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| Provincetown Dunes, Charles Demuth (1914) |
Handwrite these notes in your binder. I could check them at any time during the semester for a grade. If you do not have the notes if I ask for them, you earn a grade of zero.
1. They were people who valued education strongly. Puritans established the first public high school in America--Boston Latin School. They also thought that it was very important that both boys and girls receive an education, although the extent of the different sexes' education varied. Puritans established the first Ivy League colleges in America.
2. Puritans highly praised hard work and contributed to the American work ethic.
3. Puritans had a strong sense of community and helped one another greatly.
4. Puritans were practical, "can-do" people, who did not easily give up.
5. Puritans were adventurous people and risk-takers (consider the mere fact that they were willing to endure a horrific journey to the new world, knowing they could die. They were also going to a place they perceived as a vast wilderness with no civilization, although we know that is not true from the Native American point of view).
6. Puritans had a strong sense of faith and were overall an ethical group of people who believed in doing good deeds.
7. Puritans did have fun. They played games, danced, and drank alcohol. They are not the dour-faced somber people of the stereotype.
8. Puritans believed that marriage should be based on love.
9. Although they did not know it, Puritans sowed the seeds for democratic government in the land that would become America through their tradition of the public meeting, where all members of the community could voice an opinion, even women.