A comment on my recent post, “The problem: a metacognition deficit,” reminded me of a striking illustration of cultural change, the level of the language and content of a book used in the 1890s to teach high school civics (available in plain text, a big pdf and simulated in-browser book ). It reeks of a culture that fostered metacognition.
[Update: I found crisper example (see next post).]
Just for fun, read the whole excerpt:
Some time ago, my friends, Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., requested me to write a small book on Civil Government in the United States, which might be useful as a text-book, and at the same time serviceable and suggestive to the general reader interested in American history.
[....]
It is, moreover, the mental training gained through contact with local government that enables the people of a community to conduct successfully, through their representatives, the government of the state and the nation. And so it makes a great deal of difference whether the government of a town or county is of one sort or another. If the average character of our local governments for the past quarter of a century had been quite as high as that of the Boston town-meeting or the Virginia boards of county magistrates, in the days of Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry, who can doubt that many an airy demagogue, who, through session after session, has played his pranks at the national capital, would long ago have been abruptly recalled to his native heath, a sadder if not a wiser man?
[....]
If you have not already done so, it would be well worth while for you to organize a debating society in your town or village, for the discussion of such historical and practical questions relating to the government of the United States as are suggested in the course of this book. Once started, there need be no end of interesting and profitable subjects for discussion….A few hours every week spent in such wholesome studies cannot fail to do much toward the political education of the local community, and thus toward the general improvement of the American people. For the amelioration of things will doubtless continue to be effected in the future, as it has been effected in the past, not by ambitious schemes of sudden and universal reform (which the sagacious man always suspects, just as he suspects all schemes for returning a fabulously large interest upon investments), but by the gradual and cumulative efforts of innumerable individuals, each doing something to help or instruct those to whom his influence extends. He who makes two clear ideas grow where there was only one hazy one before, is the true benefactor of his species.
For an outside perspective, here’s a quote from a review of the book in Science magazine, 19 September 1890:
Questions for pupils, and suggestions for teachers, adapt the work for use in schools; and its value is increased by an appendix containing the Articles of Confederation, the National Constitution, a translation of the Great Charter of King John, and other interesting documents.
i think high school books and teachers and kids are not so high now
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I think your observation about highschool are accurate, but the most important reason for it, is the increase in attendance.
At the time my father was young (much more recent than 1890), highschool was attended by around 15% of those of appropriate age. Generally that part of the group who was most academically skilled.
Today (atleast here in Norway), 75% attend. Including many of sub-average capability.
You simply CANNOT teach on the same level, when the students aren’t of the same level. Or if you did, you’d end up talking right over the heads of half the class.
@ Eivind — Yes, this is one important reason for a change in the level of teaching.
In the U.S., “The median years of school attained by the adult population, 25 years old and over, had registered only a scant rise from 8.1 to 8.6 years over a 30 year period from 1910 to 1940” (source: National Center for Education Statistics). This suggests that, in the time frame you refer to, most regions of the U.S. had a high school enrollment rate considerably larger than 15%, yet low enough to make a difference of the sort you suggest.
BTW, the same source quotes estimates of the U.S. illiteracy rate as 13.3% in 1890 vs. 0.6% in 1979, but in light of observation and biological realities, the claim of a 99.4% U.S. literacy rate reminds me of the alleged 99.9% electoral turnout of eligible voters in North Korea.
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