I don’t get it.

How can that possibly work?

-Mark Roulo

http://www.murdockmuseum.org/One-room%20school%20website%20info.doc

“The first subject of the day was reading. The textbook of choice for many years was the McGuffey’s Reader. It contained excerpts of great works, like Shakespeare, the Bible, biographical sketches of great men, and portions of orations and Socrates. It was intended to inspire children with noble goals and give purpose in life. It also indoctrinated the students with moral lessons. Morals were taught as much as possible, incorporating them into the opening exercises, reading, penmanship and other lessons. The McGuffey’s Reader has six volumes and an eighth grade graduate was expected to complete the fourth or fifth reader. Even for high school graduates today, mastering the sixth reader would be a formidable task.”

So it does look like roughly two years per book. The same
page mentions that class ran from 8AM to 4PM while school was
in session, but that classes were not held 9 months per year.

-Mark Roulo

The didn’t have school for 185 days per year. I vaguely remember it being mentioned that sometimes a school year would be a total of 60 days! That might explain why it would take so long to make it through one reader.

This matches my data, but doesn’t answer the questions: (a) what age was the typical kid who was using a McGuffeys 4th reader, and (b) what percentage of kids at that age were still in school back then.

Maybe time for me to do some digging…

-Mark Roulo

Even though there were originally four Readers, most schools of the 19th century used only the first two. The first Reader taught reading by using the phonics method, the identification of letters and their arrangement into words, and aided with slate work. The second Reader came into play once the student could read, and helped them to understand the meaning of sentences while providing vivid stories which children could remember. The third Reader taught the definitions of words, and was written at a level equivalent to the modern 5th or 6th grade. The fourth Reader was written for the highest levels of ability on the grammar school level, which students completed with this book.

The McGuffey Readers “were among the first textbooks in America that were designed to become progressively more challenging with each volume.” Pre-McGuffey, many rural schools used the Bible to teach reading in lieu of a textbook.

I have a recent child, but I have noticed it. I think we do have some later potty training going on, but also larger children. My son is very bulky for his age (6 years old, 70 pounds … not fat, just solid … I’m thinking linebacker). I see other kids with similar builds. That might be part of it (as well as the later potty training).

-Mark R.

I don’t know about Japan and Singapore. Russia doesn’t start
math until 1st grade, and Russian 1st graders are 7 years old,
not 6 like in this country.

I have read that 6 is the traditional age to introduce formal
academic education in Japan, but don’t have a reliable source
for this.

I think what has happened is that with most children in daycare
and then pre-school, the older socialization function of Kindergarten
has been handled by these other institutions. The thinking is
that (a) the kids have already sang songs and learned how to not
bite each other, and (b) we need to improve out academics, so starting
early is one solution. What *I* see is more parents holding their
K-aged kids back one year (“if K is the new 1st grade, then I’ll
wait until my kid is old enough for 1st grade,” is the observed
behavior). This makes good sense to me, especially for boys, as
in California one can still be 4 years old when one enters
Kindergarten. A lot of 4 year old boys can’t sit still long enough
to do group academic activities (which may help to explain why
Ritalin is so popular now compared to 30 years ago).

What is more interesting is that if one uses test scores, our
K-4th graders are doing fine. The drop-off shows up starting
at 4th grade (more or less). Starting early won’t fix that …

-Mark R.
-Mark R.

This would explain a lot. I’ve been looking for info on
what percentage of children actually made it to 6th grade back
then (I *thought* it was fairly high, with some percentage dropping
out after 6th grade, and another block dropping out after 8th…)
, but figured that the readers were still one reader per grade.

But … I have copies of the readers. The 2rd reader is only 158
pages long. I’d guess 100 to 125 words per page. I don’t see how
this can be stretched out over two years . Additionally, I’ve
run a 1930s pulp story through the reading-difficulty-quantization
S/W. If shows a vocabulary difficulty only slightly easier than
WSJ editorials. The pulp magazines were mass market back then,
and so had to be targeted at the average adult reader or below.
This doesn’t “fit” with a claim that the McGuffeys were 2 grades
per reader.

Do you have sources? I’d love to get this clarified, because
I have quantitative data showing a sharp drop in difficulty
of readers from 1880 to 1930 to 1950. Obviously, if the McGuffey’s
are two years per reader, then the 1880->1930 drop-off is an illusion.

-Regards,
Mark Roulo