Although this is a common subject that all schools still teach, I'm sure the subject matter must have been very different. It's similar to how history classes change inevitably over time to constantly update with current events as well as new discoveries about previously "known" facts. Considering the Louisiana Purchase being only 15 years old at this point, geography must have been quite an important field of study. Today we learn from texts compiling ages of knowledge acquired over many lifetimes of contributing people. Perhaps "geography" was a skills-based class as opposed to a purely information-based one. Some people had to go out and chart good maps. If property lines were disputed a cartographer would have been sent in. Today the profession exists (with satellite and computer assistance), but is very different in main goals and intentions.

I am curious about what kind of law mandated this very specific location for the meeting. What kind of circumstances would have led to this oddly specific legislation? Since new universities don't really get chartered anymore, are there any obsolete laws like this? It just sounds very weird that the Commissioners were mandated to meet at a specific tavern.

I guess this would be considered "Old English" to most, but I'm pretty certain that, historically, this is considered to be within the category of English that we now speak today. I've heard that even the language of Shakespeare is actually considered "New/Modern English" in most regards, despite it sounding very foreign at times. I wonder how vocabulary/grammar would have begun to shift differently in the States compared to Britain, as we now see that many common words in the UK are quite different from the USA, but even common words are spelled differently.

This attentiveness to world languages at the time indicates a strong awareness by the Board of Commissioners as to the global status of the early United States. Despite becoming a self-sovereign nation and establishing a proper constitution, the US was just a fledgling nation on the world stage. The US as a super power wasn't even imaginable at that point, since the nation had so much catching-up to do in relation to the real centers of power at the time. The commissioners envisioned their system of education from a highly grounded and pragmatic perspective.