Summary Of The Pestalozzian Primer

The second critical 1826 beginning book for children was A Primer of the English Language for Parents and Schools by Samuel Worcester, copyright Boston, October 9, 1826, Hillliard, Gray, Little and Wilkins. This completely omitted the syllable tables. There is no question that Worcester meant the book to be a radical change, as he began his “Directions to Teachers” with this sentence: “In order to teach this PRIMER, it will be absolutely essential that the instructor should abandon the common method of teaching children to read and spell.”

The third critically important 1826 book is The Pestalozzian Primer, or First Step in Teaching Children the Art of Reading and Thinking, by John M. Keagy, M. D., John S. Wiestling, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Keagy wrote a Preface to this book which completely opposed the syllabary and completely endorsed “meaning” in teaching beginning reading, and he worked for years afterwards (and before) to promote those changes. He praised the Pestalozzian approach, which promoted working with real objects, and giving oral lessons instead of assigning written ones.

Keagy wrote in his introduction (page 10):

“After a child has been about two years exercised in a thinking and oral course, he may be taught reading. And here he should not be

John Wood’s awful primer in Scotland may have dated earlier than its confirmed date of 1828, since his directing of the Edinburgh Sessional School dated at least to 1819. However, his primer was extraordinarily “successful” in the reviews given it (if such harm to children can be called, “successful”). The Wood primer duly showed up on the American side of the water, and was then duly lathered with praise there, also. It completely omitted the syllable tables, taught sight words, and emphasized, to an exhausting and pointless degree, material concerning