(Excerpt from Lecture on Failures in Teaching: Delivered B...)
Excerpt from Lecture on Failures in Teaching: Delivered Before the American Institute of Instruction, at Bangor, Maine, August, 1848 The present edition Contains Various improvements, and places the Count's works at a mod (crate price. See third page of cover. 1898. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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John Kingsbury was born on May 26, 1801 in South Coventry, Connecticut, United States. He was the son of a farmer, John Kingsbury, and Dorothy Leavens, daughter of Benjamin Leavens of Killingly, Rhode Island. On his father's side he was descended from Henry Kingsbury who, with his wife, Susan, emigrated to Massachusetts in 1630.
Until John was twenty years old he worked on the farm, attending winter sessions of the district school as pupil to the age of fifteen, and then for four years serving as teacher in his own or a neighboring district. Having prepared himself in the classics under Reverend Chauncey Booth of South Coventry, Connecticut, he entered Brown University in 1822, still teaching part of the year to pay expenses. In 1826 he graduated, ranking second in his class.
About 1826 Kingsbury joined G. A. Dewitt in conducting the Providence high school (a private venture), and two years later he opened a department for girls, which soon became a separate young ladies' high school, startlingly novel in every feature. Its room had papered walls, carpeted floor, comfortable chairs, desks covered with broadcloth; instead of six annual holidays it had a four-weeks' vacation; tuition was fifty dollars a year; pupils were courteously treated, corrected for faults in manners, dismissed with curtsies on the one side and bows on the other. There softness ended, however: a weekly certificate of scholarship and behavior and a system of honors and rewards secured regular attendance, punctuality, and a wholesome rivalry in excellence; and the curriculum included no "showy and superficial accomplishments, " but thorough drill in Latin, algebra, geometry, several natural sciences, and "the higher English branches. " Doubt and ridicule had no effect upon Kingsbury's reasoned proceedings; shouts of "There goes the man who is teaching the girls Latin" left him unperturbed. The school was soon full, drew visitors from near and far, and in time could easily have doubled its size; it never received more than forty-three, even after occupying a fine new building in 1848.
In 1830 he was among the founders of the American Institute of Instruction, and was for many years an officer and councilor, serving as president from 1855 to 1857. His Lecture on Failures in Teaching (1848), an address delivered before the Institute, at Bangor, Maine, in August 1848, is a singularly clear and sane analysis of what goes to make a good school and a good teacher. The degree of illiteracy and of prejudice against free public schools, especially in rural parts of Rhode Island, was a subject of serious concern.
The Rhode Island Institute of Instruction, founded 1845, undertook to secure cooperation in every community for putting into force a new system of public instruction just authorized by the state. Kingsbury was its most active founder and for the first eleven years its president. Upon him fell the task of raising funds and securing speakers to win popular approval of the schools. His year of service as commissioner of public instruction (1857 - 1858) was a fitting culmination of these labors; his tour of inspection included every school; he investigated, consulted, made practical suggestions, and bade the workers go on "with steady courage and cheerful hearts". His constant insistence upon high moral character in teachers, and his own rare firmness, patience, and self-control were altogether in keeping with this article of faith.
In many kindred ways Kingsbury served his generation: as teacher of a young men's Bible class, beginning when Sunday schools were a novelty; mover for a new church (the Central Congregational) in a growing part of Providence and collector of funds to build it; member of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions; distributor of Bibles to the poor of Rhode Island; raiser of endowment to finance President Wayland's "New System" of education at Brown University; officer of the Rhode Island Alpha of Phi Beta Kappa for seventeen years; trustee for twenty years of the Butler Hospital for the Insane; trustee, fellow, and secretary of the corporation of Brown University. For the last fifteen years of his life, he was president of the Washington Insurance Company in Providence.
Kingsbury helped to originate and direct public movements for better education. During his administration, Providence high school educated more than five hundred young women, some of them from distant places. He played the key role in founding the American Institute of Instruction and The Rhode Island Institute of Instruction.
(Excerpt from Lecture on Failures in Teaching: Delivered B...)
Quotations: "The welfare of children should never be weighed in the scales of pecuniary gain or loss. There is something infinitely higher and better than money--and that is character. "
Kingsbury was a president of the Franklin Society.
Kingsbury married Mary Mackie Burgess on August 19, 1834. They had three daughters.
