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Here's How

There are 40 textbooks, one for each member of the class. Problem: How to distribute them to the pupils in a manner that reflects "habits of neatness and order"? A manual published in the early 1860s by the Public School Society of New York shows the way.

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The pupil should stand erect, his heels near together,-toes turned out, and his eyes directed to the face of the person speaking to him.

FIGURE ONE represents the Book Monitor with a pile of books across his left arm, with the backs from him, and with the top of the page to the right hand.

FIGURE TWO represents the Book Monitor, with the right hand hands the book to the Pupil, who receives it in his right hand, with !e back of the book to the left; and then passes it into the left hand, where it is held with the back upwards, and with the thumb ex tended at an angle of forty-five degrees with the edge of the book (as in figure 2,) until a further order is given.

FIGURE THREE-When the page is given out, the book is turned by the thumb on the side; and, while held with both hands, is turned with the back downwards, with the thumbs meeting across the leaves, at a point judged to be nearest the place to be found. On opening the book, the left hand slides down to the bottom, and thence to the uniddle, where the thumb and little finger are made to press on the two opposite pages. If the Pupil should have thus lit upon the page sought for, he lets fall the right hand by the side, and his position is that of Fig. 3.

FIGURE FOUR-But, if he has opened short of the page required, the thumb of the right hand is to be placed near the upper corner of the page, as seen in Fig. 4; while the forefinger lists the leaves to bring into view the number of the page. If he finds that he has not raised enough, the forefinger and thumb hold those already raised,

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while the second finger lifts the leaves, and brings them within the grasp of the thumb and finger. When the page required is found, all the fingers are to be passed under the leaves, and the whole turned at Should the Pupil, on the contrary, have opened too far, and be obliged to turn back, he places the right thumb, in like manner, on the left-hand page, and the leaves are lifted as before described. FIGURE FIVE-Should the book be old, or so large as to be wearisome to hold, the right hand may sustain the left, as seen in Fig. 5. FIGURE SIX and SEVEN-While reading, as the cye rises to the top of the right-hand page, the right hand is brought to the position seen in Fig. 4; and, with the forefinger under the leaf, the hand is slid down to the lower corner, and retained there during the reading of this page, as seen in Fig. 6. This also is the position in which the book is to be held when about to be closed; in doing which, the lest hand, being carried up to the side, supports the book firmly and unmoved, while the right hand turns the part it supports over on the left thumb, as seen in Fig. 7. The thumb will then be drawn out from between the leaves, and placed on the cover; when the right hand will fall by the side, as seen in Fig. 2.

FIGURE EIGHT-But, if the reading has ended, the right hand retains the book, and the left hand falls by the side, as seen in Fig. 8. The book will now be in a position to be handed to the Book Monitor; who receives it in his right hand, and places it on his left arm, with the back towards his body. The books are now in the most suitable situation for being passed to the shelves or drawers, where, without being crowded, they should be placed with uniformity and care.

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ixteen years before
A Vindication of
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Woman by Mary
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published in
England, a Colo-
nial woman on the

other side of the

Atlantic wrote a prophetic letter to a delegate to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. The date was March 31, 1776nidway between the New Year's Day publication of Thomas Paine's Common Sense and the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

The author of the letter was Abigail Adams, wife of one future President and mother of another, who had learned to ead and write without benefit of the ormal schooling usually reserved for her eers of the opposite sex. Its recipient was er husband, whom she admonished:

"...in the new Code of Laws which I uppose it will be necessary for you to make desire you would Remember the Ladies, nd be more generous and favourable to hem than your ancestors.... If particular are and attention is not paid to the Ladies De are determined to foment a Rebellion, nd will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice or Cepresentation...."

OR WOMEN

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A century later, however, and for almost century after that, educational pportunities as well as laws remained onsiderably less than "generous and avourable" as far as "the Ladies" were

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be forced one day to face the female equation.

An early sign arose in 1819 when Emma Willard issued An Address to the Public; Particularly to the Members of the Legislature of New York Proposing a Plan for Improving Female Education. A Magna Charta for the higher schooling of women, the plan called for public endowment of an institution that would offer systematized instruction having educational substance. The legislature proved apathetic but the citizens of the town of Troy came to her aid, and the Troy Female Seminary she founded in 1821 led to others. For example, Catharine Beecher, an early advocate of domestic science, opened a school in Hartford in 1822 and later the Western Female Institute in Cincinnati. An activist in what she termed "securing professional advantages of education for my sex equal to those bestowed on men," she sought to arouse the public to endow still other institutions for the liberal education of

women.

In 1828, a different approach to the encouragement of female education began to unfold. Sarah Josepha Buell Hale, a writer who had been tutored by her Dartmouth brother, began to publish the new Ladies Magazine. Two years later Louis A. Godey started The Lady's Book, and in 1837- a landmark year as it developed - bought out his competition and ensconced Mrs. Hale as literary editor. Her work quickly gained a national reputation for Godey. One of her neverending purposes and certainly her favorite reform effort was the education of females to become more than hearthside hostesses. Step by step through the years she campaigned for high schools for girls, promoted the idea of normal schools and colleges for women, even outrageously urged medical education for women at a time when such training was regarded as plainly inappropriate for "delicate souls." The conclusion of her editorial career of nearly a half century marked the beginning of the upsurge in higher education opportunities for throughout the land.

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women

Far-reaching events other than the influence of The Lady's Book made 1837 a historic year for women. That was the year for realization of the dream and crystallization of the career of Mary Lyon, who wanted young women to have the chance to attend a seminary of superior academic quality at an inferior price. Against almost interminable discouragements, she raised funds through private philanthropy for a distinguished institution that offered its first instruction in 1837 and, in time, became Mount Holyoke College. That year also saw the inauguration of co-education at the college

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were barred from the study of Greek or Latin on the ground that the "rigors of these languages" were too great for the "female mind." Moreover, a gross disparity in timing was involved. The decision to establish the institution soon known as Harvard College was made in 1636, and the first class of "English and Indian youth" - meaning males - was admitted two years later. By contrast, 199 years were to pass before the first door was opened to baccalaureate degrees for women. And for that matter, it took another half century before Harvard's coordinate sister, Radcliffe College, offered instruction resulting in conferral (in 1894) of the first baccalaureate degree on a "Cliffie."

In any case, the early decades of the 19th century did at least see the first steps toward introducing women to organized secondary and postsecondary education, tentative though that introduction may have been. In addition, an alternative to privately financed education for women also had begun to emerge. A State law enacted in 1827 required towns of a certain size in Massachusetts to employ a master to offer "instruction of utility" to young lads, and towns of a larger size to broaden that instruction to include such subjects as Greek and Latin. To get their money's worth, these towns sometimes allowed girls to fill empty places in the classes. A more subtle but in the long run more significant development also occurred in Massachusetts in the form of laws enacted between 1827 and 1834 that required tax support for public schools and declared them free to pupils.

Ultimately this concept of universal taxsupported schooling was to give a dramatic new dimension to the principle of equality set forth in the Declaration of Independence, but that time was not at hand in 1840. Witness the Sixth Decennial Census conducted that year. At the instigation of Henry Barnard of Connecti(later to be the first U.S. Commissioner of Education), statistics about schooling were included for the first time. Women, however, like blacks and Indians, were not considered in the enumeration of citizens over the age of 20 who could neither read nor write. Similarly, women abolitionists

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were

excluded from delegate participation in a World Anti-Slavery Convention held in London in 1841, even when they repre sented antislavery groups composed entirely of females. For two of the women thus excluded, that action was the last straw. Said Elizabeth Cady Stanton to her friend Lucretia Mott, "When we return home, we must hold a convention and form a society to advance the rights of women." The result was the first women's rights conference the Nation had ever seen, convened in 1848 at Seneca Falls, New York.

And so it was that three quarters of a century after Abigail Adams made her prediction, the rebellion surfaced. The history of mankind, the delegates declared in their overriding "sentiment," is "a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her." Buttressing this "sentiment" were 15 "facts" which they submitted "to a candid world." The one on education declared: "He had denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being closed to her." This statement was almost but not quite true College doors already had opened to women, but by so small a crack that the 300 men and women at the Seneca Falls Conference evidently had not yet noticed it.

In any case the Abigail Adams rebellion had been launched, though numerous other developments proved to be necessary before it achieved substance or even significant recognition.

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laws providing grants of land and other support for establishment and mainte nance of what became known as the "Land-Grant" institutions of higher learn ing. None of these laws contained provisions specifically discriminating against females. Nevertheless, initia. practice in the States often barred wome from admission, and even after that situa tion began to be eased they were either ex cluded or else denied anything approach ing equal access to programs in certai fields - forestry, law, and medicine, fo example-on grounds that these were no "women's fields" or that women would not put into productive use the expensive training involved.

Still, the Land-Grant institutions dic open up wider opportunities for women

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