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John Orville Taylor: A Forgotten Educator

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Paul D. Travers*
Affiliation:
University of Missouri at St. Louis

Extract

John Orville Taylor was one of many prominent educators of the eighteen thirties and forties who labored continually to win public support for popular education. One can safely infer that his efforts to muster common school support were comparable with those of his more publicized contemporaries; yet today he receives little recognition from educational historians for the part he played in laying the groundwork for the American public school.

Type
Notes and Documents II
Copyright
Copyright © 1969 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1. Hinsdale, Burke A.Notes on the History of Foreign Influence upon Education in the United States,“ Report of the Commissioner of Education for the Year 1897–1898 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1898), I, 623.Google Scholar

2. Wilson, J. G. and Fiske, J., eds., “John Orville Taylor,” Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography, VI (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1889), 46.Google Scholar

3. Barnard, Henry ed., “The American Common School Society,” The American Journal of Education, XV (June 1865), 248.Google Scholar

4. Taylor, J. O. District School or National Education, 3d ed. (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, and Blanchard, 1835), p. 88.Google Scholar

5. Taylor, J. O. A Digest of M. Victor Cousin's Report on the State of Public Instruction in Prussia, also the Organization and Administration of the School System of the State of New York, Taken from the Report of the Superintendent of Common Schools of 1836 (Albany: Packard and Van Benthuysen, 1836), pp. 913, 29.Google Scholar

6. Taylor, District School …, p. 123.Google Scholar

7. Ibid., p. 85.Google Scholar

8. Ibid., pp. 62, 202.Google Scholar

9. Taylor, A Digest …, p. 47.Google Scholar

10. Adams's, John Q. Letters on Silesia (1805), Henry E. Dwight's Travels in the North of Germany (1829) and Eliza Robbins's report on Public Instruction in Prussia (based on Cousin's Report), read before the American Institute of Instruction in 1835, and published in 1836, all did their share in awakening an American interest in Prussian normal schools. See Nicolaus H. Julius, “The Prussian System of Teachers’ Seminaries,” The American Journal of Education, XVI (March 1866), 92.Google Scholar

11. Taylor, Prospectus to the Common School Assistant,“ A Digest …, pp. 172–74.Google Scholar

12. His three available lectures were published by the American Common School Society; however, their dates and places of publication are unknown. These three lectures are typical of the addresses he delivered “on the improvement of common-school education in the principal cities of the country.” Wilson and Fiske, loc. cit. Google Scholar

13. Taylor, The First Lecture on Popular Education (New York: American Common School Society, n.d.), p. 4.Google Scholar

14. Ibid., p. 9.Google Scholar

15. Ibid., p. 26.Google Scholar

16. The reference librarian at New York University states that the catalogs (1835–1840) of that institution probably had disappeared around 1900. It seems that little other material is currently available to shed light on Taylor's employment at the university, but the title page of his District School (1835), however, stated that he was professor of popular education. Letter from A. C. Sutherland, reference librarian, New York University, July 18, 1967.Google Scholar

17. Taylor, The Third Lecture on Popular Education (New York: American Common School Society, n.d.), p. 92.Google Scholar