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19th Century Laura Ingalls Curriculum


Guest Rachaeljanae
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Guest Rachaeljanae

I am reading the whole Little House Series to my kids and we are now in the middle of Little Town on the Prairie. I am astounded at the work that Laura is doing as a 15 year old! "Everyone" has the Declaration of Independence entirely memorized. At the school exhibition, Laura and the others did incredible math sums in their heads (like 2689 divided by 16), they parsed and diagrammed sentences verbally, and Laura recited half the history of the United States from memory.

 

Is there middle school/high school curriculum that channels that 19th century method? I would love for my kids (now 9 and under) to work toward that level of mental dexterity and understanding. Is the curriculum Laura's teacher followed written down anywhere or has someone compiled it? How did we lose this??

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In math, 15 year olds now spend their time on algebra or geometry or even calculus.

 

Mental arithmetic is not a focus of our educational system, and to spend time on that at the expense of more advanced math would be a disservice to the student. (Although it's still a fun trick, and useful in the grocery store as most stores around here seem to have dispensed with unit pricing.)

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I'm going to post two homeschool blogs that I like. Both use McGuffey Readers and Ray's Arithmetic. They aren't laid out lesson plans,but I've found them to be very useful. I believe they would be very close to what Laura Ingalls Wilder would have used. You can find most of the resources for free at http://books.google.com and http://www.freechristiancurriculum.com/ (you have to register but it's free) or you can purchases cd's at www.dollarhomeschool.com

 

 

http://ladyofvirtue.blogspot.com/2011/05/how-to-use-mcguffey-reader.html

 

Check out the above's freebie's list. She has some nice one's for using McGuffey's.

 

http://thelegacyofhome.blogspot.com/2009/12/efficient-teaching-ideas-for-busy.html

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There are good and bad points to such education.

 

Firstly, remember that she was one of the better pupils. Many others were not achieving as well or had already quit school.

 

Secondly, it is altogether possible to memorize the text of something, without understanding WHY it is important, how it mattered, what it meant to people at the time and people later, etc. I would consider the second far more important.

 

Thirdly, the arithmetic problem mentioned is frankly an elementary school problem. While I do think you should be able to come up with a quick estimate in your head, I really don't see the point of training to be able to do elementary school arithmetic in your head rather than training to be able to do middle school/high school mathematics with a pencil and paper. These kind of things were far more important when paper was rare and expensive.

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There are good and bad points to such education.

 

Firstly, remember that she was one of the better pupils. Many others were not achieving as well or had already quit school.

 

Secondly, it is altogether possible to memorize the text of something, without understanding WHY it is important, how it mattered, what it meant to people at the time and people later, etc. I would consider the second far more important.

 

Thirdly, the arithmetic problem mentioned is frankly an elementary school problem. While I do think you should be able to come up with a quick estimate in your head, I really don't see the point of training to be able to do elementary school arithmetic in your head rather than training to be able to do middle school/high school mathematics with a pencil and paper. These kind of things were far more important when paper was rare and expensive.

 

I agree with Kiana. We've used McGuffey Readers, Elson Readers, Ray's Arithmetic, and Harvey's Grammar in our homeschool, so I'm familiar with what Laura was learning.

 

McGuffey Readers are for 1st-8th grade.

Elson Readers are for 1st-8th grade.

Ray's Arithmetic is for 1st-8th grade.

Harvey's Grammar is for 1st-6th grade.

 

I love and use all of these books. My eldest son used Ray's and Harvey's all the way through his elementary years and I have no regrets. But even though many pioneer schools had students using Harvey's Revised Grammar and Ray's Higher Arithmetic in high school, the content matches eighth grade programs of today. Students in college-prep schools back east were doing more in Laura's day, too. My son completed them and went on to more advanced work in high school

 

The U.S. History presentation would be possible for a modern homeschooler by the end of 6th grade, if not much before. And Laura didn't write that; she memorized it from a book of school recitations. It's still impressive. She had an amazing memory, and children in those schools were taught with memorization and drill. But as far as the content covered, modern homeschoolers learn more in elementary school.

 

The sentence parsing would be possible by eighth grade or sooner, whether the student learned with Harvey's Grammar or Rod and Staff.

 

The composition that Laura wrote on Ambition was the first composition she ever wrote, and that was after she was a schoolteacher, herself! My students are writing compositions of that level before high school. The vocabulary and thought process of her writing were very good, because Laura was a cogent thinker and gifted writer. But the form and content were neither on par with what high schoolers should be doing today nor equal to the writing required in better schools in other parts of the country in her day.

 

The mental arithmetic is something that can be learned. It's about memorization and concentration. The division problem itself was not above elementary level.

 

Laura didn't study World History. She got a brief overview of various countries and some knowledge of their imports and exports in her Geography book, but again, if you use Story of the World your elementary child will be miles ahead of where Laura was at the end of high school.

 

Laura didn't study much Science in school, although she obviously had a lot of nature study with her parents. The telegraph had just been invented while she was a student! As with history and math, our students need more if they are to be globally competitive in their own era.

 

Laura didn't get to study Latin, Greek, formal Logic, or Rhetoric. She didn't get to learn about the religions of the world. She didn't study Algebra, Geometry, or Calculus. She didn't study Biology, Chemistry, or Physics. She had the best eighth-grade education possible for a pioneer girl of her era who didn't go to school every year.

 

I expect my children to have a globally-competitive, college prep, high school education. They have to go beyond eighth grade.

 

How was Laura an excellent student, then? She was a diligent student, and she had a very keen mind. Her mother was a good teacher. To me, these are the take-away lessons. I also want my children to study books with excellent vocabulary. I want them to express themselves clearly, in their writing and their speech. I want them to apply their education to their daily lives, and I want them to be curious forever. In that way, I want them to be like Laura.

Edited by Tibbie Dunbar 2.0
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The Little House books are fiction. They are BASED on Laura Ingall's life but they are still fiction. Also as posted above, frontier education was different than Eastern and European college prep education.

 

I think you will like reading the Eclectic Manual of Methods.

 

You also might like reading about Amish education, in Train Up a Child.

 

You might like Guide to American Christian Education and some of the Noah Plan books.

 

How to Tutor is a must read for the 3R's. The math is quite controversial and some of us had an interesting conversation about it. Here are some free articles by the author.

 

I tend to teach a bit more like a frontier/Amish education than a full college prep curriculum. So far all the students I have taught ended out at a community college, mostly due to finances but also other factors. I'm learning to more and more tweak my educational philosophy to better prepare my students for where they end out, instead of copying the public school version of college prep, which is NOT the best community college prep. C.C. is not just dumbed down inferior selective 4 year college. It is a whole other type of world, with different staff, students and priorities.

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Books and paper was very expensive back then. There was no internet or calculators. In a small town like where she lived would generally not have had a library. A school teacher would have had to handle 40+ students in one room at one time. What do you have the students do while you're working with other kids? Things like memorize the declaration of independence would be one thing they could do. They couldn't take the single copy for all the students home so if they wanted to "refer" to it later they had to memorize it. They were also academically competitive. Like in modern day spelling bees it's a fun skill to have but it's not all that useful to be able to spell obscure words.

 

It is impressive but not all that useful to today's students. The time spent on all that memorization and mental math could be spent reading and learning more advanced skills.

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It is impressive but not all that useful to today's students. The time spent on all that memorization and mental math could be spent reading and learning more advanced skills.

 

 

I personally believe that speed arithmetic is more useful than advanced mathematics for SOME students, but... that is what makes me such an educational maverick. :tongue_smilie:

Edited by Hunter
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Is there middle school/high school curriculum that channels that 19th century method? I would love for my kids (now 9 and under) to work toward that level of mental dexterity and understanding. Is the curriculum Laura's teacher followed written down anywhere or has someone compiled it? How did we lose this??

 

I assume you've already read TWTM? That's a good place to start. There is a place for memorization in mental dexterity and understanding that goes far beyond just regurgitating the material.

I'd also suggest reading Climbing Parnassus, although it's a bit of a slog at times.

 

 

It is impressive but not all that useful to today's students. The time spent on all that memorization and mental math could be spent reading and learning more advanced skills.

 

To memorize something one reads it, listens to it, writes it and recites it. It does take a lot of time. But it also develops a TON of skills: reading with comprehension, listening to another person read it helps with listening skills and the writing of a great piece of work helps the student see what good writing looks like, not to mention penmanship. The recitation works on confidence in standing up and speaking in front of others, as well as training in diction and delivery. That's a lot of really good stuff right there.

 

Mental math--for one thing, doing math mentally helps a student become very, very comfortable with numbers. I am constantly showing my boys how math done in your head can be done in a variety of ways. We play around with them on the whiteboard often. We drill arithmetic facts by adding and subtracting numbers in sequences. Being able to keep track of numbers in your head is a good skill to learn. And having a good solid arithmetic background could well be useful in more advanced work, by leaving the student free to concentrate on the math, without having to fret about the arithmetic. It isn't just memorization that the OP is impressed with. It's the ability to keep the numbers from getting jumbled in long calculations without having to write them anywhere.

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I hope I won't be skewered here. . . we read all of Laura's books twice. They were VERY popular in our family.

 

However, her daughter Rose was an accomplished writer. It's very possible (some say probable) that Rose actually wrote the books.

 

When they study some of Laura's actual letters written to Rose the grammar isn't the greatest.

 

I love Laura too. Believe me I do.

 

Alley

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Two things to point out about Laura's education 1) she didn't go to school until they were in Walnut Grove, or about the age of seven or eight. She could not, at the time, read or write. The other point is that her mother had been a school teacher, so she had extra help at home.

 

In the books that is true, but in real life she started school at age 3 in Pepin. That was pretty common on the frontier, as it was basically free childcare for kids too young to do much on the farm. Older children (especially boys) would be pulled out at busy times of year... if you ever see old photos of 19th or early 20th century graduating high school classes in the west, they're almost all girls.

 

I agree with the PPs on page 1 (haven't read page 2 yet) that it comes across as impressive to a modern reader, because the methods of delivery (recitation, basically) are something we're no longer really comfortable with. And those methods of delivery were basically the result of pens and paper being expensive, books rare, and teachers often overburdened with many ages of children. Children in schools were expected to do their lessons by sitting at their desks memorizing the book, and would be called in turn by the teacher to show what they'd learn and be corrected as necessary.

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  • 3 years later...

There are good and bad points to such education.

 

Firstly, remember that she was one of the better pupils. Many others were not achieving as well or had already quit school.

 

Secondly, it is altogether possible to memorize the text of something, without understanding WHY it is important, how it mattered, what it meant to people at the time and people later, etc. I would consider the second far more important.

 

Thirdly, the arithmetic problem mentioned is frankly an elementary school problem. While I do think you should be able to come up with a quick estimate in your head, I really don't see the point of training to be able to do elementary school arithmetic in your head rather than training to be able to do middle school/high school mathematics with a pencil and paper. These kind of things were far more important when paper was rare and expensive.

 

 

People also don't want to go by high school math books such as Geometry, Algebra, trig etc. Many kids even if they did get to high school may not have been made to take those courses.  People have to be careful by going by what is done today.  There was a guy who was complaining about there being College Algebra and said there was no such thing as College Algebra, because colleges expected students to already have had algebra in Jr. High/High School.  He was going by this, because there was no College Algebra at his dads college in the 70's (though you have to be careful with this as well, because courses can be called something else and you don't realize it's college algebra or College Writing instead of English Composition 1 and 2).  I kindly linked him to some vintage College Algebra textbooks for sale.   One was from the late 1800's, One from the teens/20's, One from the 50's and another from the 70's.

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