Early National Education
Even in Williamsburg,
Pennsylvania in 1774, there were still few schools. Many parents
taught their children to read and write at home using a bible and a
hornbook. A hornbook was a wooden board with a handle. A lesson
sheet of the ABCs in small and capital letters, some series of syllables
and often, the Lord's Prayer, was attached to the board and was protected
by a thin layer of cow's horn. Some hornbooks of wealthy families
were very fancy, decorated with jewels and leather and included ivory
pointers. Most of them were plain and had a string around the handle
to be worn around the neck.
People who wrote the early
primers and readers used pictures of animals learning to read and write to
show that reading and writing were natural and fairly easy
processes! By the 1750s, literacy rates
(percentage of people who could basically read and write) were the highest
in the New England colonies, at about 75% for
males and 65% for females. The literacy
rates, however, were lower in the the Middle and Southern colonies.
Children wrote using a quill dipped in ink, which sometimes blotted on the page, so they sprinkled on pounce. Pounce is a powder-like sand that helps not blotch the page. 
Most children wrote in a copybook because paper
was so expensive. Wealthy children had a tutor (always a man) teach them
privately. Some boys went to grammar school and sometimes even college but
never girls. Girls were given lessons on how to run a home. It wasn't even
expected for girls to spend any of their time reading! Instead their
mothers taught them how to cook, sew, preserve food, direct servants and
serve an elegant meal. Some girls were sent to teachers to learn how to
sing, play a musical instrument, sew fancy stitchery, to serve tea
properly by learning manners and how to carry on a polite conversation.
When boys grew older, they could become apprentices to learning to become
shopkeepers or craftsmen by working with and watching an adult.
Education was becoming more secular in order to produce socially
responsible citizens.
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on Sabtu, 07 Juli 2012
at 03.57
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