Jesse Brundage Sears

This book, published in 1918, is a real piece of history--particularly for those with even modest knowledge of the history of pedagogy in public institutions in the United States. Sears writes from the cusp between 19th-century simple disciplinarianism found in rural school houses (he urges his readers, for example, not to exhibit anger when administering corporal punishment) and the emerging, nuanced axioms of Freudian psychology, e.g. he has much to say about motivation and learning.

While this book is only passingly relevant today, it fascinated me, as I say, as a piece of history.… (meer)