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The History of the School

Curriculum

A Day in the Life of a New York African Free School Student

The school day ran from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., and then from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Students learned reading, writing, and math. Boys were instructed in cartography and navigation, at least in part because seafaring was one of the venues in which young black men could expect to make a competent living. Girls were unlikely to have received instruction in navigation. Instead, they received sewing instruction in addition to the standard curriculum.

Monday Morning Schedule

1st Composition, from the Class of Merit, to be handed to the Master.
2nd Monitor General of Reading [a senior boy from the school, most likely about 13 or 14 years old], prepares all lesson boards, and lessons for the drafts.
3rd After 12 words have been dictated, and written on slates, by the whole school, the Monitor General of Arithmetic orders out the addition, subtraction, multiplication and division classes, to exercise in those rules at the blackboard until reading time.
4th The whole school reads 10 minutes before 11 o'clock, 20 minutes before 12, spell till dismission.
5th Such of the senior boys as put sums into books, commence that exercise at 9 o'clock.
6th At 10 o'clock their pay tickets, for the past week.
7th At half past 10, Astronomy class up half an hour.
8th At dismission, the Monitor General of Arithmetic hangs up signals for ciphering in the afternoon.²

The school operated under the Lancasterian plan of education, which was designed by Joseph Lancaster in late-eighteenth-century England to provide a system for educating the lower classes.

"Monitor's Seat and Desk," Plate No. 4 from Manual of the Lancasterian system, of teaching reading, writing, arithmetic, and needle-work, as practised in the schools of the Free-School Society of New-York.

New-York Historical Society

Under this system, one teacher could arguably be in charge of hundreds of students—this was accomplished through the help of monitors. Monitors were advanced students who had shown particular promise, and were charged with both instructing younger students and maintaining discipline. To encourage good behavior and good grades, instructors provided students with a series of rewards. At times, tickets were distributed. These tickets could be saved and redeemed for a trinket or might simply accrue as a reward. At other times, students were given presents directly.

As one might imagine, the Lancasterian system invested people—often no older than 14—with incredible responsibility. The records indicate that the students lived up to the charge admirably. On one occasion in 1822, a visitor to the school observes a 13-year-old boy running the entire school in the headmaster's absence:

Visited the School in the afternoon & found it in excellent order, under the superintendence of Robert Gray, Monitor of order, a boy of 13 years of age, who conducted the various exercises of the School to our admiration & entire approbations—The Teacher, C. C. Andrews, being absent for the purpose of visiting all the Parents of particularly all those children who are not regular in their attendance at School, which no doubt must have a very beneficial effect.¹

One might consider the prolonged absence of a responsible adult a striking example of negligence. Certainly, it is difficult to imagine students being allowed to run a school without any supervising adults on the premises. On the other hand, one might argue that investing students with so much responsibility led them to develop keen leadership skills that would serve them well as they sought to find create and sustain a free black community in New York City.

¹ January 11th, 1822, New-York Historical Society B.V. Records of the New York African Free School, v ol. 2. p. 74-75.

² Charles C. Andrews, The History of the New York African Free School (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1850), pp. 74-75.