In 1668 in England, George Fox advised the newly organized Religious Society of Friends to set up schools where children could be taught to be useful members of society. In America, William Penn established in Pennsylvania a “holy experiment,” a colony dedicated to the principles of religious toleration, participatory government and enduring love. The realization of these principles depended on a moral education for children. To accomplish this, Penn established a Friends Public School in 1689, the first Quaker educational institution in America.

Monthly Meetings were urged to provide suitable schools for their youngsters. Most of these local meetings found a teacher to start a small group on its educational journey. Three of our present member schools stem from just such a humble beginning. William Penn Charter School and Friends Select School date their beginnings to 1689. Abington Friends School started in 1697.

The next century, 1700-1800, provided us with 13 more Friends schools, which still survive and thrive. From 1800 to 1900 the number increased to 28. In 1931 there were 34 Friends schools in America, most of them located in the vicinity of Philadelphia, but also from Maine to Idaho and one in Ontario, Canada.

The year 1931 is especially significant for Friends education in America, since it represents the founding of the Friends Council on Education whose purpose was to bring all these diverse Friends schools under an integrating canopy of educational service.

In his initial address to the Council in 1931, Dr. John A. Lester, founding volunteer executive secretary, urges Friends schools to lead in preparing children to address contemporary problems, in words that still ring true today:

A unique aspect of the founding is that the Friends Council on Education not only brought together all of the Friends schools, but also brought a piece of organizational unity to the Hicksite-Orthodox split in the Religious Society of Friends. (The “split” was officially healed in 1955.) Howard H. Brinton, along with Hadassah and Morris Leeds, dreamed a big dream: a national consultative organization, the Friends Council on Education, to deal with education from kindergarten through college. Since Morris Leeds was a member of the Orthodox group and Hadassah of the Hicksites, they represented in their marriage and interests what the Society of Friends was to accept some twenty-three years later: unity and fellowship.