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children's primary school in some remote, rural places in North America in the 19th century, which became increasingly outdated and obsolete as the century progressed.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.
Blab is a shortened form of the word "blabber", meaning to talk much without making sense. [3] Middle English had the noun blabbe, "one who does not control their tongue". [4]
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. [5] [6]
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. [7] In more elegant terms, blab schools were sometimes called vocal schools. [8]
Blab schools were widespread in frontier days of the American West, since many settlers could not read. [9] These one-room schools were called "old field" schools and were housed in log cabins, often having only dirt floors. [10] The students sat on wooden, backless benches. [11] This type of school was known as an "Old-time School" in the Appalachian region of Virginia in the 19th century. [12]
Blab schools typically were not equipped with many books or paper. [9] 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. [9] [3] The only requirement to become a teacher was basic literacy. [3]
Reciting lessons was a form of entertainment in frontier communities, as well as a means of learning. [9] Paper was scarce and expensive, so memorizing was the preferred method of study. [13] 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. [9]
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. [12]
The method of memorizing lessons by recitation was referred to as "loud studying". [13] Some 19th-century educational theorists held that listening to the "blabbing" of their fellow students would encourage each child's individual retention of information, but the ubiquity of "blab schools" 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. [13] Teachers were not reluctant to harshly punish their students. [14] 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. [15] [16]
U.S. president Abraham Lincoln learned the alphabet and other basic subjects when he attended a vocal school in his youth. [19] [20] Like many other children, Lincoln walked to school; the first school he first attended was at least a mile from his home. [2] His first two teachers were Zachariah Riney and Caleb Hazel, who taught from a windowless schoolhouse. [21] 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. [22]
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. [23] Lincoln studied Dillworth's Speller and Webster's Old Blueback. [24] Later he read Murray's English Reader. [24]
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. [25] He had the habit of reading anything aloud. [15] Between the ages of 11 and 15, Lincoln went to school occasionally, when his considerable workload of farm chores would allow it. [26] All of Lincoln's schooling combined in various blab schools amounted to less than a year. [24] [27] 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. [28]
The Pledge of Allegiance is a patriotic recited verse that promises allegiance to the flag of the United States and the republic of the United States of America. The first version was written in 1885 by Captain George Thatcher Balch, a Union Army officer in the Civil War who later authored a book on how to teach patriotism to children in public schools. In 1892, Francis Bellamy revised Balch's verse as part of a magazine promotion surrounding the World's Columbian Exposition, which celebrated the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' arrival in the Americas. Bellamy, the circulation manager for The Youth's Companion magazine, helped persuade then-president Benjamin Harrison to institute Columbus Day as a national holiday and lobbied Congress for a national school celebration of the day. The magazine sent leaflets containing part of Bellamy's Pledge of Allegiance to schools across the country and on October 21, 1892, over 10,000 children recited the verse together.
Hafiz, depending on the context, is a term used by Muslims for someone who has completely memorized the Quran which consists of 77,797 words in the original Classical Arabic. Hafiza is the female equivalent.
School prayer, in the context of religious liberty, is state-sanctioned or mandatory prayer by students in public schools. Depending on the country and the type of school, state-sponsored prayer may be required, permitted, or prohibited. The United Kingdom requires daily worship by law, but does not enforce it. Countries which prohibit or limit school prayer often differ in their reasons for doing so. In the United States, school prayer cannot be required of students in accordance with the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. This is generally rigorously applied in public schools; the Establishment Clause does not prevent prayer in private schools that have no public funding. In Canada, school-sponsored prayer is disallowed under the concept of freedom of conscience as outlined in the Canadian Charter on Rights & Fundamental Freedoms. School-sponsored prayer is disallowed in France as a byproduct of its status as a secular nation.
Śruti or shruti in Sanskrit means "that which is heard" and refers to the body of most authoritative, ancient religious texts comprising the central canon of Hinduism. Manusmriti states: Śrutistu vedo vijñeyaḥ meaning, "Know that Vedas are Śruti". Thus, it includes the four Vedas including its four types of embedded texts—the Samhitas, the Upanishads, the Brahmanas and the Aranyakas.
A qāriʾ is a person who recites the Quran with the proper rules of recitation (tajwid).
Roosevelt Franklin is an African-American Muppet who was featured on the children's television series Sesame Street during the early 1970s.
The Vedas, sometimes collectively called the Veda, are a large body of religious texts originating in ancient India. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute the oldest layer of Sanskrit literature and the oldest scriptures of Hinduism.
A recitation in a general sense is the act of reciting from memory, or a formal reading of verse or other writing before an audience.
The oral tradition of the Vedas consists of several pathas, "recitations" or ways of chanting the Vedic mantras. Such traditions of Vedic chant are often considered the oldest unbroken oral tradition in existence, the fixation of the Vedic texts (samhitas) as preserved dating to roughly the time of Homer.
‘Abdul-Basit ‘Abdus-Samad, or Abdel Basit Abdel Samad, or Abdul Basit Muhammad Abdus Samad was an Egyptian Quran reciter and Hafiz. He is part of a quadrumvirate, along with Siddiq Al-Minshawi, Mustafa Ismail, and Al-Hussary, which are considered to be the most important and famous Qurra of modern times to have an outsized impact on the Islamic World. He was the first president of the Reciter's union in Egypt. He is known by the title "Golden Throat" and "Voice of Heaven" due to his melodious style, breath control, and unique emotional and engaging tone.
Traditional education, also known as back-to-basics, conventional education or customary education, refers to long-established customs that society has traditionally used in schools. Some forms of education reform promote the adoption of progressive education practices, and a more holistic approach which focuses on individual students' needs; academics, mental health, and social-emotional learning. In the eyes of reformers, traditional teacher-centered methods focused on rote learning and memorization must be abandoned in favor of student centered and task-based approaches to learning.
Svādhyāya is a Sanskrit term which means self-study and especially the recitation of the Vedas and other sacred texts. It is also a broader concept with several meanings. In various schools of Hinduism, Svadhyaya is a Niyama connoting introspection and "study of self".
Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of symbols, often specifically those of a written language, by means of sight or touch.
Sheikh Mahmoud Khalil al-Hussary also known as Al-Hussary, was an Egyptian qāriʾ widely acclaimed for his accurate recitation of the Qur'an. Al-Hussary committed the entire Qur'an to memory by age 8 and started reciting at public gatherings by age 12. In 1944, Al-Hussary won Egypt Radio's Qu'ran Recitation competition which had around 200 participants, including veterans like Muhammad Rifat. The quadrumvirate of El Minshawy, Abdul Basit, Mustafa Ismail, and Al-Hussary are generally considered the most important and famous qurrāʾ of modern times to have had an outsized impact on the Islamic world.
Piano pedagogy is the study of the teaching of piano playing. Whereas the professional field of music education pertains to the teaching of music in school classrooms or group settings, piano pedagogy focuses on the teaching of musical skills to individual piano students. This is often done via private or semiprivate instructions, commonly referred to as piano lessons. The practitioners of piano pedagogy are called piano pedagogues, or simply, piano teachers.
Language pedagogy is the discipline concerned with the theories and techniques of teaching language. It has been described as a type of teaching wherein the teacher draws from their own prior knowledge and actual experience in teaching language. The approach is distinguished from research-based methodologies.
Lincoln Pioneer Village is a memorial along the Ohio River in Rockport, Spencer County, Indiana to President Abraham Lincoln who lived in the county during his boyhood years. It was built in 1934 and 1935 in the city park by the Works Progress Administration. George Honig, an artist and sculptor from Spencer County, designed the memorial. He also oversaw the building of the pioneer village replica, which was sponsored by the Spencer County Historical Society and the Rockport City Council. It was listed as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places on April 20, 1998.
Abu Sa'id Uthman Ibn Sa‘id al-Qutbi, better known as Warsh (110-197AH), was a significant figure in the history of Quranic recitation (qira'at), the canonical methods of reciting the Qur'an. Alongside Qalun, he was one of the two primary transmitters of the canonical reading method of Nafi‘ al-Madani. Together, their style is the most common form of Qur'anic recitation in the generality of African mosques outside of Egypt, and is also popular in Yemen and Darfur despite the rest of Sudan following the method of Hafs. The method of Warsh and his counterpart Qalun was also the most popular method of recitation in Al-Andalus. The majority of printed Mushafs today in North Africa and West Africa follow the reading of Warsh.
Iqro is a textbook used in Indonesia and Malaysia for learning Arabic letters and pronunciation. It was originally published in the early 1990s, authored by As'ad Humam and a team known as "Team Tadarus AMM" in Yogyakarta. Iqro is a stepping-stone for reading the Quran in its original Arabic, given that these countries do not use Arabic outside religious contexts.
Bhāṇaka were Buddhist monks who specialized in the memorization and recitation of a specific collection of texts within the Buddhist canon. Lineages of bhāṇakas were responsible for preserving and transmitting the teachings of the Buddha until the canon was committed to writing in the 1st century BC, and declined as the oral transmission of early Buddhism was replaced by writing.
Notes
Bibliography