Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The New England Primer was first published between 1687 and 1690 by printer Benjamin Harris, who had come to Boston in 1686 to escape the brief Catholic ascendancy under James II. It was based largely upon The Protestant Tutor , which he had published in England, [ 1 ] and was the first reading primer designed for the American Colonies.
By 1690, Boston publishers were reprinting the English Protestant Tutor under the title of The New England Primer. The Primer was built on rote memorization. By simplifying Calvinist theology, the Primer enabled the Puritan child to define the limits of the self by relating his life to the authority of God and his parents.
Full title: An inquiry into the nature and form of the books of the ancients; with a history of the art of bookbinding, from the times of the Greeks and Romans to the present day; interspersed with bibliographical references to men and books of all ages and countries
Education in the Thirteen Colonies during the 17th and 18th centuries varied considerably. Public school systems existed only in New England. In the 18th Century, the Puritan emphasis on literacy largely influenced the significantly higher literacy rate (70 percent of men) of the Thirteen Colonies, mainly New England, in comparison to Britain (40 percent of men) and France (29 percent of men).
The contents of the New England Psalter included: the Psalms, some of the stories of the Old and New Testament, rules for reading, lessons in spelling, instructions for printing letters, reading verse and the use of capitals. It is significant that during this period of time the laws of England forbade the printing of Bibles outside of Britain.
Benjamin Harris (fl. 1673–1716) was an English publisher, a figure of the Popish Plot in England who then moved to New England as an early journalist. He published the New England Primer, the first textbook in British America, and edited the first multi-page newspaper there, Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick, from 25 September 1690.
Get a daily dose of cute photos of animals like cats, dogs, and more along with animal related news stories for your daily life from AOL.
A primer (in this sense usually pronounced / ˈ p r ɪ m ər /, [1] sometimes / ˈ p r aɪ m ər /, usually the latter in modern British English [2]) is a first textbook for teaching of reading, such as an alphabet book or basal reader. The word also is used more broadly to refer to any book that presents the most basic elements of any subject. [3]