Early 20th Century Education in Clyde River: The Practical Speller

Our research continues into our collection of Clyde River School textbooks (1880s-1920s). We came across a spelling book used at the beginning of the 1900s – Gage & Co’s Educational Series – The Practical Speller – 20th Century Edition – printed in 1901 (208 pages). A sobering message is found in the preface, pointing to the importance of teaching spelling:

Is a Speller a Necessary School Book? The old-fashioned spelling book has been discarded by teachers generally. Many valid objections were properly urged against it use and it passed away.

Entire dependence upon oral spelling may also be fitly styled a method of bygone days. Unfortunately for the old spelling book it was associated with all the folly and weakness of “oral spelling,” and this partly accounts for its rejection.

What have the reformers given as a substitute for a Speller? They took our bread and have given in return but a stone. The bread even though a little stale was much more wholesome than the stone. In Canada parts of the lessons to be found in the Readers are taken as dictation lessons, and the pupils are turned loose on society to shock it by their bad spelling, and disgrace the school which they attended, and which they should have been taught. The readers to not contain all the words that boys and girls will have to spell in life, and if they did, the lessons are not arranged in proper form for spelling lessons. Only a comparatively small portion of readers can be written from dictation in schools. Bad as were the old spellers, they were infinitely better than nothing. This fact is now recognized in Great Britain and the United States, in both of which countries many valuable spelling books have recently been issued. That these were necessary in England is clearly shown by the fact that at a recent Civil Service Examination “no less than 1861 out of 1972 failures were caused by spelling.”

A practical dictation Speller is clearly a necessity, and this work has been prepared to supply an obvious want in the program in Canadian schools. The claim to the name “Practical” is based on the fact that is not a mere collection of thousands of “long-tailed works in osity and ation,” but contains a graded series of lessons to teach pupils the proper spelling of the words which all have to use.

A glimpse at parts of the textbook (click on any photo to enlarge and advance through gallery:

Editor’s note: If you wish to view the full digital copy, we found an edition here at archive.org.