NOAH WEBSTER 1. WHO WAS NOAH WEBSTER?

Noah Webster (1758-1843) wore many hats during the course of his life: lexicographer, educator, author, publisher, editor, lawyer, and political commentator. However the most remarkable aspect of his figure is without doubt the fact that he is considered one of the so-called Founding Fathers that struggled for the independence of the American nation. Noahs contribution to the founding of America consisted mainly on promoting an American language, totally independent from the British English. Until that moment, in America lived together different dialects of German, English, or French and the idea of a united and unified nation led him to create an American standard in order to get a unified and a free nation not dependent of Great Britain. He has been considered also the father of the early American education and the father of the American dictionary as well as a real American hero. Noah Webster was born at West Hartford, Connecticut, in 1758. At that time few people went to college, but Noah loved to learn so his parents let him to go Yale, Connecticuts only college. In 1774, he had to interrupt his studies to serve briefly in the U.S. War of Independence, and was graduated in 1778. When he came back home he found his family needed help, so he took a job teaching school in order to earn money to support them.

When he was a schoolmaster in Hartford, he lived with a judge who had a large library. He was able to study law using the judge's books. He became a lawyer, but what he really wanted to do was to teach others. While teaching in Goshen, Webster became dissatisfied with texts for children because from his point of view ignored the American culture. He thought that the schools should teach from American, not British, textbooks. His youth coincided with the years of the revolution and the patriotism and the ideas of independence and liberty led him to struggle for the cultural independence for America. It was then when he began his lifelong efforts to promote a distinctively American education as well as a distinctively American language.

2. DEFINING NOAH WEBSTER

The lacked of American books was considered by Webster an inexcusable defect in schools, above all since the revolution. The collections which were then used consist on essays that respect foreign and ancient nations. The youth was taught the history of Greece, Rome or Great Britain, and Webster stated that these topics were neither interesting nor useful to children. What he was seeking was that an American child was acquainted with the history of his own country and was taught

to appreciate not only liberty but also those men who he considered illustrious heroes and statesmen of the revolution. To get this purpose he defended the use of proper books that furnish children with ideas that would be useful to them in life. He maintained that a proper school book for an American child should contain a selection of essays, respecting the settlement and geography of America; the history of the late revolution and of the most remarkable characters and events that distinguished it, and a compendium of the principles of the federal and provincial governments. Further, Webster shared with Montesquieu the idea that the laws of education ought to be relative to the principles of the government". For him this meant that in a republican government where people should govern themselves, knowledge should be universally diffused. He championed the equality of people so he disliked the educational system of some monarchical states where, according to him, the education was adapted to the rank of each class of citizens. Webster was convinced that education and information provided people from liberty and independence and make them qualified to govern themselves in agreement with the ideas of a republic. According to Noah that was the reason why despotism rejects the education for the yeomanry. The diffusion of the knowledge he defended was not merely a knowledge of spelling books or The New Testament but was also an acquaintance with ethics, and with the general principles of law, commerce, money and government that were so necessary for the people of a republican state.

In agreement with Websters point of view, every small district should be furnished with a school, at least four months in a year; when boys are not otherwise employed. The school should be kept by the most reputable and well informed man in the district. There children should be taught the usual branches of learning: submission to superiors and to laws; the moral or social duties; the history and transactions of their own country; the principles of liberty and government. Further, at schools the principles of virtue and good behaviour should be inculcated. Noah stated that the virtues of men are of more important to society than their abilities and that was the reason why he thought that the heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head. Such was the general system of education which Noah defended and that according to him deserve the first attention of American patriots; and what is more, he felt that America afforded the best opportunities for making the experiment and success.

2.2.

His

contribution

to

the

American

culture

2.2.1. AN APPROPRIATE BOOK FOR THE NEW EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

for a powerful central government and an increased sense of nationalism, believing that only a strong union could insure liberty. Parts two and three of his Institute were a grammar and a reader. The former appeared in 1784 and was based on Webster's principle that "grammar is formed on language, and not language on grammar", and the latter appeared in 1785 and consisted mainly of American selections chosen to promote democratic ideals and responsible moral and political conduct. Those books were completing his plan for the improvement of American education. The book has never been out of print. The large sales of his books led him to campaign for a uniform Federal copyright law to protect authors. Webster sent letters to various state legislatures and travelled widely, claiming uniform copyright laws and teaching and lecturing to help support himself. 2.2.2. WORKING FOR AN AMERICAN LANGUAGE Another relevant part of his work, maybe the most, was without any doubt his dictionaries. When Noah was 43, he started writing the first American dictionary. He did this because Americans from different parts of the country spelled, pronounced and used words differently. He thought that all Americans should speak the same way since he considered this another step to unity and thus to independence. He also thought that Americans should not speak and spell just like the British English. In 1806 Webster published his Compendious Dictionary of the English Language. Though it was no more than a preparation for his later dictionary, it contained a number of innovations,
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including perhaps the first separation of i and j, and of u and v, as alphabetical entities, or the introduction of some words very used in America but not listened in any other dictionary. Then he started work on his American Dictionary of the English language. The first edition was published in two volumes in 1828, and it was characterized by its "Americanisms," its unconventional preferences in spelling, its inclusion of non literary words, particularly technical terms from the arts and sciences and its tendency to advocate U.S. rather than British usage and spelling. With regard to the spelling, Noah used American spellings like "color" instead of the English "colour" and "music" instead of "musick" or plow instead of plough. He tried to make other spelling changes like wimmen for women or tung for tongue, but these were not accepted by people. Further, he also added American words that weren't in English dictionaries like "skunk" and "squash". 2.3. Political and religious view separation

between church and state:

When talking of Webster contribution to the founding of America, it is essential to take into account his religious conversion since it influenced the American nation from colonial times to today. Noah Webster was characterized during all his life for his political and religious conservatism. But his biographers have noted that there was an evolution in his political thought due to

his religious conversion, at least respecting to his opinion as to the separation between church and state. 2.3.1. AS A SEPARATIONIST In his earlier years and coinciding with which the historians have agreed to call the founding period, Noah was a radical federalist and a real defender of the separation between church and state. In his youth he believed in a strong central government, the elimination of class distinctions, and the disestablishment of religion. He was convinced that whatever establishment prescribed by humanity was an insult to the spirit of the Christianity, although this establishment was a system based on religious principles. He felt that an established church would only improve jalousies and this would fill the Christian world with rancour and animosity. Noah summarized this idea in his sentence: that civil magistrate, who ventures in the least punctilio to abridge a man's liberty of thinking or worshipping according to the dictates of conscience, encroaches upon the prerogatives of heaven, and impiously attempts to wrest the sceptre view. Circa 1783 he started to consider the two institutions, state and church, two different and independent powers. The former dealt with the temporal happiness of man, the latter with his spiritual redemption. Both of them were necessary for the utopia but they could not be reconciled, to attempt to do so, he believed, was to attempt to mix oil with water. from the hands of Jehovah" (Noah Webster: Schoolmaster to America, p. 48). This was at least his earliest

In these years, the biblical content of his speller-book was far less than in other previous spellers. According to him, an excessive use of the Bible was not only a profanation of the sacred word and the Divine truth, but also prejudicial to children since the Bible did not provided them from a proper knowledge of the modern manners of writing and words. 2.3.2. RELIGIOUS CONVERSION His biographers set the date of his conversion circa 1801. In these years he seems to show sympathy for an alliance between church and state. Consequently, the amount of the biblical material started to increase as in his reader as in his speller book. His writings in these years suggest the idea that the Christian religion was essential for the survival of the American nation. The most conservative sector publications borrowed a huge amount of Noahs works from this period. In these second period of his life Noah Webster also wrote a very representative work that shows how strong was his conversion; it was his translation of the Holy Bible The Holy Bible ... with Amendments to the Language (1833), maybe this work is not so widely known as his dictionaries, but the reason can be the huge popularity of the ancient version of the King James.

3. CONCLUSION
From my point of view, Noah Webster has given to America a great part of his identity by means of his language reform. For a country, a uniform language is essential to get the unity and
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above all, the independence, and as I see it, the strong nationalism that characterized today many people in United Stated springs from people like Noah Webster. Personally, I completely agree with Webster when he says that language must be based on living, spoken language rather than on artificial rules, because at long last are we, common people, who use the language. However, I disagree with Webster in his late idea of an education based on the precepts of Christianity. In the society there are people that share a religious feeling and people who do not and therefore state can not force these later to know and share these feelings. Further, I strongly believe education can not be based on feelings but on solid and objective values.