The Movement toward Public Schooling
131
5-2e Webster: Schoolmaster of the Republic
FOCUS Why did Franklin, Jefferson, Rush, and Webster propose plans to use education and schooling to construct a distinctive American cultural identity? Did they succeed? How did political and social change in the early national period change the educational institutions and processes inherited from the colonial era? Have particular school subjects, ceremonies, or events shaped your cultural identity as an American?
Noah Webster (1758–1843), a prominent educator and lexicographer, was one of the early republic’s leading cultural nationalists.11 He wanted the United States to be culturally independent with its own “language as well as government.” Believing that a common language and literature would build a sense of national identity, Webster worked to construct a distinctive American version of the English language with its own idiom, pronunciation, and style. Believing that textbooks had a powerful influence on teaching and learning, Webster wrote spelling and reading books that emphasized American identity and achievements.12 His American Dictionary was published in 1828 after years of intensive research. Esteemed as the “schoolmaster of the republic,” Noah Webster promoted a monocultural American identity with its own distinctive Americanized version of English as the national language. Until the mid-twentieth century, public schools “Americanized” immigrant children by imposing this monolithic cultural version on them. Today, multicultural and bilingual education programs recognize America’s diversity by seeking to broaden the contours of American cultural identity.
5-3 The Movement toward Public Schooling
monitorial method A method of
instruction, also known as mutual instruction, developed by the English educators Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster, which was popular in the United States in the early nineteenth century.
In the early nineteenth century, when some children worked in the factories in the industrializing eastern states, philanthropic groups supported Sunday and monitorial schools to educate them in basic skills and religion. The Sunday school instructed children on Sunday when factories were closed. When public schools were established, the Sunday school model was used by Protestant churches to provide religious education to the children of their particular denomination. The American Sunday School Union was established to coordinate the activities and develop curricular materials for its member churches. Of the various philanthropic educational efforts, the monitorial school was most popular. Monitorial education came to the United States from the United Kingdom, where Joseph Lancaster (1778–1838) had developed it to provide basic instruction in reading, spelling, and arithmetic to large numbers of children. In the monitorial method, a master teacher would train older and more advanced students as instructional aides (monitors) to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic to younger pupils. Because student monitors did most of the teaching, the costs were minimal. Lessons
Joshua Kendall, The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster’s Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2010), pp. 69–75. 12 For Webster and his Elementary Spelling Book, see Gutek, An Historical Introduction to American Education, pp. 55–61. 11
1801–1809 US President
1825 Opening of University of Virginia 1826 Death
1790 1800 1810 1820 1830
Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.