Learning to Read and Write in Colonial America

Studies in Print Culture and the History of the Book

by E. Jennifer Monaghan

An experienced teacher of reading and writing and an award-winning historian, E. Jennifer Monaghan brings to vibrant life the process of learning to read and write in colonial America. Ranging throughout the colonies from New Hampshire to Georgia, she examines the instruction of girls and boys, Native Americans and enslaved Africans, the privileged and the poor, revealing the sometimes wrenching impact of literacy acquisition on the lives of learners. For the most part, religious motives underlay reading instruction in colonial America, while secular motives led to writing instruction. Monaghan illuminates the history of these activities through a series of deeply researched and readable case studies. An Anglican missionary battles mosquitoes and loneliness to teach the New York Mohawks to write in their own tongue. Puritan fathers model scriptural reading for their children as they struggle with bereavement. Boys in writing schools, preparing for careers in counting houses, wield their quill pens in the difficult task of mastering a "good hand." Benjamin Franklin learns how to compose essays with no teacher but himself. Young orphans in Georgia write precocious letters to their benefactor, George Whitefield, while schools in South Carolina teach enslaved black children to read but never to write. As she tells these stories, Monaghan clears new pathways in the analysis of colonial literacy. She pioneers in exploring the implications of the separation of reading and writing instruction, a topic that still resonates in today's classrooms. Monaghan argues that major improvements occurred in literacy instruction and acquisition after about 1750, visible in rising rates of signature literacy. Spelling books were widely adopted as they key text for teaching young children to read; prosperity, commercialism, and a parental urge for gentility aided writing instruction, benefiting girls in particular. And a gentler vision of childhood arose, portraying children as more malleable than sinful. It promoted and even commercialized a new kind of children's book designed to amuse instead of convert, laying the groundwork for the "reading revolution" of the new republic.

512 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Michelle Commeyras · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dear Book Friends,

I read Monaghan's book with two doctoral students for independent studies. I'm glad of it. I've long been interested in the colonial period in America because of my youth spent in Concord, Massachusetts. Monaghan's historical research is impressive and she sheds light on literacy access and acquisition of all strata of society including (Indians and Slaves). Since most of you probably won't be reading this lengthy book I include a few quotations to give you some of the flavors of my reading it.
"Americans of all denominations were suspicious of fairy tales, whose stories of goblins, monsters, and magic violated the Protestant concept of truth." (p 318) [Think of some of the critiques of Harry Potter!:]

About 1669..."To Eliot and Coote alike, pronouncing the words correctly was the key to reading and understanding them." (p. 90) [Some of what is done today mimics this belief.:]

"Unlike Congregationalists, the Anglicans saw no need to 'civilize' the Indians as part of their conversion procedures. They were content simply to 'gospelize' them - to bring them the 'good news' of Christianity without requiring any radical change in their way of life." (p. 169) [There are missionaries and there are missionaries.:]