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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.

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    IIRC there was no national curriculum. Details would vary from school district to school district. Still an interesting question.
    – MCW ♦
    Jul 25, 2019 at 23:19
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    My wife's a 3rd grade teacher and somewhere she has a 19th century math book. I'll try to find it later. From what I recall, it is closer to a modern 2nd grade curriculum than 3rd grade.
    – Gort the Robot
    Jul 25, 2019 at 23:54
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    I added a particularly interesting example above that might make for some interesting discussion.
    – ylluminate
    Jul 26, 2019 at 2:13
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    @StevenBurnap I have a friend who has a book from the 1800s, for 4th grade or thereabouts. The book has algebraic equations, pre-calculus type stuff, trigonometry, etc. 1800s kids were apparently smarter than portrayed in movies. I would say kids today are generally learning at a slower pace than them.
    – GDP2
    Jul 26, 2019 at 6:29
  • That is very interesting @GDP2. This is the crux of the issue: how do these nomenclatures roughly map to the (arguably flawed) education system that we're all familiar with today? It's fascinating that the more I see on this topic the more it seems that students had greater opportunity in the 1800s to go beyond what might be "standard" or normal while conversely being a double edged sword that could facilitate "falling behind" of less "driven" students.
    – ylluminate
    Jul 26, 2019 at 15:30

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To focus on a single type of schoolbook, we can look at the McGuffey Readers. If we look at the wiki page discussing these, we find an explanation of the progression through this series of books. (emphasis mine)

Most schools of the 19th century used only the first two in the series of McGuffey's four readers. The first Reader taught reading by using the phonics method, the identification of letters and their arrangement into words, and aided with slate work. The second Reader was used once students could read. It helped them to understand the meaning of sentences, while providing vivid stories which children could remember. The third Reader taught the definitions of words and was written at a level equivalent to the modern 5th or 6th grade. The fourth Reader was written for the highest levels of ability on the grammar school level.

You can see from this that the designation is not what you understand as 'grade' level, but is actually the individual textbooks progression level. Remember in many places in the 19th century the one-room school was the formal education system, and all the students were basically in the same classroom, so grade-level type systems were less relevant. A (the) teacher would assign students to the textbook they felt the student was ready to learn from.

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  • That is quite interesting offers some foundation! So from the Wikipedia article one might assume that a "Fourth Reader" is considered to be the highest level of learning w/in the pre collegiate level; perhaps high school level? Further, while that brief treatment of McGuffey is interesting, what about some of the other book editors/composers such as Marcius Willson as above? I'd very much like to see some expanded details & discussions on this fascinating topic! I fear that getting into the specific McGuffey aspect here might lead to generalization that might not offer a more holistic vista.
    – ylluminate
    Jul 26, 2019 at 15:26
  • @ylluminate, "grammar school" corresponds roughly to "K-8" in the modern American system, so a "fourth Reader" would be targeted at what are now middle-school students. (After completing grammar school, a student might go on to high school (if the area had one), or a bright student might skip directly to college, or they might enter vocational school, or start an apprenticeship, or get a job, or any of a number of other things. Schooling wasn't as strictly organized as it is today.)
    – Mark
    Jul 27, 2019 at 1:05

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