The Practical Infant Teacher - Vol I-V Plus Supplementary Volume

The Practical Infant Teacher – Vols I–V plus Supplementary Volume (1929)
By P. B. Ballard | New Era Publishing
ISBN: none (too early for numbers, absolutely on time for stern pedagogy)
Condition: Good (with two slightly wobbly soldiers)
Offered by: Crappy Old Books

Note, whilst these are a set, some of them are taller than others indicating they originate from different editions or print runs, but its not a massive difference, just a few mm or a cm.

At last, the complete toolkit for educating very small children as if the year will always be 1929.

This is The Practical Infant Teacher, a full set: Volumes I–V plus the Supplementary Volume, written by P. B. Ballard, a person who clearly believed that tiny humans could and should be organized, directed and intellectually cultivated with military precision and a blackboard.

If you’ve ever wondered how early-20th-century teachers were trained to wrangle thirty under-fives armed with slate pencils and unprocessed energy, this is your time machine.

What’s inside (besides quiet educational terror)

Across the volumes you can expect:

• Detailed guidance on how to teach reading, number, nature study, songs, stories and “sense training” to infants who would probably rather be licking the furniture.

• Lesson structures, classroom layouts, and the sort of earnest teaching methods that assume children respond best to order, rhythm and carefully planned activities—and not once to iPads.

• Strong opinions on character formation, discipline, and how to turn small chaos-gremlins into respectable citizens, one carefully staged activity at a time.

• The Supplementary Volume: more material, extra lessons, refinements, and probably some gently exasperated updates from the front lines of the classroom.

It’s a complete snapshot of how a serious educator in 1930 thought infant teaching should be done: practical, methodical, and deeply convinced this is all very important indeed.

The physical situation (aka: Condition Report)

This is a full set, and as such, behaves like a small faculty:

• Overall condition: Good – absolutely suitable for reference and actual use, not just shelf decoration.

• Volumes II and III:

  • Have very loose bindings.

  • They are still intact and usable, but you will want to handle them with the same respectful caution you might offer a senior staff member who’s seen too much.

  • Volume II has two loose pages – they are present, just no longer firmly welded to the binding. Think of them as “consultants”: attached to the project, not the structure.

• The other volumes (I, IV, V and the Supplementary) are all in very good condition – remarkably tidy for books that may have lived through real classrooms, colleges, staffrooms and at least one cupboard of forgotten teaching resources.

As a set, they are quite sufficient for reference and use. You can read them, consult them, and even leave them open on a desk without them bursting into confetti.

The vibe

Open any volume and you’re immediately in:

• A world of infant schools with polished floors, wall charts, and children in sturdy shoes.

• Teacher training colleges where people say “the Infant Room” with the mix of dread and devotion usually reserved for active volcanoes.

• A mindset that believes structure + repetition + purposeful activity can conquer almost anything, including four-year-olds.

The language is earnest, formal and wonderfully confident. Nobody is hedging anything with “maybe” or “kind of”. This is Practical Method, capital P, capital M.

Why you might actually want this set

• You’re a historian of education, early years specialist, or general pedagogy nerd who wants primary-source insight into infant teaching between the wars.

• You collect old teaching manuals and like to occasionally open one and think: “Good grief, they really did it like this.”

• You’re charmed (or lightly horrified) by the contrast between 1929 infant training and modern early-years practice, where we now pretend we’re not slightly outnumbered.

• You simply enjoy beautifully serious multi-volume works that take their subject – in this case, the education of very small people – extraordinarily seriously.

Condition vs. Function

• If you want sealed, immaculate objects to be admired but never opened, this is not that.

• If you want working tools, historically fascinating and entirely readable, with only a couple of volumes needing a gentle hand, this is exactly the right level of imperfectly perfect.

Volumes II and III say:

“Treat us gently and we will still teach you things.”

The rest of the set says:

“We are prepared, indexed, and quietly confident we could run an infant classroom if required.”

Ideal for:

• Educationalists, historians, and vintage teaching enthusiasts.

• Anyone building a collection on childhood, schooling, or teacher training.

• People who find it darkly amusing that something called The Practical Infant Teacher—a full, serious 1930s training suite—is being sold by Crappy Old Books.

Respectfully supplied by Crappy Old Books, where the pedagogy is old-school, the set is complete, a couple of bindings are hanging on by sheer professional commitment, and the whole lot is still perfectly ready for reference, research, or sheer fascinated browsing.

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