M. Myers

✓ After reading what Myers had to say about recitation, I was turned off to the English curriculum of that time period. On page 64 where it discusses the oral recitations appalled me. Having a child sit on a bench facing a teacher to recite a piece of writing or literature is no way to learn. The toe-to-line approach is barbaric. The line, "children were expected to stand on the line, perfectly motionless, their bodies erect, their knees and feet together, the tops of their shoes touching the edge of a board in the floor" (64). The way a child stands, whether they are perfectly motionless or not, will not effect their learning. I can see how children were more disciplined with this method, but this style of teaching reminds me of a boarding school.

✓I was amazed to read about the circulating libraries in the 1850s. In today's society there is a library in almost every township that hundreds of people can use, but in the 1850s there was one library for every 600 free adults.

✓ I think the recitation method has many flaws, but may have worked for its time period. Because the recitation method didn't require all students to have a book in hand, it makes me wonder what the children did who didn't have a book. I understand that this helped with the shortage of books, but each student needs a copy of a book, or at least share. Also, on page 67 the text reads, "In recitation schooling, one's intelligence was determined by how many written materials one could recite." This is entirely not true because a student may only recite one written material, but acquire more information than a student who recites 15 written materials.

✓ I don't like how students were sorted by their order of "achievement." Students learn from each other so students need to be intermixed with their abilities. I feel as though this ranking is just a way to point out who is smarter, or richer in a classroom.

✓ Overall this article was informative of past teaching techniques. As a teacher, I do not agree with this method and feel as though it wouldn't work for students in today's society. Students need more hands on activities to help engage them in learning and teachers need to do more than sit on a bench as a child recites a line of poetry back to them. Teachers need to model what they are trying to conveying to their students.