STUDIES AND TEXTBOOKS. The studies of the elementary vernacular school remained, throughout the whole of the eighteenth century, much as before, namely, reading, a little writing and ciphering, some spelling, religion, and in Teutonic countries a little music. La Salle (R. 182) had prescribed, for the Catholic vernacular schools of France, instruction in French, some. Latin, "orthography, arithmetic, the matins and vespers, le Pater, l'Ave Maria, le Credo et le Confiteor, the Commandments, responses, Catechism, duties of a Christian, and maxims and precepts drawn from the Testament." The Catechism was to be taught one half-hour daily. The schoolbooks in England in Locke's day, as he tells us (p. 435), were "the Horn Book, Primer, Psalter, Testament, and Bible." These indicate merely a religious vernacular school. The purpose stated for the English Church charity-schools (R. 238 b), schools that attained to large importance in England and the American Colonies during the eighteenth century, shows them to have been, similarly, religious vernacular schools. The School Regulations which Frederick the Great promulgated for Prussia (1763), fixed the textbooks to be used (R. 274, § 20), and indicate that the instruction in Prussia was still restricted to reading, writing, religion, singing, and a little arithmetic. In colonial America, Noah Webster's description (R. 230) of the schools he attended in Connecticut, about 1764-70, shows that the studies and textbooks were "chiefly or wholly Dilworth's Spelling Books, the Psalter, Testament, and Bible," with a little writing and ciphering. A few words of description of these older books may prove useful here.
[Illustration: FIG. 130. A HORN BOOK]
THE HORN BOOK. The Horn Book goes back to the close of the fifteenth century, [7] and by the end of the sixteenth century was in common use throughout England. Somewhat similar alphabet boards, lacking the handle, were also used in Holland, France, and in German lands. This, a thin oak board on which was pasted a printed slip, covered by translucent horn, was the book from which children learned their letters and began to read, the mastery of which usually required some time. Cowper thus describes this little book:
Neatly secured from being soiled or torn
Beneath a pane of thin translucent horn,
A book (to please us at a tender age
'T is called a book, though but a single page)
Presents the prayer the Savior designed to teach,
Which children use, and parsons—when they preach.
The Horn Book was much used well into the eighteenth century, but its reading matter was in time incorporated into the school Primer, now evolved out of an earlier elementary religious manual.
THE PRIMER. Originally the child next passed to the Catechism and the Bible, but about the middle of the seventeenth century the Primer began to be used. The Primer in its original form was a simple manual of devotion for the laity, compiled without any thought of its use in the schools. It contained the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and a few of the more commonly used prayers and psalms. [8] The Catechism soon was added, and with the prefixing of the alphabet and a few syllables and words it was transformed, as schools arose, into the first reading book for children. There was at first no attempt at grading, illustration, or the introduction of easy reading material. About the close of the seventeenth century the illustrated Primer, with some attempt at grading and some additional subject-matter, made its appearance, both in England and America, and at once leaped into great popularity.
The idea possibly goes back to the Orbis Pictus (1654) of Comenius (p. 413: R. 221), the first illustrated schoolbook ever written. The first English Primer adapted to school use was The Protestant Tutor, a rather rabid anti-Catholic work which appeared in London, about 1685. A later edition of this contained the alphabet, some syllables and words, the figures and letters, the list of the books of the Bible, an alphabet of lessons, the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, the Ten Commandments, and a poem, long famous, on the death of the martyr, John Rogers. [9] It was an abridgement of this book which the same publisher brought out in Boston, about 1690, under the name of The New England Primer (R. 202). This at once leaped into great popularity, and became the accepted reading book in all the schools of the American Colonies except those under the Church of England. For the next century and a quarter it was the chief school and reading book in use among the Dissenters and Lutherans in America. Schoolmasters drilled the children on the reading matter and the Catechism it contained, and the people recited from it yearly in the churches. It was also used for such spelling as was given. It was the first great American textbook success, and was still in use in the Boston dame schools as late as 1806. It was reprinted in England, and enjoyed a great sale among Dissenters there. Its sales in America alone have been estimated at least three million copies. The sale in Europe was also large. It was followed in England by other Primers and other introductory reading books, of which The History of Genesis (1708), a series of simple stories retold from the first book of the Bible, and The Child's Weeks-Work (1712), containing proverbs, fables, conundrums, lessons on behavior, and a short catechism, are types. Frederick the Great, in his list of required textbooks for Prussian schools (R. 274, § 20), does not mention a Primer.
[Illustration: THE WESTMINSTER CATECHISM.
(A page from The New England Primer, natural size)]
THE CATECHISM. In all Protestant German lands the Shorter Catechism prepared by Luther, or the later Heidelberg Catechism; in Calvinistic lands the Catechism of Calvin; and in England and the American Colonies the Westminster Catechism, [10] formed the backbone of the religious instruction. Teachers drilled their pupils in these as thoroughly as on any other subject, writing masters set as copies sentences from the book, children were required to memorize the answers, and the doctrines contained were emphasized by teacher and preacher so that the children were saturated with the religious ideas set forth. No book except the Bible did so much to form the character, and none so much to fix the religious bias of the children. Almost equal importance was given to the Catechism in Catholic lands (R. 182, §§ 21-22), though there supplemented by more religious influences derived from the ceremonial of the Church.
[Illustration: FIG. 132. THOMAS DILWORTH (?-1780)
The most celebrated English textbook writer of his day.
(From the Frontispiece of his Schoolmaster's Assistant, 1740)]