This essay was originally published in the 1942 OCHS Yearbook. Please note that this essay was published over 80 years ago. While still useful for general education, language may be outdated and at times offensive. The Oswego County Historical Society does not stand by the language used in this essay. All photos were added in 2024 when this article was uploaded to the web. To view the original document, please visit NYHeritage.org.
Paper Read Before Oswego County Historical Society at Oswego, January 12, 1943, by Dr. Richard K. Piez, Former Head of Department of Psychology, Oswego State Normal School
Quoting the Hon. E. J. Harmon of Oswego: “In 1848 E. A. Sheldon, then a young man, found himself in Oswego, in one of those strange pauses in life which, to the outer eye, seem accidental, but are in reality the sources and springs of life’s greatest work.
“He was induced to canvass the city, especially among the neglected poor, and found some 2500 young people and adults who could not read.”
Result, the organization on October 31, 1848, of the Orphan and’ Free School Association whose object was the intellectual and moral improvement of such poor and orphan children in this city as were not otherwise provided for in these respects. Against his own inclinations Sheldon was prevailed upon to become the teacher of a class of underprivileged children soon dubbed as the “Ragged School.” For this work he asked a salary of $275 for the year but at the suggestion of the Hon. Judge Churchill it was made $300.
Moves To Make All Schools Free
Quoting from Sheldon’s autobiography: “Opened the Orphan and Free School on the 14th of January 1849 with 70 scholars. Have now on my list (Jan. 20) over 140′ wild boys and girls who had never been inside a ‘school room and who knew no better how to behave as pupils than I did as teacher.
“Like many philanthropic enterprises an enthusiastic beginning finds, after a time, a waning. The effort to raise money to meet the various expenses of the school and the necessities of the poor, began to abate, and general interest to cease. As I saw these tendencies, I urged upon the members of our committee the importance of making all the public schools of the city free.”
At this time the schools had been under the old district school system. There were twelve school districts in the city. Each district had its own local officers, elected annually by the people of the district. Each district was a separate establishment similar to the present rural district before the era of consolidation. The consolidation of the twelve school districts of the city units, into one with a single governing board encountered much opposition, based on sectarian prejudices, greater expense and the reluctance of the districts to surrender their autonomy.
Enabling Legislation Passed
In 1852-3, sponsored by the Hon. D. C. Littlejohn of Oswego in the Assembly and the Hon. Robert C. Piatt in the Senate, a bill for the consolidation of the twelve districts was passed. Under this act the new board of education, consisting of Leander Babcock, A. C. Matteson, D. C. Golden, Wm. H. Goit, Wra. F. Mason, A. B. Coe, John C. Churchill and O. J. Harmon, began to function May 11, 1853. The board elected E. A. Sheldon as its secretary and superintendent of schools. He returned from Syracuse where during the previous two years he had been superintendent of schools and began the work of reorganizing, not only the public schools, but public sentiment as well.
After some months of careful planning E. A. Sheldon proceeded to redistrict the city dividing it into twelve primary districts for children in the 1st, 2d and 3d grades; four junior districts for 4th, 5th and 6th grade children and two senior districts for 7th, 8th and 9th grade children. He also planned a four year high school course. He mapped out a definite course of study for each year.
Sheldon Reconstructs School Program
The weeding out of incompetent teachers proved a delicate task but was accomplished by the inauguration of a carefully guarded impartial system of examinations. Selection of teachers he based on evidence of knowledge and ability.
Buildings were renovated and up to date furniture installed.
The result as stated by E. A. Sheldon himself “A more perfect system of educational machinery had never been constructed.”
When, at the end of the first year, he could show that notwithstanding extensive improvements, the expenditures were only $266 greater than during the preceding year, most of the active oppositions to the new order disappeared.
Supported by a competent and friendly Board of Education, E. A. Sheldon entered upon the second year of administering the Free Public Schools of Oswego. He started a number of classes for pupils who worked during the summer but were idle in the winter. Because they wanted particularly to know more arithmetic, they were called “Arithmetic Schools.” Instruction was also given in reading, penmanship, spelling and geography. In addition, he started evening classes for boys employed during the day.
A very significant innovation was the establishment of an “Ungraded School”, intended for the retarded pupil who could not progress with the regular classes and became increasingly uncomfortable in classes with younger children, more or less listless and unresponsive. These pupils, he grouped into an unclassified school. Years later when child-study, especially the researches of Binet , Goddard, and others had established the fact that most cases of retardation are due to mental deficiency, the unclassified schools became the present day “Special Classes.”
Teachers Met For Discussion
Regular teachers’ meetings for the discussion of school problems, organization, classification, instruction and discipline, principles of education and methods of teaching, were inaugurated. A rigid system of examinations was put in operation. Quoting E. A. Sheldon: “I carried a straightjacket system of close classification to its highest point of perfection, accompanied by a course of study as precise, definite, and exacting as it is possible to make, tested by complete and exhaustive examinations which left us room for doubt as to the thoroughness of the work done.”
Promotions from grade to grade were based on these examinations. The most serious embarrassment at this time was the need of greater school accommodations. The school population had already doubled. The private schools had vanished with the presence of the new system. Some 500 children away from home in private schools were brought back by the new system. During this year, new schools were added and needed facilities installed.
If I seem to have dwelt at too great length upon the advent and organization of the Oswego Public Schools, it is because the origin of the Oswego State Normal and Training School is rooted in Sheldon’s work in the Public Schools. Viewed against the educational ideology of the period, Sheldon could truthfully declare that “A more perfect system of educational machinery has never been constructed.”
At the time of the beginning of the Oswego Public Schools, instruction aimed at rote learning; memorizing of words and facts was identified with knowledge. Did not Sir Francis Bacon affirm that “Knowledge is power” ? The fact that knowledge is sterile unless inspired by intelligence was overlooked and the knowledge thus acquired by memoriter learning was but remotely related to the daily life of pupils and thus school knowledge and life knowledge were more or less separate identities.
Discipline Repressed Individual
Discipline aimed to repress. “Children should be seen, not heard.” The best disciplined group of children was so quiet that one could hear a pin drop. Corporal punishment was the order of the day, in school and out. “Spare the rod and spoil the child.” The harsh discipline was a natural concommittant [sic] of the unnatural memoriter learning. As for the facts taught, the less said the better. A comparison of many elementary “Courses of Study” of the period leads one to believe that many school superintendents who, by the way, were not career educators, used the scissors and paste pot more frequently than the pen.
A good teacher of this period had of necessity to be a “born teacher” for the training of teachers was decidedly sketchy. Specific training in the art of teaching was conspicuously absent. He or she might be a high school graduate; very few had the advantages of higher institutional training. Nor were teachers—career teachers. The young women might—and usually were rescued from pedagogical drudgery by young Lochinvar while the occasional young man’s school teaching was only a prelude to entry upon some profession.
Aimed to Make Pupils Think
And so E. A. Sheldon had organized what seemed the perfect public school system. But in his own words, “Notwithstanding all perfection of organization there was something wanting to give life, spirit, soul to the school system. As a machine it was perfect. But, it lacked vitality. This I felt strongly, but how to remedy the defect, I did not know. I realized that our work was too formal, too much of a memorizing process. We wanted something that would wake up the pupils, set them to thinking, observing, reasoning. I decided that our school work must be more objective. But there were no facilities for carrying on objective work. We wanted collections of objects of all sorts, illustrations, more reading matter suited to the ages of children, charts of color, and forms, objects for teaching arithmetic, natural history.”
In September, 1859, he found many of the facilities he had been wishing for in Toronto. These were collections of objects, pictures, color charts, reading charts, and books for teachers prepared by the Home and Colonial Training Institution, London. He made out a new course of study for the primary schools employing the Toronto material. With the approval of the Board, it was put in operation the following year. A new era had begun. “Important changes were inaugurated that were to be destined to revolutionize methods of teaching, not only in Oswego, but in the whole country.” This was the first effort to introduce systematic objective work into all subjects and through all grades of the public schools.
Trained in Objective Teaching
The training of teachers for this objective teaching was done at Saturday meetings at which E. A. Sheldon laid out work for the following week, discussed principles and methods with them and then saw that the work was properly carried out in the classroom. As soon as some of the teachers were well trained, they left for more lucrative positions elsewhere. He proposed to the board that he should establish a city training school for the training of primary teachers. The board assented and he outlined a plan which admitted graduates of high school or equivalent scholastic training to a one-year course of strictly professional training, one half the time to be given to theory and the other half to teaching under criticism. As teacher for conducting the training school, he was able to secure Miss Margaret E. M. Jones of the Home and Colonial school in London who assumed her duties in May, 1861. At the end of the period for which Miss Jones was employed, Mr. Sheldon was prevailed upon to become principal of the training school.
Prominent Educators Approved
February 11, 1862, a group of prominent educators met in Oswego to examine the principles and practices of the new system of primary instruction. After careful examination and discussion, they gave the new departure their unqualified approval, stating: “That its underlying principles are sound; that the methods of instruction merit and receive our hearty approval and that they recommend the introduction of the system wherever practicable.”
The Board of Education in 1864 reports as follows:
In the two years since its establishment, this training school has been of great value to us in preparing teachers for our schools. It has done much to elevate standards of teaching and increase the efficiency of our schools. Many teachers of experience and established reputation coming from distant parts of the state and from adjoining states have sought its advantages. Applications for teachers trained in this school have been beyond our ability to supply. Our own schools have been supplied from the same source. By an act of the legislature, the training school was , thereafter placed under the control of the state superintendent, the state providing for its support. For the instruction of each student to the number of 50, the State allows fifty dollars.
Normal School Incorporated in 1865
From this point, the transition was easy to the filial act of incorporation in 1865 of the Oswego State Normal and Training School. The city agreed to furnish the building and the state provided the funds for maintenance. The former United States Hotel on West Seneca Street— acquired and remodelled by the city—housed the 500 city children which made up the practice school and also the teachers in training. Mr. Sheldon continued as Secretary of the Board of Education and principal of the Normal and Training School until 1869 when he resigned the former position and devoted himself entirely to the task of teacher training. After its incorporation by the state, the school was placed in charge of a Local Board of Managers—originally consisting of thirteen members and later reduced to seven. The Local Board administered the financial affairs, had the responsibility for the building and grounds. It also adopted courses of study and appointed teachers to the faculty, subject to the approval of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.
School Buildings Enlarged
The school rapidly increased in popularity and numbers and soon outgrew the capacity of the building. In 1878, the state appropriated funds to enlarge. In 1880, additional funds were available until the original building had been much enlarged and improved. This building continued in use until a modern and more commodious one was completed in 1911. After that time, the high school department was discontinued. Previously the department was operated to enable students not prepared in certain subjects to make up their academic deficiencies. From 1894 onward, the classical department was abolished, notwithstanding the disagreement of principals and other school officials. The adoption by the State Education Department of the minimum course for entrance to Normal Schools made the high school department In the Normal School practically superfluous.
Up to this point, I have briefly outlined the origin of the Oswego Training School and its development into the Normal school. With the more important aspect of the development, I have yet to deal. I am referring to what Mr. Sheldon termed the life, the spirit, the soul of this institution and its influence upon educational thought and practice throughout the country and far beyond its boundaries.
Education Adapted to Child
Mr. Sheldon’s contribution to child education is not mereJy the introduction of object teaching or objective methods of teaching in the elementary school. These new techniques attracted wide attention and were widely adopted. Their introduction by Mr. Sheldon was merely one evidence of the basic motive that actuated his entire educational career.
This motive may thus be stated : The educational machinery, courses of study, methods of teaching should be adapted, to the nature, needs and capacities of children instead of trying to adapt children to the educational machinery. The obvious corollary to this proposition is that teachers must be trained to teach in accordance with the natural laws of child development. Such is the keynote of the Normal School. This is the creed consciously or unconsciously incorporated in the thoughts and activities of the members of the Normal School. Both students and faculty, for these two supplemented each other as co-workers in a great cause. This underlying creed may not have been explicitly stated by some but it was always present by implication in the course of study, in the attitude of the faculty, and in the actual teaching.
Sheldon’s Work Brought Educational Renaissance
E. A. Sheldon’s innovation in Oswego was the beginning of a renaissance of elementary education. Many school officers had been aware of the inadequacy of rote learning, but like Sheldon did not know what to do about it. The success of objective teaching gave a new direction to educational thought and gave impetus to a new era of investigation, discussion and changes of which the end is not yet. Sheldon was familiar with all the new educational issues. While he was proud of being the founder of the first teacher training school and of the reform in teaching through objective methods, he was keenly alive to the new contributions to education. He studied the new issues as they arose and developed his educational policy accordingly. He was indefatigable in keeping track of new contributions and determining their validity. I have reason to know that nearly at the end of his life he spent a month in the hot summer season in Chicago studying a new method of teaching arithmetic only to conclude that we taught arithmetic better at home.
In the small town of Burgdorf, Pestalozzi at the age of fifty-five had his first opportunity of teaching a class of boys and putting into practice his intuitive conceptions concerning the improvement of the method of teaching the subjects of the curriculum. His basic innovation, named by him, “learning by looking at things,” (AnschaungsUntericht) is learning through vision, or “looking at”, as opposed to the then practiced oral learning, (Learning by rote). Pestalozzi formulated a few principles of instruction such as “ideas before words; things before ideas; from the concrete to the abstract”. His method was objective. It was not necessarily object teaching, it was a method especially apt in the teaching of arithmetic, geography, nature study. He used charts, diagrams and pictures.
Sheldon an Intuitionist
E. A. Sheldon, like Pestalozzi, was an intuitionist. He felt that his first educational machine did not get results in terms of understanding on the part of the pupils. He saw the lack of spontaneous response to the rote learning of many things of which they did not know the meaning. He also saw that an objective approach was needed. But he did not definitely know what he could do until he found this collection of aids to objective teaching prepared by the Home and Colonial School of London.
Quoting Hermen Krusi:
“Miss M. E. M. Jones’ teaching was essentially based on principles, which owe their chief advocacy and application to the educational reformer, Pestalozzi. The more exclusive attention to object lesson as a separate branch of study was of English origin and has since (1888) been greatly modified. Yet it was this new feature in particular, which struck casual observers as worthy of attention and unitation, and a practical way to change the usual word—or book-method—for for one in which the real object be studied and thus establish a connection between the subjects taught in school and the exigencies of life. More accurate observers, however, found that objective teaching in its broadest sense was the germ from which better methods of reaching number, language, geography, etc., could be derived.
It was to be expected that the name of Sheldon and the Oswego Normal school would be identified with object teaching because of the publication of Sheldon’s “Lessons on Objects.” (Scribner’s 1862)
Pestalozzi’s Influence
One should not associate Pestalozzi with the technique of object teaching. Objective teaching and object teaching are not identical in aim or procedure. One aims at understanding; the other aims at first-hand knowledge of objects. Although inspired by the teaching of Miss Jones of the Home and Colonial School, “Lessons on Objects” is exclusively a Sheldonian creation and originated in the Oswego training class. Because of their respective emphasis upon the objective method of teaching and of object teaching, the work of Krusi complemented the work of Sheldon with most happy and profitable results.
Krusi joined the teaching staff of the training class in 1867, at the end of Miss Jones’ engagement. He was born in Yverdon in Switzerland, where his father had been a member of the faculty of the teacher training seminary directed by Pestalozzi. The senior Herman Krusi became principal of Normal School in Gais, conducted on Pestalozzian lines. The junior Krusi received his early education in his father’s school. He was particularly fitted by birth and early environment for furthering the cause of objective teaching and for the important part he afterward took in the movement which led to the reformation of methods of instruction in the United States. Herman Krusi had been a teacher in the Home and Colonial School in London and after his emigration to the United States was a teacher in a Normal School in Lancaster, Massachusetts, and Institute lecturer. Krusi was not a specialist. His catholic tastes and his wide acquaintance with a wide range of subjects made it possible for him to teach many subjects which he did most effectively, always following the objective treatment. One illustration: —In his class in geometry, he used no texbook [sic] but required original solutions or proofs of propositions. His habitual approach to the subject matter studied, encouraged observation or determination of facts, independent thinking, and reasoned out conclusions. The habits of approach to and treatment had a far-reaching influence upon the men and women who went afield in the educational world and are to be credited with many of the reforms made in the schools of the country.
Froebel’s Kindergartens
One cannot proceed to the next outstanding addition to the Normal School without examining the work of Friedrich Froebel whose work and philosophy were destined to have considerable influence on child training procedures in the United States rather than in his own country. Circumstances combined to compel him to teach a group of young children. It was good fortune for the children and himself. An intuitionist like Pestalozzi, seeing the utter futility of repressive control, he had an inspiration. “Why not let the children learn through their spontaneous activity? Why not direct this activity into productive channels instead of inhibiting it?” And thus was born a new procedure in education—education through the activity of the learner. The means he employed were social plays and constructive plays. He wrote songs suited to the children. He had them sing about, and imitate the actions of the artisans of the community. He invented group games and plays. His occupational activities he called “gifts”. (Gaben). They were not intended to be used in fruitless handling. It is interesting to note that the children acquired information concerning color, size, form, number, etc., without formal instruction. The first gift consisted of three worsted balls, red, yellow, blue. They could be employed in many ways and the children learned physical facts about them without actually being taught these facts. The second gift consisted of a cube, a sphere, a cylinder. Another of the cube bisected in three directions resulting in 8 smaller cubes, providing a source of information about form, counting, etc. The lethargic group of small victims condemned to the regular school of the period became a group of happy, smiling, active children. And this institution he named the Kindergarten.
Froebel’s revolutionary doctrine of education through activity found a wide acceptance in the United States. Kindergartens gradually were added to many school systems. The Oswego Normal and Training School as far back as 1882 established a Kindergarten and placed it under the able direction of Mrs. C. A. Burr. Her successor, Miss Amanda P. Funelle, who had done remarkably effective work in disseminating the spirit and method of object teaching in the Albany Normal School, the City Training School of Indianapolis, and the Detroit Normal and Training School. “The great idea of the Oswego Normal School is not Pestalozzianism, but freedom —rational freedom—the freedom of true selfactivity through self control.” To one of this conviction, Froebel’s doctrine appealed strongly. She devoted herself to the study of Froebel’s educational philosophy and the conduct of the Kindergarten. She assumed charge of the Kindergarten department in the Oswego Normal School retiring from this work in 1911. The primary and the Kindergarten Course, as well as a course for those wishing to devote themselves exclusively to Kindergarten work, was incorporated in the curriculum during her incumbency. It might be noted in passing, ours was the first Normal School to include the Kindergarten in its program.
Henry Straight’s Work In Oswego
Henry H. Straight began a course in object lessons in science while principal of the public schools at Galena, Ohio. In 1876 he joined the faculty of the Normal School as teacher of the Natural Sciences. Dissection in the biological branches and experimental laboratory work in the physical sciences were notable innovations at this period. In 1882, philosophy of education was added to his courses. Mr. Straight made some important contributions to the cause of elementary education of which at least one deserves special mention.
In the twenty years after the introduction of objective teaching, interest in the improvement of teaching had swept the educational circles. Scheme succeeded scheme, some ephemeral, others holding the attention for longer periods of time. The course of study was enriched until there were more subjects than the daily session could accommodate. Thinking of the child, one wondered “how one little head could hold it all.” In the catalogs, the enriched curriculum made a brave show. In the minds’ of children it produced ‘ chaos. How to get all the subject matter “over to the children” without sacrificing any of it? The answer seemed to be found in what was known as the correlation of the subjects of the curriculum. Correlate a number of subjects by selecting a “core”. Some advocated history as the core, others literature, still others insisted on geography. I can remember but one voice crying in the wilderness “Make the child’s life and mind—the core.”
Parker’s Tribute To Straight
Henry Straight took great interest in this discussion and was an active participant in the attempts to solve this problem. He chose geography as the core because it dealt with every division of knowledge. Another exponent of the “geography core”, was Col. Francis Parker, principal of the Cook County, 111. Normal School. While the disputations among the wise educators were still in full swing, Straight joined Col. Parker in the Cook County School. Col. Parker some time later published a book entitled “Geography” which dealt with this problem of correlating subjects of the cirriculum [sic], with geography.
Col. Parker is quoted: “I published the book but Straight’s name should be on the title page.” Of course these projected correlations failed. They were destined to fail because they were concerned with collections or groups of knowledge arranged in “air and water tight compartments.” They took no cognizance of the child and that he had to develop his systems of knowledge from what he learned through his own activity of the interrelation between himself and the things outside of himself. Psychology as an empirical and scientific study apart from philosophy of which it had been a very small chapter had yet to be born. But I am anticipating. The sterility of all proposals for correlating subjects of the curriculum eventually led to their abandonment and another discussion entered the spotlight. The evaluation of the subject of study was undertaken by the conservative exponents of K formal discipline and the progressive utilitarians. What knowledge is most worth? Herbert Spencer (Education) answered the question in terms of science rather than the ancient classics. I never heard Mr. Sheldon express himself on this subject. He was more concerned with the child than with subjects. He wanted children to be happy in their school life. He wanted them to learn about the things that lay within the compass of their own lives. From this as a nucleus they could branch out into various fields of recorded knowledge according to their interests and inclinations. He found his program reasonably successful. He was like William James and later John Dewey, a pragmatist. His program worked—so it was right.
Dr. Mary Lee’s Influence
Dr. Mary Lee was sent to the Oswego Normal School by the Superintendent of Public Instruction of Connecticut in 1862 to learn objective methods. After being graduated from the Michigan University, Medical Department, in 1872. She entered the Oswego Normal School to teach physiology, have general oversight over the health of the pupils. After an absence of two years, she returned to Oswego, in 1882, to teach the closely related subjects of biology, physiology, physical culture, and methods of teaching. Dr. Lee sums up the underlying principle of her work: “I worked, not so much to give information, as to influence life.” She succeeded. It should be noted here that she is one of the first to insist that knowledge in itself has no value unless it functions in the life of the pupil. That instruction alone is not education. Another conception of the function of education is taking shape and Dr. Lee is one of its heralds.
Increasing interest in science does not stop with the organization of science courses. Children have contacts with natural objects and living beings. Science in the elementary school finds expression in “Nature Study”. Mr. Sheldon had long considered how elementary science could be adapted to children. In 1894, he secured the services of Charles B. Scott to organize a course in Nature Study in the elementary school and to teach methods. In his work we notice a radical departure from the preceding descriptive procedure. Instead of the structural, the functional aspect of organism became the center of interest. What animals do and how they behave; how plants grow from the seed to the fruit. Here we have the sublimation of object teaching. Not a mere inventory of attributes, but the grasp of meaning of some of these. In passing, Cornell University carried the implications of nature study to its highest degree. Dean Bailey and Mrs. Comstock, through the Cornell leaflets, introduced millions to the wonders of our natural environment. After an all too brief period, Mr. Scott left for Porto Rico. Nature Study after some years again appeared as elementary science in the curriculum. Here also we find a reaffirmation of Dr. Lee’s philosophy. “Not mere information, but knowledge which influences life—from nature to nature’s God.”
Manual Training Established
Practically the last important act of Mr. Sheldon was the establishment of the manual training course. He had for some time been interested in this new movement, had written articles dealing with the educational value of manual training as a means of educating through activity. He was concerned with its functional aspect rather than the technical. Graduates of the school should be able to use the simple tools and be able to construct for themselves some of the devices needed in their school work. Manual training courses in a few high schools already interested him. He was especially interested in the work of Dr. Woodard, the father of Manual Training in the United States. He had some acquaintance with the Swedish system of Sloyd. Though he approved of its underlying purpose, he did not consider its procedure suitable for schools. In instituting the manual training course, he really laid the foundation for the present industrial arts department with its separate building and splendid equipment. Drawing had already been taught by Krusi as far back as the sixties. The courses in drawing, mechanical, pictorial, and decorative were closely coordinated with the manual training—1893.
The Herbartian Movement
Sometime in the late eighties, the Herbartian movement swept the educational world. Johann Friedrich Herbart first explicitly stated the principle that all educational procedure should have a psychological basis. The education of the young cannot be achieved by instruction aiming at information only. It must shape the heart as well as the mind. The former was to be accomplished by acquainting the pupils with biographies of noble lives, derived from Biblical, ancient Greek and other historical sources. Instruction was to create manysided interests. In the process of learning, he stressed the fact that perception must become apperception— the grasp of the meaning of the perceived. All learning involved four formal steps, viz., clearness, association, system, method. The subject matter must consist of “method wholes.” (Note the similarity to the present day “unit activity.”)
These are a few of the outstanding principles as stated by Herbart. The Herbartian Society —to become later the National Society for the study of Education—was formed and included some of our foremost educators. John Dewey was one of these. The Oswego Normal School was in the forefront of the Herbartian Movement. Margaret K. Smith, Grant Karr, and Mary E. Laing, who had studied the Herbartian doctrines at the fountain head in Jena, were the successive interpreters of Herbart within the school and beyond its walls. Mr. Sheldon did not live to see the culmination of this movement. He reorganized the curriculum of the elementary schools about two cores, nature study and language literature. A noteworthy result of the latter grouping was the development of “story work” which attained a high degree of effectiveness under the leadership of Lina L. Loveridge.
At this stage, we can well close our review of the Oswego Normal and Training School. After the unification of the two educational authorities of the state, the administration of Normal Schools through the Commissioner of Education, Andrew S. Draper, became more and more centralized. The school became the State Normal school and recently the Oswego Teachers’ College.
Sheldon Great But Modest
We have reviewed the history of our institution created and guided in its progress by a personality energizing progress. Dr. E. A. Sheldon was a great man, withal modest and without arrogance. He was singleminded in purpose and persevering. The graduates left the school not merely to retail the technique of objective teaching but to further the welfare and progress of children. The achievements of the graduates would require a large volume for their enumeration. In the last analysis, they were largely determined by the inspiration and example of a great educator. I like to think of Dr. E. A. Sheldon as we think of his contemporary, Abraham Lincoln, known in history as the great emancipator. Lincoln freed the Negro from slavery, Sheldon emancipated childhood from the thraldom of mechanized memoritor learning.
