Contents:
She founds her empire upon the idea of universal toleration: She admits all religions into her bosom; She secures the sacred rights of every individual; and astonishing absurdity to Europeans! Webster dedicated his Speller and Dictionary to providing an intellectual foundation for American nationalism. In terms of political theory, he de-emphasized virtue a core value of republicanism and emphasized widespread ownership of property a key element of Federalism.
It was not Rousseau's politics but his ideas on pedagogy in Emile that influenced Webster in adjusting his Speller to the stages of a child's development. Webster married well and had joined the elite in Hartford but did not have much money. In December, he founded New York's first daily newspaper American Minerva later known as the Commercial Advertiser , which he edited for four years, writing the equivalent of 20 volumes of articles and editorials.
As a Federalist spokesman, he defended the administrations of George Washington and John Adams , especially their policy of neutrality between Britain and France, and he especially criticized the excesses of the French Revolution and its Reign of Terror.
His most important improvement, he claimed, was to rescue "our native tongue" from "the clamour [29] of pedantry" that surrounded English grammar and pronunciation. There's a problem loading this menu right now. It's best read to the child so you can ask the child what he or she thinks when someone lies to them. It comes and goes, but can get very painful at times, and restricts the movements in my arm quite severely. Webster decided to have fun and say his name was Max. He returned to Connecticut in and served in the Connecticut House of Representatives.
As a result, he was repeatedly denounced by the Jeffersonian Republicans as "a pusillanimous, half-begotten, self-dubbed patriot," "an incurable lunatic," and "a deceitful newsmonger For decades, he was one of the most prolific authors in the new nation, publishing textbooks, political essays, a report on infectious diseases, and newspaper articles for his Federalist party.
He wrote so much that a modern bibliography of his published works required pages.
He moved back to New Haven in ; he was elected as a Federalist to the Connecticut House of Representatives in and — The Copyright Act of was the first major statutory revision of U. As a teacher, he had come to dislike American elementary schools. They could be overcrowded, with up to seventy children of all ages crammed into one-room schoolhouses. They had poor, underpaid staff, no desks, and unsatisfactory textbooks that came from England.
Webster thought that Americans should learn from American books, so he began writing the three volume compendium A Grammatical Institute of the English Language. The work consisted of a speller published in , a grammar published in , and a reader published in His goal was to provide a uniquely American approach to training children. His most important improvement, he claimed, was to rescue "our native tongue" from "the clamour [29] of pedantry" that surrounded English grammar and pronunciation. He complained that the English language had been corrupted by the British aristocracy, which set its own standard for proper spelling and pronunciation.
The appropriate standard for the American language, argued Webster, was "the same republican principles as American civil and ecclesiastical constitutions. The Speller was arranged so that it could be easily taught to students, and it progressed by age.
From his own experiences as a teacher, Webster thought that the Speller should be simple and gave an orderly presentation of words and the rules of spelling and pronunciation. He believed that students learned most readily when he broke a complex problem into its component parts and had each pupil master one part before moving to the next. Ellis argues that Webster anticipated some of the insights currently associated with Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development. Webster said that children pass through distinctive learning phases in which they master increasingly complex or abstract tasks.
Therefore, teachers must not try to teach a three-year-old how to read; they could not do it until age five. He organized his speller accordingly, beginning with the alphabet and moving systematically through the different sounds of vowels and consonants, then syllables, then simple words, then more complex words, then sentences.
Over the course of editions in his lifetime, the title was changed in to The American Spelling Book , and again in to The Elementary Spelling Book. Most people called it the "Blue-Backed Speller" because of its blue cover and, for the next one hundred years, Webster's book taught children how to read, spell, and pronounce words.
It was the most popular American book of its time; by , it had sold 15 million copies, and some 60 million by —reaching the majority of young students in the nation's first century. Its royalty of a half-cent per copy was enough to sustain Webster in his other endeavors. It also helped create the popular contests known as spelling bees.
As time went on, Webster changed the spellings in the book to more phonetic ones. Most of them already existed as alternative spellings. He also changed tongue to the older spelling tung , but this did not catch on. Part three of his Grammatical Institute was a reader designed to uplift the mind and "diffuse the principles of virtue and patriotism. Several of those masterly addresses of Congress, written at the commencement of the late Revolution, contain such noble, just, and independent sentiments of liberty and patriotism, that I cannot help wishing to transfuse them into the breasts of the rising generation.
He included excerpts from Tom Paine 's The Crisis and an essay by Thomas Day calling for the abolition of slavery in accord with the Declaration of Independence. Webster's Speller was entirely secular by design. There was no mention of God, the Bible, or sacred events. As Ellis explains, "Webster began to construct a secular catechism to the nation-state. Here was the first appearance of 'civics' in American schoolbooks. In this sense, Webster's speller becoming what was to be the secular successor to The New England Primer with its explicitly biblical injunctions.
Bynack examines Webster in relation to his commitment to the idea of a unified American national culture that would stave off the decline of republican virtues and solidarity. Webster acquired his perspective on language from such theorists as Maupertuis , Michaelis , and Herder. There he found the belief that a nation's linguistic forms and the thoughts correlated with them shaped individuals' behavior.
Thus, the etymological clarification and reform of American English promised to improve citizens' manners and thereby preserve republican purity and social stability. This presupposition animated Webster's Speller and Grammar. In Webster began compiling an expanded and fully comprehensive dictionary, An American Dictionary of the English Language; it took twenty-six years to complete. Webster hoped to standardize American speech, since Americans in different parts of the country used different languages.
They also spelled, pronounced, and used English words differently. Webster completed his dictionary during his year abroad in January in a boarding house in Cambridge , England. As a spelling reformer , Webster preferred spellings that matched pronunciation better. He was very influential in popularizing certain spellings in America, but he did not originate them.
Rather […] he chose already existing options such as center, color and check on such grounds as simplicity, analogy or etymology. At the age of seventy, Webster published his dictionary in , registering the copyright on April Though it now has an honored place in the history of American English, Webster's first dictionary only sold 2, copies. He was forced to mortgage his home to develop a second edition, and his life from then on was plagued with debt. In , the second edition was published in two volumes. On May 28, , a few days after he had completed revising an appendix to the second edition, and with much of his efforts with the dictionary still unrecognized, Noah Webster died.
The rights to his dictionary were acquired by George and Charles Merriam in from Webster's estate and all contemporary Merriam-Webster dictionaries trace their lineage to that of Webster, although many others have adopted his name, attempting to share in the prestige. Lepore demonstrates Webster's paradoxical ideas about language and politics and shows why Webster's endeavors were at first so poorly received.
Culturally conservative Federalists denounced the work as radical—too inclusive in its lexicon and even bordering on vulgar. Meanwhile, Webster's old foes the Republicans attacked the man, labeling him mad for such an undertaking. Scholars have long seen Webster's dictionary to be an important resource for reading poet Emily Dickinson 's life and work; she once commented that the "Lexicon" was her "only companion" for years. One biographer said, "The dictionary was no mere reference book to her; she read it as a priest his breviary—over and over, page by page, with utter absorption.
Nathan Austin has explored the intersection of lexicographical and poetic practices in American literature, and attempts to map out a "lexical poetics" using Webster's definitions as his base. Poets mined his dictionaries, often drawing upon the lexicography in order to express word play. Austin explicates key definitions from both the Compendious and American dictionaries, and finds a range of themes such as the politics of "American" versus "British" English and issues of national identity and independent culture. Austin argues that Webster's dictionaries helped redefine Americanism in an era of highly flexible cultural identity.
Webster himself saw the dictionaries as a nationalizing device to separate America from Britain, calling his project a "federal language", with competing forces towards regularity on the one hand and innovation on the other. Austin suggests that the contradictions of Webster's lexicography were part of a larger play between liberty and order within American intellectual discourse, with some pulled toward Europe and the past, and others pulled toward America and the new future.
In Blackie and Son in Glasgow published the first general dictionary of English that relied heavily upon pictorial illustrations integrated with the text.
Webster's Friend (Webster Technology Book 3) and millions of other books are available . In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to Picture books for children are one of the hardest things to get right, but . I can't wait to find more to read to them. . Internationally · Home Services. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary New Edition (c) $ Mass Market by Merriam-Webster Inc. Showing 1 - 12 of all Results Books: Advanced Search.
Webster in early life was something of a freethinker, but in he became a convert to Calvinistic orthodoxy, and thereafter became a devout Congregationalist who preached the need to Christianize the nation. Webster viewed language as a tool to control unruly thoughts. His American Dictionary emphasized the virtues of social control over human passions and individualism, submission to authority, and fear of God; they were necessary for the maintenance of the American social order. Once Upon a Time If You Give a Mouse an iPhone: Sponsored products related to this item What's this?
A beautiful collection of kids' bestsellers. Teach them, entertain them and have loads of fun with this collection of shorts, rhymes and much more! A Space Opera Fantasy. The first cat in space. A million ways for it to go wrong. Get your paws on this action-packed thrill ride now. A delightful tale of a spoiled Parisian cat who learns that friendship means giving as well as receiving. Prince Martin Wins His Sword: You'll love this action-packed sci-fi fantasy thrillogy because everyone enjoys rooting for the undercat. Get your paws on a copy right now. Join Charley as he adjusts to life with not one, but two newly adopted cats.
Will he be able to manage? An award-winning story for all animal lovers. Review Awards and reviews for the Webster Technology Books collection: Born Digital Books June 21, Language: Related Video Shorts 0 Upload your video. Share your thoughts with other customers. Write a customer review.
Read reviews that mention internet safety play a game stranger danger name was max great introduction webster the spider online bruno lesson lie meet computer illustrations lunch teaches lessons lies parents strangers truth. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Kindle Edition Verified Purchase. Do you have imaginary friends? How do you play together? The author, Hannah Whaley, handwritten a book with a wonderful message for children. Webster liked to play pretend, and that is a lot of fun. One day Webster was on the Internet with his computer and he found someone named Bruno.
Webster decided to have fun and say his name was Max. Max made up,a lot of interesting things he could do and say. He even told Bruno he was going to have lunch with an alien. Bruno was so excited about the alien that he said hew Luke be right over to have lunch with both of them. He thought he should talk this over with his father. However, when he was outside his room he ran into his brother who told him he was going to lunch. When you read this story you will understand what occurred. Of concern to me is that this age group should not be on the computer, particularly, alone.
The other lessons are good for children to learn. The illustrations by the author, Hannah Whaley, are fun and the writing is done in a rhyme tone which is fun to read. This book is a whimsical way of introducing little kids to the dangers of using the internet. Webster and his friend both lie to make themselves someone else on the internet. It's best read to the child so you can ask the child what he or she thinks when someone lies to them. I appreciated how this was written, and my kids thought it was funny that Webster is a spider, but they didn't like how he lied and was lied to.
I hope they remember the lessons, so when they are using the internet they can be more cyber conscious that there are those that are going to lie so they don't have to give away who they are, but then there are those that will lie to prey on the vulnerable. This book is a good introduction into the many dangers of the internet, but it doesn't mean they shouldn't use such a wonderful resource in our world.
One person found this helpful 2 people found this helpful. Barbara Mojica Top Contributor: Cute story centered around what can easily happen when using the internet.
A spider named Webster likes to pretend, and dress-up. One day Webster goes online and play a game with a new internet acquaintance.
Webster changes his name to Max and begins to fabricate stories. He pretends to be a teenager, a champion gardener, and a space explorer. The stories grow more and more incredible as his new friend named Bruno attempts to match his prowess.
When Bruno asks to meet for lunch, Max becomes frightened. Webster is in store for another surprise when he has a chat with his brother, Jake. Nice way to introduce younger children to the dangers of using the internet to engage with strangers and the pitfalls of pretending to be someone other than ourselves. Simple illustrations and text make the story perfect for its targeted audience of preschool or early primary school children.
Recommended for parents, teachers and librarians of computer savvy youngsters. It is amazing that these little stories can help me show my kids the right and wrong with nowadays technology. We forget as adults things that we feel are common sense when in fact our children still don't yet understand, which makes it difficult to teach them in our own ways. My guy may be five, but he's just learning about fibbing and lying.
Reading this to him doesn't just help for the internet world, but the real world where lying isn't okay and not everyone we meet will tell the truth. I've read two of Webster's stories to my kids, and they love them. I can't wait to find more to read to them. One person found this helpful. This was a free download from the kindle store and my second download from this series. These books teach great habits, this one in particular teaches proper technology habits and how not to talk to strangers online. I would download more books from this series if I found them for free from the kindle store because my daughter thoroughly enjoys them and they teach good values.