"Experiencing These Effects And Sinking Under Them" (Edu-vice from 1850)
Posted by Blue Cereal on Tuesday, 28 April 2015
The very concept of taxpayer-funded public schooling was less than a generation old, and all but non-existent in many areas - including most of the South. Millard Fillmore was President. California became the 31st State of the Union. Slavery was still entrenched in half the nation, and Harriet Tubman was beginning her work as a ‘conductor’ on the ‘Underground Railroad’ in defiance thereof. Fancy travel meant your wagon was covered, or in rare cases you rode on a train. Internet was still dial-up.
It was a long #$%@ing time ago is what I’m saying. And Supt. Mayhew was commissioned – by an act of the State Legislature, no less – to write a book on learnin’. Which he did.
To begin posting 15 years of my favorite lessons, materials, ideas – most borrowed from sources I don’t even remember and modified on the fly no matter how many times I use them – is insane, right? The reasons it’s a horrible idea are legion. But I moved from a blog to an actual website to allow for the possibility, and for a year now I’ve done only minimal work on that part of things while focusing on wowing the world with my insights, charm, and general lack of decency or shame once I’m riled about something. 
I’ve been revisiting the chapter on “Classroom Control” from Vol. I of the 12-volume The Class Room Teacher (1927-28). We were introduced last time to a very listy list of possible methods: 
1927-28 saw the publication of a full 12 volumes of The Class Room Teacher by Corinne A. Seeds, A.M., Principal of the Training School, Assistant Supervisor of Training, University of California at Los Angeles, with the cooperation of Milo B. Hillegas, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of Education, Teachers College, Columbia University. What a mouthful. 
This one’s a little longer than I normally like – a fact which isn’t exactly helped by adding 54 words up front to tell you so. I wanted to wrap this one up, but couldn’t bring myself to cut more than I already have. For the #11FF actually plowing through these with me, my apologies
Lincoln points to the year of the Declaration of Independence – the ‘birth’ of our nation and a written statement not only of rebellion, but of ideals. The Constitution has rules about running for the Senate and requiring the various states to play nicely together; the Declaration proclaims all men were created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. The Constitution is functional, but birthed in compromise and politics. The Declaration is idealistic and uninterested in practicalities – it glows and pretty music plays whenever we close our eyes and call its name three times.
The Battle of Gettysburg was a three-day conflagration resulting from Robert E. Lee’s second and final attempt to bring the Civil War into the North, in hopes citizens therein would tire of the fighting and tell their elected leaders – Lincoln in particular – to knock it off. 
Grant was perhaps the single most bearded example of nothing working quite the way it should have during the American Civil War. He’d have never ended up a war hero, let alone future President, in a more ordered universe. I’m not sure he’d have existed at all. 
Alyssa had just finished her first year in the classroom when I met her at a workshop I was leading last summer. I'll spare her my extended lauding of her content knowledge, her intimidating grasp of pedagogy in its dozens of variations, and her - my god - her ENERGY level.