the

paper from being soiled and thumbed to pieces by frequent use.* At the top of the paper which comprised the hornbook, the alphabet was usually written in capital and small letters. Underneath, either numerals or sometimes vowels and consonants were printed. Almost invariably at the bottom was the Lord's Prayer.

The use of the hornbook in America was a direct import from the English educational system. It had been used in England ever since the 1400's, although it had never made inroads on the Continent where a simple engraving of the alphabetical tables was used-without the protective horn. The hornbook reached its peak of popularity in the 16th and 17th centuries, and it is interesting to note the references to it in English literature. Ben Johnson wrote:

The letters may be read through the horn. That makes the story perfect. Shakespeare refers to it in discussing Holofernes, the schoolmaster, in Love's Labour's Lost: "He teaches boys the Hornbook." "

The Pilgrim fathers probably brought hornbooks to America with them on the Mayflower; it is certain that they were in constant use during colonial days and shortly after the revolution. Many references are made to them in American literature. As late as December 7, 1760, the Pennsylvania Gazette advertised "gilt horns and plain horns."9

There is evidence which indicates that hornbooks were never manufactured in the American colonies but were handled as imports from England. This supports the theory that the main reason for the disappearance of the hornbook was the influence of the Revolutionary War, which disrupted trade between England and America and resulted in a post-revolutionary reaction against everything British.10

Another theory is that the hornbook became modified during years of use and finally evolved into the simple primer. Later hornbooks do show improvements such as wooden slides through which different lessons could be slipped under the horn. As paper became cheaper, the A-B-C's printed on a piece of cardboard replaced the wood and horn altogether.

One obvious outgrowth of the hornbook was the "battledore book" invented by John Newbury, an Englishman, in 1746.11 It was simply a piece of cardboard which could be folded into a two- or threeleaf book and made to stay that way by a little flap on the corner.

• American Journal of Education, Vol. 28 (1877), p. 854. Ibid., Vol. 8.

Ibid., p. 310.

Andrew W. Luer, History of the Hornbook, New York. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1896, p. 136.

10 American Journal of Education, Vol. 17 (1867–1869), p. 187.

11 George A. Plimpton, "Hornbooks", The Independent (New York), Vol. 73 (July 31, 1912), p. 268.

Essentially, the battledores were small illustrated primers. Their simplicity made them very cheap (about a penny each for the cheapest!) and one English publisher sold more than 100,000 books in ten years. However the battledore, too, was rarely used in this country after the Revolutionary War.

Textbooks

We have seen how the hornbook and later the battledore and A-B-C primers were used during colonial times. The next big step toward the modern textbook was the spelling book, which preceded true primers by a number of years.

The first of such spelling books was Coote's The English SchoolMaster, a thin 72-page book published in 1596. According to the title page, "he which hath this Book only, needeth to buy no other to make him fit from his Letters to the Grammar-School, or for an Apprentice," 12 Not only did it contain spelling lessons but had a smat tering of arithmetic, history, and a short catechism. The book was popular for over a century.

One of the first notable textbooks was Comenius', Orbis Pictus, first published in Nuremberg, Germany in 1657.13 It was soon translated into fourteen languages and went through countless editions. Not only was it the standard text for German Schools for 200 years, but it enjoyed great popularity in England and the American colonies.

Comenius' Orbis Pictus is especially significant because it was the first illustrated schoolbook of any importance ever to be printed.1a The Orbis Pictus (translated: Visible World or World Illustrated) sought to fulfill its ambitious title with "pictures of all chief things that are in the world, and of men's employment therein; in above 150 cuts." It begins by illustrating the alphabet ("The Crow Crieth"with a wood-cut illustration of a crow) and then moved on to larger cuts of human activities. For example, one cut entitled, "The Blacksmith," shows a smith working in his shop. The tools in the shop are numbered and under the cut the objects are named and numbered: and thus are hammer'd out Nails, 9, Horse-shoes, 10, etc.

Orbis Pictus had more of the character of an illustrated dictionary than a child's reading book.

12 Johnson, op. cit., p. 22.

13 John Amos Comenius, The Orbis Pictus, reprinted by C. W. Bardine, Syracuse (1887), introduction.

14 Whether it was the first illustrated textbook as such to be printed is open to question. See Brien's article, "Notes on the Background of Visual Education," in Education, Vol. 61, No. 6, Feb. 1941, pp. 321-325.

Because of this book, Comenius is often credited with being the father of Visual Education. Regardless of the merits of this claim, his theories on visual education are of special interest to us.

Basically, Comenius felt that the child in his early school years was not ready for a flood of abstractions. If an object was used to present the abstractions, however, he felt children would "grow merry, wax lively and willingly suffer themselves to be fastened upon them, till the thing be sufficiently discerned." Comenius offered pictures or woodcuts in place of objects in his Orbis Pictus.

In the colonies, the printing of textbooks was begun early. The first printing press was assembled by Stephen Daye in 1639. Between 1641 and 1643, he printed a spelling book. It had little circulation and had no influence on the American textbook movement except for the fact that it was the first American textbook.15

The first American textbook of any importance-The New England Primer-was published about 1690 16 by Benjamin Harris. Although the primer, an outgrowth of a long line of English primers, was nothing original, it immediately became an accepted textbook in New England. Every home had a copy and they were on sale in every town and village bookshop. The accounts kept by printers Benjamin Franklin and David Hall show that their firm alone sold 37,000 copies between 1749-1756; 1 undoubtedly overall sales easily ran into the hundreds of thousands.

17

Technologically the New England Primer was not very advanced. Printed from movable type, each letter had to be set by hand. Each time the book was printed in a different locality, the printer had to repeat this hand-setting process unlike today's when a publisher can make duplicate sets of plates and send them to anyone wanting to reproduce one of his books. The typography in these early editions was clear and distinct, but only because books were printed in small quantities.

The New England Primer was bound by hand. This was a slow process, and even the largest printers could bind only a few books a day. Covers were made from thin oak, and despite the coarse blue paper pasted over the oak, they cracked and splintered badly. The back was of leather and neither back or sides had any printing on them.18

Textual material was concentrated more on moral teaching than

15 American Textbook Publishers Institute, Textbooks in Education, Chicago; The Lakeside Press, 1949, p. 24.

16 A Boston Almanac made the first written reference to it in that year in the form of an advertisement.

17 American Textbook Publishers Institute, op. cit., p. 26.

18 Johnson, op. cit., p. 74.

actual factual teaching. Thus the New England Primer began with the letter A:

In Adam's Fall

We Sinned All

Even in presenting the sciences, the opportunity for moralizing was not to be overlooked in the early texts. In the arithmetic section of Dillworth's Schoolmaster's Assistant, reprinted in Philadelphia, we find:

Three jealous husbands, each with a wife, met on a river bank. How are they to cross so that none of the wives is left in the company of one or two men unless her husband is also present?

19

Factual material subjects such as history left much to be desired. In a colonial primer written by a certain Fenning and appearing in 1775, a chronology of "the most remarkable Occurrences in Sacred and profane History" is recorded, including such titles as:

Eleven Days successive Snow---

A Very great Comet____

A terrible high Wind, November 26---.

20

A.D. 1674

1680

1703

Illustrations in early texts were as bad as the textual material, or worse. While wood engravings had been used in Europe since 1430, and copper engravings were used as early as 1450, it was 1814 before a steel-engraving process was invented. Because of these technical limitations, illustrations were used sparingly and the drawings and engravings were very crude.21

10 William Edward Pulsifer, A Brief Account of the Educational Publishing Business in the United States, Atlantic City, New Jersey, 1921, p. 6.

20 Johnson, op. cit., p. 54.

21 Pulsifer, op. cit., pp. 8–9.

Part II

FROM THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

TO THE CIVIL WAR

Technological Development

THE 70-YEAR PERIOD from 1791 to 1861 was one of rapid growth for young America. In manufacturing, her mills and factories were competitive with those of Europe. Her inventive genius developed improved tools and new industrial techniques and machines. Her expansion westward resulted in a complete new communications system utilizing railroads and clipper ships and tied together by the most extensive telegraph system the world had yet seen.

Trends in Education

The Revolutionary War, which forced American industry to stand on its own feet, had a shattering effect on education. The colonial educational system was completely disrupted as teachers were summoned to the army. Schools closed down one after another.

Following the war, the nation had little time to devote to rebuilding its education system. A new government was needed. The western expansion required much of the nation's strength. It was a static period in education until about 1830, when Henry Barnard, Horace Mann, and other educators gave a new direction to education.

However, some benefits of the growing American technology did filter down to education. During this period important teaching implements such as the blackboard, slate, and maps were added. School furniture and architecture also improved.

Even more important, from about 1830 on, educators began to accept the fact that new teaching apparatuses could make invaluable contributions to the educational field. Reformers like Mann and Barnard began to require their schools (in Massachusetts and Connecticut, respectively) to report regularly on apparatuses acquired and their use.

There was a substantial change underway. William J. Adams, lecturing to a teachers convention at Boston in August 1830 told them:

Sensible objects, judiciously selected, and properly exhibited to the young student, are found to contribute wonderfully to his advancement in all good