Joel Dorman Steele

Background

Joel was born on May 14, 1836 in Lima, New York, United States. He was the son of the Rev. Allen and Sabra (Dorman) Steele, a descendant of John Steele, one of the founders of Hartford and Farmington, Connecticut.

Education

His early schooling was irregular, for his father was an itinerant Methodist minister, but he had two years under Charles Anthon at the Boys' Classical Institute in Albany, and two years at the Boys' Academy in Troy. After a year in clerical positions in New York City, he entered Genesee College (later part of Syracuse University) and was graduated in 1858.

Career

To defray his college expenses, he worked summers on his father's farm or taught district school. He became instructor (1858 - 59), then principal at Mexico Academy, Mexico, New York.

In 1861 he resigned to raise the New York Volunteers, of which he was captain. He was severely wounded at the battle of Seven Pines, Fairoaks, Virginia, and his life hung in the balance for weeks, but in the following autumn he was well enough to become principal of the high school at Newark, New York. In 1866 he became principal of the Elmira Free Academy, where he found discipline sadly demoralized; he soon had the situation under control, however, and introduced the honor system with extraordinary success.

At Elmira he taught only science, always his favorite subject. He took careful notes of effective classroom procedure, largely abandoned use of the cumbersome textbooks of the period, and substituted outlines of his own. These developed into his famous "Fourteen Weeks" series of textbooks in the sciences, the first of which was published in 1867.

He had begun in 1871, in collaboration with his wife, to write textbooks in history, known as the Barnes Brief History Series, the most popular of which was A Brief History of the United States for Schools (1871).

No authors' names appeared on the history textbooks until after Steele's death, since he felt that to acknowledge the authorship of books in a field not his own would injure his prestige in science. His contribution in these scientific and historical textbooks lay in his ability to present facts comprehensibly and with interest; his success is attested by the fact that five of his science textbooks and two of his histories were still in print in 1928.

He had the advantage, as he often said, of a devoted wife who assisted him from the beginning in all his writing, and who continued to revise editions after his death in 1886.

Achievements

• Joel Dorman Steele and his wife Esther were important textbook writers of their period, on subjects including American history, chemistry, human physiology, physics, astronomy, and zoology. Steele popularized science in theit textbooks (the Barnes Brief History Series) as a secondary school subject, introduced simple laboratory exercises and the study of specimens, and urged departure from memoriter recitations. In his memory she erected the Steele Memorial Library in Elmira.

Works

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  • A Popular Chemistry (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from A Popular Chemistry I sympathize with that ...)

  • Fourteen Weeks in Chemistry

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

  • Fourteen Weeks in Chemistry electronic Resource

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

  • Fourteen Weeks in Natural Philosophy / by J. Dorman Steele

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

  • A Brief History of France (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from A Brief History of France Opposite error of...)

  • Brief History of Ancient Peoples

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Fourteen Weeks in Human Physiology

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • A Brief History of Ancient, Mediæval, and Modern Peoples: With Some Account of Their Monuments, Institutions, Arts, Manners and Customs

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Fourteen Weeks in Zoology

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Fourteen Weeks Course in Descriptive Astronomy

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Brief history of Greece : with readings from prominent Greek historians

    (Brief history of Greece : with readings from prominent Gr...)

  • A Brief History of the United States

    (HardPress Classic Books Series)

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  • book

Religion

He was all his life profoundly religious.

Views

Quotations: "I had become convinced, " he said, "that the germinal idea of discipline was self-control; and that the true aim of the schoolmaster was not to teach the pupil how to be governed by another, but how to govern himself".

Connections

His marriage on July 7, 1859, to Esther Baker, teacher of music at the academy, daughter of the Rev. Gardner Baker, proved one of rare intellectual and spiritual companionship.

Father:

Allen Steele

Mother:

Sabra (Dorman) Steele

Wife:

Esther Baker

Friend:

Alfred Cutler Barnes

References

• STEELE FAMILY, GENEALOGICAL HISTORY OF JOHN & GEORGE STEELE (SETTLERS OF HARTFORD, CT, (1635-6) & THEIR DESCENDANTS
• Joel Dorman Steele: Teacher and Author (Classic Reprint)
• Joel Dorman Steele, Teacher and Author;
• Seventy-five years of book publishing, 1838-1913