The Young Composers

Drawing on primary materials that have not been considered in previous histories of writing instruction - little-known textbooks and student writing that includes prize-winning essays, journal entries, letters, and articles written for school newspapers - Schultz shows that in nineteenth-century American schools, the voices of the British rhetoricians that dominated college writing instruction were attenuated by the voice of the Swiss education reformer Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. Partly through the influence of Pestalozzi's thought, writing instruction for children in schools became child-centered, not just a replica or imitation of writing instruction in the colleges.