Lancasterian System of Instruction in the Schools of New York City, (Contributions to Education / Teachers College, Columbia Univ)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1916 Excerpt: ... education, promoting agriculture, and aiding the arts and industries, thus anticipating the idea of the Smithsonian Institution and the Department of Agriculture. Lancaster proposed a tax on sea-captains, merchants and travelers who neglected to bring in specimens.1 In a measure following his suggestion, the African Free School in 1828 issued a circular inviting "captains of vessels and other gentlemen traveling in our own or foreign countries to contribute to the school museum."2 Object teaching came in with the establishment of the Infant Schools in 1828. These schools followed the Pestalozzian rather than the Lancasterian model, and were taught by "females" Schools with some monitorial assistance. The daily program provided for conversation about common objects; and reading was taught in association with objects and pictures. A visitor thus describes the instruction in Infant School No. 1: "Underneath the picture may be placed the letters c, a, t; the child is soon taught to spell cat, and thus at once learns its letters, the name of its favorite animal, and how to spell it. Thus I observed in the infant school, in children of about eighteen months old, one that could scarcely stand alone, who, on a picture of a cat being placed on the stand, would, as the monitor pointed with his stick, spell c, a, t. The same with dog, cow, horse, etc. up to elephant, crocodile, rhinoceros, and other animals of which they had only seen the pictures. It soon becomes easy to make them acquainted with the natural history of these animals, and an infant learns the difference between the names of an elephant and a phaeton, and how to spell them much sooner than some persons who ride in one of their own. Thus children acquire ideas of things along w...