the girls on the other. We had nothing to do but to look on and thus cultivate our powers of observation. With all the classes of an ungraded school to teach, of course the teacher could give but a few minutes to the three A-B-C darians, who had just entered the school. Twice a day we were called up and took our places at the teacher's knee. Here we received our first lessons in learning to read; and this reading lesson of five minutes in the forenoon and five minutes in the afternoon was all we had to do". Reform Beginning in the 1830s, education reform included consideration of how to improve instruction for all students, including the a-b-c-darians. Education reformer Henry Barnard shared in the American Journal of Education that "Basedow at Magdeburg Johann Bernhard Basedow, adopted a constructive method of teaching the letters, by presenting them made in gingerbread—then rewarding success in remembering the name by gift of the substance. This founder of Philanthropinism should be held in everlasting and grateful remembrance by A-b-c-darians". In the 1850s it was reported that in some, modifications had already taken place: "The A B C darians are each in a separate class, and are instructed in a very uniform style". By contrast, New York educators continued to complain of poor methods for the younger students into the 1860s. "The habit of requiring the children of the alphabet class to give formal definitions to words which are far more simple than those used to define them, is a practice which I have endeavored to discourage. For instance, such words as father, mother, brother, sister, boy, girl, etc., it is not uncommon to hear defined by these little A-B-C-darians, in this manner:—"Mother—a female parent; brother—a male child born of the same parents; girl—a female child; cat— a domestic animal; cow—a domestic animal", &c." Obsolescence By the end of the 19th century, the mere use of the term represented a bygone era of the one-room schoolhouse. George Howland, superintendent of the Chicago Public Schools declared in 1898 that "The days of the A-B-C-darians, and the three R's—all! ah! and alas!—have happily gone by, and hard after them are following those to whom the ability to trace with index-finger, word by word, and line by line, the pupil's progress down the page of the text-book, was enough". References External links The Carolina Abecedarian Project History