Early American Education 3

What textbooks helped to produce such high literacy rates? According to famous English educational philosopher John Locke (1632-1704), students in that day learned to read by following "the ordinary road of the Hornbook, Primer, Psalter, Testament, and Bible."

A Hornbook was a flat piece of wood with a handle that had a sheet of printed paper attached, covered with a thin transparent layer of animal horn to protect it. A typical hornbook had the alphabet, the vowels, a list of syllables, the acknowledgement of the Christian Trinity and the Lord's Prayer.

Next on the "ordinary road" of education were Primers. They contained many elements, often including catechisms that taught the fundamentals of the christian faith through a system of questions and answers.

The psalter, next in the sequence of educational texts, was a lyric songbook whose words were taken solely from the book of Psalms in the Bible.

Next came the Testament ---that is, the New Testament, a part of the Bible.

Finally came the full Bible. Thus, all five of the texts central to early education were Bible-centered.

Content sourced from The American Story, The Beginning. David Barton and Tim Barton