SCHOOL BOOKS for VERY old children

all of the following images came from children's school books of the past . . .
       
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from a later school book about 1500s European schools  "The world of the sixteenth Century was a hard world,  a cruel world,  a world marked by singular absence of affection and by a conspicuous lack of joy.  It was a world oppressed by superstition,  darkened by demonology,  haunted by imminent death and terrified by anticipated damnation."
       
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 1500s "Deformed and Monstrous people"   up until the 1900s,  school books educated children about illness,  death,  war,  alcoholism,  and religion ... life was short,  death was frequent, 
 and children saw it all.
       
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1600s  "The Besieging of a city"
       
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1600s  alcohol temperance
       
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1600s  "Tennis-play ... One throweth, and another taketh, and sendeth it back with a racket."
       
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the pets and animals familiar to 1600s English homes
       
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1600s "Men are wont also to swim over Waters"
       
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1600s  "Malefactors are brought from the prison (where they are wont to be tortured) by Sergeants,  or dragged with a horse to place of execution.  Thieves are hanged by the hangman,  Whoremasters are beheaded,  Murderers and robbers are either laid upon a wheel having their legs broken,  or fastened upon a stake."
       
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from an 1683 school book       see full size 
       
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1780?   "To a naughty girl ...

So,  pert mistress Prate-apace,  how came you here?
There is nobody wants to see you at the fair.
Not an orange an apple, a cake, or a nut,
Will anyone give to so saucy a slut."

(slut meant slovenly or unwashed)
       
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1804,  the art of instructing knowledge       see full size
       
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"The Dunce"  1811 ...  the lowest scoring student is punished with
humiliation,  separated and displayed as ugly and inferior
       
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1815 school book:  a drunk ridicules a religious zealot for hanging a cat
       
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1815 school book: a crowd of children ridicule a man's bald head. 
"Go up, thou bald head."  Two bears come and kill 42 of the children.
       
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1820  "The Old man and Death"
       
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1822  "Of a hundred men who are born,  50 die before the 
10th year ... 6 only live to be above the age of 60"
       
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1863 schoolbook ... a man gives a young lamb as a gift to a little girl,  and tells her

he crushed the mother lamb to death

    
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"Evening School for Working Classes - Working in Clay" 

an 1894 New York school       see full size

     
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a 1912 school book

     
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a 1912 school book says that bisexuals have both male and female genitals, and therefore are attracted to both genders

    
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1819:  We simply couldn't end without a trampling