Vocal school

Etymology and word origin

The term "blab" derives from "blabber," meaning to talk much without making sense, and from the Middle English noun "blabbe," referring to one who does not control their tongue. Another claimed origin is that the garbled "blab-blab" sound of students' loud recitations, as heard by neighbors, gave the school its name. Children repeated the teacher's oral lesson at top volume, often in harmonized unison, and such schools were sometimes more elegantly called vocal schools.

Description

Blab schools were common on the American frontier, where many settlers could not read. These one-room schools, sometimes called "old field" schools, were often housed in log cabins with dirt floors and wooden backless benches. In the Appalachian region of Virginia, they were known as "Old-time Schools." Typically lacking books and paper, the teacher—who needed only basic literacy—would give a short oral lesson, and the children would recite it loudly until memorized.

Recitation served as both learning and entertainment in frontier communities. The basic curriculum covered reading, writing, and arithmetic. Students who excelled were called "leather-heads" and received praise. In many ABC schools, each pupil recited the previous evening's homework first thing in the morning, with order determined by "first come, first called."

The method was called "loud studying." Some educational theorists believed listening to others' recitations aided retention, but the prevalence of blab schools likely resulted more from a lack of trained teachers, facilities, and equipment than from pedagogical superiority. The name itself suggests observers found the method somewhat ridiculous. Teachers often punished students harshly, patrolling with a wooden switch or paddle and using it on any child not reciting loudly enough.

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln learned the alphabet and basic subjects at a vocal school in his youth. He walked at least a mile to his first school, a windowless schoolhouse taught by Zachariah Riney and Caleb Hazel. Another teacher, Azel Waters Dorsey, taught Lincoln for six months in 1824 at a blab school in Spencer County, Indiana. Lincoln first studied spelling books, learning to spell all words before advancing to other texts, including Dillworth's Speller, Webster's Old Blueback, and later Murray's English Reader. He was noted for shouting his reading lesson on the path to school, audible from a distance. Between ages 11 and 15, he attended school occasionally when farm chores allowed, totaling less than a year of schooling. Often the blab school had no teacher, and older students taught the younger children.