Editing Noah Webster (section)

==School Books==
[[File:Noah Webster's prospectus for his English language dictionary.jpg|thumb|''To the Friends of Literature in the United States'', Webster's [[prospectus (book)|prospectus]] for his first dictionary of the [[English language]], 1807–1808]]
[[File:Handwritten drafts of dictionary entries Noah Webster.jpg|thumb|[[Handwriting|Handwritten]] drafts of dictionary entries by Webster]]
[[File:Noah Webster The Schoolmaster of the Republic.jpg|thumb|''Noah Webster, The Schoolmaster of the Republic'', published in 1886]]
As a teacher, Webster grew dissatisfied with American elementary schools. They could be overcrowded, with up to seventy children of all ages crammed into [[one-room schoolhouse]]s. They suffered from poorly paid staff, lacked desks, and used unsatisfactory textbooks imported from England. Webster thought that Americans should learn from American books, so he began writing the three-volume compendium ''A Grammatical Institute of the English Language''. The work consisted of a speller (published in 1783), a grammar (published in 1784), and a reader (published in 1785). His aim was to provide a uniquely American approach to education. His most important improvement, he claimed, was to rescue "our native tongue" from "the clamour<!-- Citing this article, "at first he kept the ''u'' in words like ''colour'' or ''favour''" so this quotation should have a 'U' in clamour --> of pedantry" that surrounded English grammar and pronunciation. He complained that the English language had been corrupted by the British aristocracy, which set its own standard for proper spelling and pronunciation.<ref>See Brian Pelanda, [https://ssrn.com/abstract=1941506 Declarations of Cultural Independence: The Nationalistic Imperative Behind the Passage of Early American Copyright Laws, 1783–1787] 58 Journal of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A. 431, 431–454 (2011).</ref> Webster rejected the notion that the study of Greek and Latin must precede the study of English grammar. The appropriate standard for the American language, argued Webster, was "the same republican principles as American civil and ecclesiastical constitutions." This meant that the people at large must control the language; popular sovereignty in government must be accompanied by popular usage of language.

The ''Speller'' was designed to be easily taught to students, progressing according to age. From his own experiences as a teacher, Webster thought that the ''Speller'' should be simple and give an orderly presentation of words and the rules of spelling and pronunciation. He believed that students learned most readily when he broke a complex problem into its component parts and had each pupil master one part before moving to the next.

Ellis argues that Webster anticipated some of the insights currently associated with [[Piaget's theory of cognitive development|Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development]]. Webster said that children pass through distinctive learning phases in which they master increasingly complex or abstract tasks. Therefore, teachers must not try to teach a three-year-old how to read; they could not do it until age five. He organized his speller accordingly, beginning with the alphabet and moving systematically through the different sounds of vowels and consonants, then syllables, then simple words, then more complex words, then sentences.<ref>Ellis 174.</ref>

The speller was originally titled ''The First Part of the Grammatical Institute of the English Language''. Over the course of 385 editions in his lifetime, the title was changed in 1786 to ''The American Spelling Book'', and again in 1829 to ''The Elementary Spelling Book''. Most people called it the "Blue-Backed Speller" because of its blue cover and, for the next one hundred years, Webster's book taught children how to read, spell, and pronounce words. It was the most popular American book of its time; by 1837, it had sold 15 million copies, and some 60 million by 1890—reaching the majority of young students in the nation's first century. Its royalty of a half-cent per copy was enough to sustain Webster in his other endeavors. It also helped create the popular contests known as [[spelling bee]]s.

As time went on, Webster changed the spellings in the book to more phonetic ones. Most of them already existed as alternative spellings.<ref name=algeo599>Algeo, John. "The Effects of the Revolution on Language," in ''A Companion to the American Revolution''. John Wiley & Sons, 2008. p. 599</ref> He chose spellings such as ''defense'', ''color'', and ''traveler'', and changed the ''re'' to ''er'' in words such as ''center''. He also changed ''tongue'' to the older spelling ''tung'', but this did not catch on.<ref>Scudder 1881, pp. 245–52.</ref>

Part three of his ''Grammatical Institute'' (1785) was a reader designed to uplift the mind and "diffuse the principles of virtue and patriotism."<ref>{{cite book |first=Harry Redcay |last=Warfel |title=Noah Webster, schoolmaster to America |year=1966 |page=86 |location=New York |publisher=Octagon }}</ref>

{{Blockquote|text="In the choice of pieces", he explained, "I have not been inattentive to the political interests of America. Several of those masterly addresses of Congress, written at the commencement of the late Revolution, contain such noble, just, and independent sentiments of liberty and patriotism, that I cannot help wishing to transfuse them into the breasts of the rising generation."}}

Students received the usual quota of [[Plutarch]], [[Shakespeare]], [[Jonathan Swift|Swift]], and [[Joseph Addison]], as well as such Americans as [[Joel Barlow]]'s ''[[The Columbiad|Vision of Columbus]]'', [[Timothy Dwight IV|Timothy Dwight]]'s ''Conquest of Canaan'', and [[John Trumbull (poet)|John Trumbull]]'s poem ''[[M'Fingal]].'' The Reader included two, original, fan-fiction sequels to ''[[Emile, or On Education|Emile or On Education]]'' by ''[[Jean-Jacques Rousseau]]'', a portrait of Rousseau's character, Sophie, and a tribute to Juliana Smith who had recently rejected Webster's romantic advances.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Harris |first=Micah |date=2024-09-01 |title=Noah Webster and the Influence of Rousseau on Education in America, 1785–1835 |url=https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/732277 |journal=American Political Thought |language=en |volume=13 |issue=4 |pages=505–527 |doi=10.1086/732277 |issn=2161-1580|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Kendall |first=Joshua C. |title=The forgotten founding father: Noah Webster's obsession and the creation of an American culture |date=2010 |publisher=Putnam |isbn=978-0-399-15699-1 |location=New York, NY |pages=60, 66–67}}</ref> Webster also included excerpts from [[Tom Paine]]'s ''The Crisis'' and an essay by [[Thomas Day (writer)|Thomas Day]] calling for the abolition of slavery in accord with the Declaration of Independence.

Webster's Speller was relatively secular.<ref>Ellis, ''After the Revolution: Profiles of Early American Culture'' (1979) p. 175</ref> It ended with two pages of important dates in American history, beginning with Columbus's discovery of America in 1492 and ending with the [[Siege of Yorktown|battle of Yorktown]] in 1781. "Let sacred things be appropriated for sacred purposes," Webster wrote. As Ellis explains, "Webster began to construct a secular catechism to the nation-state. Here was the first appearance of 'civics' in American schoolbooks. In this sense, Webster's speller became what was to be the secular successor to ''The New England Primer'' with its explicitly biblical injunctions."<ref>Ellis 175.</ref>

Later in life, Webster became more religious and incorporated religious themes into his work. However, after 1840, Webster's books lost market share to the ''McGuffey Eclectic Readers'' of [[William Holmes McGuffey]], which sold over 120 million copies.<ref>{{cite book |first=John H. III |last=Westerhoff |title=McGuffey and His Readers: Piety, Morality, and Education in Nineteenth-Century America |url=https://archive.org/details/mcguffeyhisreade1978west |url-access=registration |year=1978 |location=Nashville |publisher=Abingdon |isbn=0-687-23850-1 }}</ref>

Vincent P. Bynack (1984) examines Webster in relation to his commitment to the idea of a unified American national culture that would stave off the decline of republican virtues and solidarity. Webster acquired his perspective on language from such theorists as [[Pierre Louis Maupertuis|Maupertuis]], [[Johann David Michaelis|Michaelis]], and [[Johann Gottfried Herder|Herder]]. There he found the belief that a nation's linguistic forms and the thoughts correlated with them shaped individuals' behavior. Thus, the etymological clarification and reform of American English promised to improve citizens' manners and thereby preserve republican purity and social stability. This presupposition animated Webster's ''Speller'' and ''Grammar''.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Vincent P. |last=Bynack |title=Noah Webster and the Idea of a National Culture: the Pathologies of Epistemology |journal=Journal of the History of Ideas |year=1984 |volume=45 |issue=1 |pages=99–114 |doi= 10.2307/2709333|jstor=2709333 }}</ref>