Vocal school

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Vocal school in Lincoln's New Salem

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Typical U.S. 19th-century vocal school

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19th-century Canadian vocal school

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Vocal school slate boards and chalkTemplate:Sfn

A vocal school, blab school, ABC school or old-time school was a type of children's primary school in some remote, rural places in North America in the 19th century, which became increasingly outdated and obsolete as the century progressed. The school children recited ("blabbed") their lessons out loud separately or in chorus with others as a method of learning.

Etymology and word origin

Blab is a shortened form of the word "blabber", meaning to talk much without making sense.Template:Sfn Middle English had the noun , "one who does not control their tongue".

It has also been claimed that the origin of the term "blab school" is the garbled "blab-blab" sound of the student's loud recitations as heard by neighbors of the schools.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Children in blab schools repeated their teacher's oral lesson at the top of their voices. The school children vocalized their lesson in "Chinese fashion" as harmonized voices in unison.Template:Sfn In more elegant terms, blab schools were sometimes called vocal schools.Template:Sfn

Description

Blab schools were widespread in frontier days of the American West, since many settlers could not read.Template:Sfn These one-room schools were called "old field" schools and were housed in log cabins, often having only dirt floors.Template:Sfn The students sat on wooden, backless benches.Template:Sfn This type of school was known as an "Old-time School" in the Appalachian region of Virginia in the 19th century.Template:Sfn

Blab schools typically were not equipped with many books or paper.Template:Sfn The schooling consisted of a teacher, with perhaps one or two books, speaking a short oral lesson and the schoolchildren reciting it back in a loud voice several times until memorized.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The only requirement to become a teacher was basic literacy.Template:Sfn

Reciting lessons was a form of entertainment in frontier communities, as well as a means of learning.Template:Sfn Paper was scarce and expensive, so memorizing was the preferred method of study.Template:Sfn The subjects of reading, writing, and arithmetic were the basic curriculum of these 19th-century schools. Students who excelled in their studies were known as "leather-heads" and were awarded with praise from the teacher.Template:Sfn

In many of the "ABC schools," each pupil was required to recite, first thing in the morning of each school day, the lesson they had learned in their homework assignment of the previous evening. The most ambitious "leather-heads" tried to reach the schoolhouse by sunrise, as the order of recitation was "first come, first called" and those who recited first had the best chance of winning the teacher's approval while he or she was still in a good mood.Template:Sfn

The method of memorizing lessons by recitation was referred to as "loud studying".Template:Sfn Some 19th-century educational theorists held that listening to the "blabbing" of their fellow students would encourage each child's individual retention of information. The ubiquity of "blab schools", however, likely owed more to the lack of properly-trained teachers, adequate facilities, and equipment in frontier settlements than to any real or perceived superiority of the "blab" method. The very name suggests that, if anything, most observers found this mode of teaching slightly ridiculous and harbored doubts about its efficacy.Template:Sfn Teachers were not reluctant to punish their students harshly.Template:Sfn Often, teachers would patrol their classrooms during recitation with a wooden switch or paddle and use it on any child not deemed to be repeating loudly enough.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Abraham Lincoln

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Abraham Lincoln's 1822 vocal schoolTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn

U.S. president Abraham Lincoln learned the alphabet and other basic subjects when he attended a vocal school in his youth.Template:Sfn Like many other children, Lincoln walked to school; the first school he first attended was at least a mile from his home.Template:Sfn His first two teachers were Zachariah Riney and Caleb Hazel, who taught from a windowless schoolhouse.Template:Sfn Another of Lincoln's teachers was Azel Waters Dorsey (1784–1858), who taught him for 6 months in 1824 in a blab school in Spencer County, Indiana.

Lincoln learned first from spelling books. It was customary to learn first to spell all the words in the spelling book and recite several times before advancing to read other books.Template:Sfn Lincoln studied Dillworth's Speller and Webster's Old Blueback.Template:Sfn Later he read Murray's English Reader.Template:Sfn

Lincoln was noted for shouting out his reading lesson on the path from his home to the blab school and could be heard for a considerable distance.Template:Sfn He had the habit of reading anything aloud.Template:Sfn Between the ages of 11 and 15, Lincoln went to school occasionally, when his considerable workload of farm chores would allow it.Template:Sfn All of Lincoln's schooling combined in various blab schools amounted to less than a year.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Many times the blab school Lincoln attended did not even have a teacher; instead, the older, more advanced students, often teenagers, taught the younger children.Template:Sfn

See also

• Lincoln's New Salem
• Primary education in the United States

References

Notes

Bibliography