The Innovative University

Chapter 4Pioneer Academy

In 1888, at roughly the midpoint of Charles Eliot's presidency at Harvard, an academy for primary and secondary school-aged children was founded in rural Rexburg, Idaho, a farming community with a population of just three thousand. Boston, by contrast, was approaching half a million.¹ Founded by Mormon pioneers who were building communities throughout the west, the school in Rexburg embodied many of the Puritan virtues of early Harvard College: religious conviction, frugality, hard work, self-sacrifice. It also shared many of Harvard's ambitions.

A High Regard for Education

Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (commonly know as the Mormon Church) wrote in 1832 of the importance ...