"being taken into the said Workhouse are there taught to Read and Write, and kept to Work until they are qualified to be put out to be Apprentices, and for the Sea Service, or otherwise disposed; … The Habit of the Children is all the same, being made of Russit Cloth, and a round Badge worn upon their Breast, representing a poor Boy, and a Sheep; the Motto: 'God's Providence is our Inheritance.'" … In this workhouse children were "taught to spin Wool and Flax, to Sow and Knit, to make their own Cloaths, Shoes, and Stockings, and the like Employments; to inure them betimes to labour. They are also taught to read, and such as are capable, to write and cast Accounts; and also the Catechism, to ground them in Principles of Religion and Honesty." [21]
The school established by Saint John's parish, Southwark, London, in 1735, and designed to train and "put out" girls for domestic service (R. 241), and which cared for, clothed, and trained forty girls, is also typical of these parish schools "for the children of the industrious poor."
METHODS OF INSTRUCTION. Throughout the eighteenth century the method of instruction commonly employed in the vernacular schools was what was known as the individual method. This was wasteful of both time and effort, and unpedagogical to a high degree (R. 244). Everywhere the teacher was engaged chiefly in hearing recitations, testing memory, and keeping order. The pupils came to the master's desk, one by one (see Figures 98, 99), and recited what they had memorized. Aside from imposing discipline, teaching was an easy task. The pupils learned the assigned lessons and recited what they had learned. Such a thing as methodology—technique of instruction— was unknown. The dominance of the religious motive, too, precluded any liberal attitude in school instruction, the individual method was time- consuming, school buildings often were lacking, and in general there was an almost complete lack of any teaching equipment, books, or supplies. Viewed from any modern standpoint the schools of the eighteenth century attained to but a low degree of efficiency (R. 244). The school hours were long, the schoolmaster's residence or place of work or business was commonly used as a schoolroom, and such regular schoolrooms as did exist were dirty and noisy and but poorly suited to school purposes. Schools everywhere, too, were ungraded, the school of one teacher being like that of any other teacher of that class.
So wasteful of time and effort was the individual method of instruction that children might attend school for years and get only a mere start in reading and writing. Paulsen, [22] writing of schools in German lands at an even later date, says that even in the better type of vernacular schools
many children never achieved anything beyond a little reading and knowing a few things by heart…. The instruction in reading was never anything else but a torture, protracted through years, from saying the alphabet and formation of syllables to the deciphering of complete words, without any real success in the end, while writing was nothing but a wearisome tracing of the letters, the net result of all the toil being the gabbling of the Catechism and a few Bible texts and hymns, learned over and over again.
The imparting of information by the teacher to a class, or a class discussion of a topic, were almost unknown. Hearing lessons, assigning new tasks, setting copies, making quill pens, dictating sums, and imposing order completely absorbed the time and the attention of the teacher.
SCHOOL DISCIPLINE. The discipline everywhere was severe. "A boy has a back; when you hit it he understands," was a favorite pedagogical maxim of the time. Whipping-posts were sometimes set up in the schoolroom, and practically all pictures of the schoolmasters of the time show a bundle of switches near at hand. Boys in the Latin grammar schools were flogged for petty offenses (R. 245). The ability to impose order on a poorly taught and, in consequence, an unruly school was always an important requisite of the schoolmaster. A Swabian schoolmaster, Häuberle by name, with characteristic Teutonic attention to details, has left on record [23] that, in the course of his fifty-one years and seven months as a teacher he had, by a moderate computation, given 911,527 blows with a cane, 124,010 blows with a rod, 20,989 blows and raps with a ruler, 136,715 blows with the hand, 10,235 blows over the mouth, 7,905 boxes on the ear, 1,115,800 raps on the head, and 22,763 notabenes with the Bible, Catechism, singing book, and grammar. He had 777 times made boys kneel on peas, 613 times on a triangular piece of wood, had made 3001 wear the jackass, and 1707 hold the rod up, not to mention various more unusual punishments he had contrived on the spur of the occasion. Of the blows with the cane, 800,000 were for Latin words; of the rod 76,000 were for texts from the Bible or verses from the singing book. He also had about 3000 expressions to scold with, two thirds of which were native to the German tongue and the remainder his invention.
[Illustration: FIG. 141. A SCHOOL WHIPPING-POST
Drawn from a picture of a five-foot whipping-post which once stood in the
floor of a school-house at Sunderland, Massachusetts. Now in the Deerfield
Museum.]
[Illustration: FIG. 142. AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY GERMAN SCHOOL
Reproduction of an engraving by J. Mettenleiter, now in the
Kupferstichkabinet, Munich, and printed in Joh. Ferd. Schlez's.
Dorfschulen zu Langenhausen. Nuremberg, 1795.]
Another illustration of German school discipline, of many that might be cited, was the reform work of Johann Ernest Christian Haun, who was appointed, in 1783, as inspector of schools in the once famous Gotha (p. 317). Due to warfare and neglect the schools there had fallen into disrepute. Haun drove the incapable teachers from the work, and for a time restored the schools to something of their earlier importance. Among other reforms it is recorded that he forbade teachers to put irons around the boys' necks, to cover them with mud, to make them kneel on peas, or to brutally beat them. Diesterweg (R. 244) describes similar punishments as characteristic of eighteenth-century German schools. The eighteenth- century German schoolmaster shown in Fig. 142 was probably a good sample of his class.