I'd like to understand how educational curriculum (book choice/material) progression worked during the 19th century within the United States and perhaps even abroad.
We frequently hear of people only obtaining a 3rd or 4th grade education during this time for various extenuating circumstances, however it would be interesting to understand the material that the students studied during each grade.
For example, there are books that seem to float around such as those found here in this 19th Century Schoolbooks list, but there's no direct delineation of which books might be used for each grade level.
Would a "Third Reader" be equivalent to the 3rd grade's general curriculum of some time period? Is there a list of books that would have been used during these different periods and at different locales within the US and elsewhere?
Here's an example of an interesting book:
"The Fourth Reader of the School and Family Series" (1863) by Marcius Willson
What grade would this be designed for? The topics in this book are somewhat advanced as one can readily see.
Another thought: the more I see here, the more I realize that perhaps the verbiage of "grade" in my title is not really appropriate since, perhaps, there wasn't a direct mapping due to the structure of schools of that time. Perhaps it's more about the age of students and yearly progression. It definitely seems as though education was largely dependent upon personal drive and circumstance in that time while simultaneously some content creators/teachers were working to standardize curriculum for more cohesive teaching and a societal knowledge base. Hmm. This topic is becoming more and more interesting.