Colonial days in old New York

								

spoke it, however imperfectly, and few were taught writing.”
William Smith, the historian of New York, writing during the year 1756
of his fellow townswomen, and of education in general in New York,
gives what was doubtless a true picture of the inelegance of education
in New York:--


“There is nothing they [New York women] so generally neglect as
Reading, and indeed all the Arts for the improvement of the Mind, in
which I confess we have set them the Example. Our Schools are in the
Lowest Order, the Instructors want Instruction, and through a long,
shameful neglect of the Arts and Sciences our Common Speech is very
corrupt, and the Evidences of a Bad Taste both as to thought and
Language are visible in all our Proceedings publick and private.”
One obstacle to the establishment and success of schools and education
was the hybridization of language. New Yorkers spoke neither perfect
Dutch nor good English. It was difficult in some townships to gather an
English-speaking jury; hence, naturally, neither tongue could be taught
save in the early and simpler stages of education. It was difficult
for those little Dutch-men who heard Holland-Dutch spoken constantly
at home to abandon it entirely and speak English in the schools. The
Flatbush master (himself a Dutchman, but bound to teach English)
invented an ingenious plan to crowd out the use of Dutch in school.
He carried a little metal token which he gave each day to the first
scholar whom he heard use a Dutch word. That scholar could promptly
turn the token over to any other scholar whom he likewise detected in
using Dutch, and he in turn could do the same. Thus the token passed
from hand to hand through the day; but the unlucky wight who chanced to
have possession of it when the school day was over was soundly whipped.
In default of “spilling,” as one master wrote in his receipts, and in
which he was somewhat shaky himself, he and all other colonial teachers
took a firm stand on “cyphering.” “The Bible and figgers is all I
want my boys to know,” said one old farmer. When the school session
opened and closed, as we have seen in Flatbush, with prayer and praise,
with catechism every day, and special catechising twice a week, even
“figgers” did not have much of a chance. All the old Dutch primers that
I have seen, the Groot A B C boeks zeer bekwaam voor de yongekinderen
te leeren, contain nothing (besides the alphabet) but religious
sentences, prayers, verses of the Bible, pious rhymes, etc.; and dingy
little books they are, not even up to the standard of our well-known
New England Primer.
Though the Dutch were great printers of horn-books, I do not find that
they were universal users of those quaint little “engines of learning.”
If used in Dutch-American schools, none now survive the lapse of two
centuries; and indeed only one can be found in a Holland museum. Mr.
Tuer, the historian of the horn-book, states that there is one in the