The New York herald., 1922-12-10

the Civil war the same condition of affairs
existed in the South. I'VE must write
our own text books cried Southern
magazine passionately in 1850. I'VE can
not have our children learn to read in
books that condemn their fathers for do
ing what we think is right and proper"
So it was that after the Revolution Amer
leans began to make their own school
books And as there were now none at
all, they began to make them in great
numbers.
Nothing which tries to satisfy a general
need, however, can be really new. Most
people cling to the old, and anything en-
tirely new even if it is to meet an en-
tirely new situation, would shock and
offend those persons who are not able 20
go as fast as the others Consequently,
these books were largely old as well as
partly new. The main thing about the
old books was that they had clung to the
idea that the school must be only the SER
want of the Church. So when the new
Biographies were written, they began, as
likely as not with Moses exploring the
Red Sea; and the natural histories de-
scribed the sort of whale that could swal-
low Jonah alive. Most people nowadays
whatever they feel about the Bible. are
willing to admit that stories of miracles
are not the sort of thing to put into books
which try to explain the world as it IS.
The new books, too, kept on trying to inn
plant theology in the minds of children.
The Republic was ten years old when
Bryant was born BY the time he went
to school, the new text books were out.
Il was an excellent. almost an nfallible
speller, and ready in geography" he
wrote, but in the Catechism, not under
standing the abstract terms. l made little
progress" And if he couldn't under
stand them, you may be sure no other
child could Worst of ALL as we think
nowadays the books still retained the
Puritan notion that children should hear
as soon as possible how dreadful the
world was. The histories were enlivened
with pictures of Indian -massacres and
burnings at the stake; the biographies
had cheerful cuts of Demonstrators
crushing the life out of men on horse
back: and there were many appetizing
problems in arithmetic. Here is one of
them. "A human. body. if baked until all
the moisture is evaporated, is reduced in
weight as 10 to l. a body that weighs
100 pounds when living weighs how much
when baked?''
Yet. notwithstanding all this, there was
a great advance on the old. A magazine
in 1926 said: "Of all the improvements in
which this age abounds. none are more
manifest or more important than such as
relate to elementary education What has
generally been made loathsome task
has been converted into a pleasure. Every
learner" For this great Improvement
Noah Webster was chiefly responsible.
If the young Bryant was an almost in
fallibe speller, he was something which
no grown up man was at the time. He
had Noah Webster's Spelling Book to
thank for that. Not until he had writ
ten it was there any real uniformity in
spelling. In the same letter. men of the
highest education would spell the same
word i'm several different ways 1t was
just as if they. said: There. take your
choice, one of them is bound to be right"
There was the same lack of uniformity,
though to a less degree. m England. Noah
Webster's attempt to regularize spelling
in America reacted on British spelling
also. They did not adopt many of the
changes he advocated. but his example