OLD-TIME SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL-BOOKS - online book

An Illustrated history & description Of Schools in the 18th & 19th Centurys.

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	248 Old-time Schools and School-books
	every left-hand page. Its author was evidently a man of much keener and more sympathetic peda­gogic perception than most of the makers of school books and the plan of the book was quite interest­ing. The idea was to teach the meaning of words through the " language of pictures," and each of the engravings in the first part of the book is accom­panied by a list of the most prominent objects in it and with a few short, simple phrases. The cuts are repeated in the latter part of the book, but this time the text that goes with each is a little story. Here is an illustration from The Progressive Reader or Juvenile Monitor, Concord, New Hampshire, 1830: We are told that the bird it de-
		picts " sang from morning till evening and was very hand­some. " Caroline, the little girl to whom the bird belonged, " fed it with seeds and cooling herbs and sugar, and refreshed it daily with water from a clear fountain." But at length it died. " The little girl lamented
	A Bird. From The Progressive Reader, 1830.	her beloved bird, and wept sore." Then her mother bought an­
	other " handsomer than the former, and as fair a songster." " But Caroline wept still more," and her mother, "amazed," asked the reason. Caroline replied it was because she had wronged the bird that died by eating a piece of sugar herself that her mother had given her for the bird. The mother saw then why