A-b-c-darian

A-B-C-darians, ABC-darians, or abecedarians were the youngest students (then called scholars) in the typical one-room school of 19th-century America, so-called because they were just learning their "a-b-cs". It could also refer to someone teaching the alphabet.

In his autobiographical reminiscences on his school days, Warren Burton recounted that he "was three years and a half old when I first entered the Old School-house as an abecedarian". Many young children were simply sent along with other siblings in order to get them out of their mothers' way.Noah Webster's early school dictionary contains the following entry for abecedarian: A-be-ce-da'-ri-an, n. One who teaches or is learning the alphabet.

In the district schools of the early 19th century, the youngest scholars were seated on the front benches in a room that typically had floors that sloped up from the center on three sides like a small amphitheater. The entrance door(s) and the teacher's desk were located on the unsloped side. The desks accommodated two or more scholars and were arranged up the ramps around a center space, the front of each desk providing the seat for the desk before it, with the front rows consisting only of the benches attached to the desks of the second row where the youngest children sat.Samuel Griswold Goodrich (a.k.a. "Peter Parley") attended a district school around 1810 in which "The larger scholars were ranged on the outer sides, at the desks; the smaller fry of a-b-c-darians were seated in the center". Warren Burton also noted that "next to the spelling floor, were low, narrow seats for abecedarians and others near that rank. In general, the older the scholar the further from the front was his location".

A-b-c-darians in unreformed schools were drilled in their letters two or three times a day, then spent the rest of the school day on their own trying to recall the names of letters, and probably watching the recitations of older scholars who were called to the middle of the room to show what they had learned for the schoolmaster. Educator William Augustus Mowry recalled that "I was sent to the old brick schoolhouse when I was four years old. Two or three others entered school at the same A-B-C time. We sat on the low seat facing the open Class floor—the boys on one side and the girls on the other. We had nothing to do but to look on and thus cultivate our powers of observation. With all the classes of an ungraded school to teach, of course the teacher could give but a few minutes to the three A-B-C darians, who had just entered the school. Twice a day we were called up and took our places at the teacher's knee. Here we received our first lessons in learning to read; and this reading lesson of five minutes in the forenoon and five minutes in the afternoon was all we had to do".

...
Wikipedia