The Forgotten Founding Father- Noah Webster Read Online Free

“originates in families, and if neglected there, it will hardly exist in society. . . . The government both of families and schools should be absolute.”
    Noah Sr. and Mercy burdened their children with a strong sense of obligation. In a letter addressed simply “Dutiful Son,” written to the twenty-four-year-old Noah, they expressed their expectation that he would “do good in the world and be useful and . . . so behave as to gain the esteem of all virtuous people that are acquainted with you and . . . especially that you may so live as to obtain the favor of Almighty God and his grace in this world.” Self-esteem in the Webster family was derived not from feeling comfortable in one’s own skin, but from adhering to the moral injunctions of others. Noah never developed a sense of his own intrinsic self-worth. Acutely self-critical, he didn’t even like the sound of his own name. As an adult, he would sign his letters “N. Webster” (and forbid his children from naming any male heirs “Noah”). He would forever define himself solely by his achievements. Though the intense desire for fame and recognition would lead to excessive vanity, it would also fuel his literary immortality. Without his trademark grandiosity, Noah Webster, Jr., would never have even thought of attempting such a mammoth project as the American Dictionary .
     
     
    AT THE AGE OF SIX, Noah began attending the South Middle School, one of the five primary schools built by the West Division’s Ecclesiastical Society that dotted Main Street at the end of the Colonial era. Connecticut was then one of just two colonies—the other was neighboring Massachusetts—with compulsory schooling, and the community put a premium on education. Under the code of laws established by Edward Hopkins, the seventeenth-century governor of Connecticut whose term preceded John Webster’s, every town of fifty householders had to appoint a teacher. Even so, the colony’s schools were in a dilapidated state. The students sat on rows of benches in the often frigid and rickety one-room schoolhouses. Blackboards were rare. Only the teacher had a desk and a chair. Much of the school day was spent in chopping up wood for the stove, around which the children—up to seventy in a classroom—huddled.
    Worse still was the caliber of the teachers, whom Webster would later describe as the “dregs” of humanity. Men (“masters”) ran the schools during the six-month winter term, and women (“dames”) conducted classes during the three-month summer term. Regardless of gender, their manners tended to be rough; what’s more, they could be vicious. Webster had learned how to read at home, and he found their instruction both pointless and terrifying. So, too, did Oliver Wolcott, Jr., a native of nearby Litchfield, who would later attend Yale with Webster. In a memoir, Wolcott recalled his first day of school at the age of six: “[My master] . . . a stout man, probably a foreigner . . . tried me in the Alphabet; and . . . I remained silent. . . . He actually struck me, supposing me to be obstinately mute; my sobs nearly broke my heart, and I was ordered to my seat.” While Webster never recalled being whipped, he did later express his annoyance that five of the six hours in the school day had been “spent in idleness, in cutting tables and benches in pieces, in carrying on pin lotteries, or perhaps in some roguish tricks.” Before the American Revolution, teachers had few books on hand besides a couple of religious texts and A New Guide to the English Tongue, a simplified spelling book by the British author Thomas Dilworth. Subjects such as geography, history and literature remained outside the curriculum. Deep frustration with his own early education, which consisted mostly of “the nurture and admonition of the Lord,” would later motivate “America’s pedagogue” to improve the classroom experience for future generations.
    Just as Noah was beginning grade school,