Benjamin was intended as a tithe to the Church, but the plan was abandoned because of lack of means to send him to college. After one year at the Latin Grammar School, and one year at an arithmetic and writing school, for better or worse, his education of that sort ceased; and at the age of ten he began to assist in his father's occupation, now that of tallow-chandler and soap-boiler. He wished to go to sea, and gave indications of leadership and enterprise. His father took him to visit the shops of joiners, bricklayers, turners, braziers, cutlers, and other artisans, thus stimulating in him a delight in handicraft. Finally, because of a bookish turn he had been exhibiting, the boy was bound apprentice to his brother James, who about 1720 began to publish the _New England Courant_, the fourth newspaper to be established in America.
Among the books early read by Benjamin Franklin were _The Pilgrim's Progress_, certain historical collections, a book on navigation, works of Protestant controversy, Plutarch's _Lives_, filled with the spirit of Greek freedom, Dr. Mather's _Bonifacius_, and Defoe's _Essay on Projects_. The last two seemed to give him a way of thinking, to adopt Franklin's phraseology, that had an influence on some of the principal events of his life. Defoe, an ardent nonconformist, educated in one of the Academies (established on Milton's model) and especially trained in English and current history, advocated among other projects a military academy, an academy for improving the vernacular, and an academy for women. He thought it barbarous that a civilized and Christian country should deny the advantages of learning to women. They should be brought to read books and especially history. Defoe could not think that God Almighty had made women so glorious, with souls capable of the same accomplishments with men, and all to be only stewards of our houses, cooks, and slaves.
Benjamin still had a hankering for the sea, but he recognized in the printing-office and access to books other means of escape from the narrowness of the Boston of 1720. Between him and another bookish boy, John Collins, arose an argument in reference to the education of women. The argument took the form of correspondence. Josiah Franklin's judicious criticism led Benjamin to undertake the well-known plan of developing his literary style.