“Abstracts of Lectures by Professors Bowens, Clark, and Phelps – 1848 & 1849”, Transcribed by an Unknown Student at the New York State Normal School.
Albany, New York: 1848–1849. Notebook measuring 7 ¾ x 10 ½ inches. 124pp filled out, totaling appx. 49,000 words. With two loose essays, 7pp. Front cover detached with wear especially to edges and spine; good. Contents excellent. Overall very good. Item #List3731
A notebook containing transcriptions of lectures by Profs. William F. Phelps, Silas Bown, and William W. Clark of the New York State Normal School, now SUNY Albany. The three professors were graduates of the school’s first class in 1846, and became professors there upon graduating.
The notebook is highlighted by ten pages of notes documenting Phelps’ extensive and detailed lecture on schoolteaching. The lecture dates to early in Phelps’ career, shortly after his own graduation; the educational pioneer would go on to preside over a number of normal schools and the American Normal School Association, found the National Education Association, serve as vice-president of the first International Conference of Educators, and author textbooks and manuals for teaching.
The lecture is titled “Organization of the school” and is divided into sixteen sections covering different aspects of teaching. He opens:
“The organization of the school is the most important step in the teacher’s duties, and the most important and critical time in his life as a teacher; this is especially with the young teacher. He enters the school as it were an apprentice, and is to work upon the most delicate material, without having first learned his trade [...] the material upon which the teacher acts is immortal, and an injury done to it, will last forever.”
Teaching, for Phelps, had to involve more than just “tak[ing] up a reading book, and call[ing] out a class and hear[ing] them read around, then command[ing] them to take their seats”, and repeating the same process with every subject—especially for a new teacher on his first day. He lays out his preferred first-day procedure—an introduction by the trustees, then a short speech followed by a “little song” or “amusing or instructive anecdote”—but emphasizes that “The spirit of kindness should be breathed forth in every sentence; nor should he forget to speak kindly to those he meets in the streets.” He then turns to the classification of students with short exams on the various subjects, along with careful attention to the students so “that you may learn their habits”, again emphasizing the teacher’s attitude towards his pupils:
“He should learn the names of the scholars as soon as possible; for it is very disagreeable not to be able to call the name of a scholar when you wish to speak to him. Never call a boy Mr. or a girl Miss; for you miss it every time you Miss your school-girls, it will make them grow too fast.”
Next, Phelps makes suggestions for getting one’s preferred textbooks adopted. One can appeal to the trustees, and then to the parents, and then if this fails the teacher can follow Phelps’ scheme of purchasing the preferred books himself, lending them out for free, and “excit[ing] a deep interest in their lessons”:
“The parents will soon begin to wonder at the change that has taken place in their children, once they could not persuade them to look at their books, but now they do nothing but study. You will thus wake up the parents to a sense of the utility of the books”.
Parents, according to Phelps, also need to be convinced that a longer lesson is not necessarily a better one: “If the teacher gives them long lessons, and thus runs them through [...] they call him a smart man.” However, a short lesson is easier to learn, and well-learned lessons “will soon [cause] the objections of parents to give way”.
His other advice concerns seating arrangements—”according to size if you are a lover of symmetry”—how to dismiss students for recess, and tracking and managing absences and tardies, which he states should mainly be managed by making the lessons interesting and the classroom pleasant. He closes by describing how the teacher ought to enact “a missionary spirit”:
“Let the first two or three weeks of your school be spent in visiting the parents in the district, and becoming acquainted with them, and giving them an opportunity of becoming acquainted with you. [...] Do not forget to talk to them about their children. Show them that you are laboring for the good of those children – that you love them, and wish to do them all the good in your power. If you have the teacher’s spirit, they will soon find it out [...] If you possess the art of being agreeable in private conversation, and in addition to this exercise true politeness in all occations [sic], you will never have any trouble in finding a pleasant boarding place. And when you do go there you will find as good a living as you want, and the pies and sweet cake will be on hand. You will also be able to teach the parents many things [...] and then you may consider your school as, ‘Thoroughly Organized’.”
One imagines that Phelps’ meticulous lecture, with its emphases on kindness and making schooling enjoyable for students and parents, was quite inspiring to the soon-to-be teacher; the practices he outlines set the foundation for his future career.
Bowen’s lectures cover rhetoric and composition—especially focusing on good taste, defined as “the power of receiving pleasure from the beautiful of nature or art”—and Clark’s cover chemistry, natural philosophy, and electricity. Throughout there are interesting comments that expose the professors’ underlying philosophies and thus approaches to teaching: for instance, Bowen comments that “Persons by nature are differently constituted, some naturally possessing a more refined taste than others”, and Clark states that “All knowledge is acquired through the senses” (and that “Natural History is not a science” but mere classification).
The notebook also includes a short lecture on music, a transcription of a chapter of Charles Babbage’s Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, and two short apparently original essays, one on technological progress and the other on wisdom.
Of interest to historians of education and of the early days of SUNY Albany.
Price: $2,500.00