{"id":388,"date":"2014-04-04T18:44:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-04T18:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stampingamericanmemory.org\/?page_id=388"},"modified":"2014-04-04T18:44:00","modified_gmt":"2014-04-04T18:44:00","slug":"philately-in-schools","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/stampingamericanmemory.org\/2014version\/learning-to-read-stamps\/philately-in-schools\/","title":{"rendered":"Philately in the Classroom"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the turn of the century, Burk\u2019s research and philatelists encouraged teachers to incorporate stamp collecting into classroom activities. Stamps appealed to educators because of their availability, color, and imagery printed from around the world. Teachers in New York public schools encouraged their students to collect stamps as early as 1885 because, teachers remarked their students learned facts about foreign countries as easily as they learned the rules of marbles. A principal in Chicago observed that all of his best students collected stamps and believed stamp collecting led to improved academic achievement in high school. Teaching geography with stamps continued for decades, and sometimes journalists teased that \u201cHobbies Solve Teachers\u2019 Problems Nowadays.\u201d ((R. L. Payne, \u201cHow Shall We Keep the Young People Interested in Philately?,\u201d The Philatelic West<\/em> 7, no. 2 (August 1898): 27\u20138; \u201cThe Public-School Museums of Belgium,\u201d Harper\u2019s Weekly<\/em>, August 13, 1881, 558; \u201cA Royal Road to Learning,\u201d Chicago Daily Tribune<\/em>, August 9, 1885, 20.; and \u201cSchool Stamp Exhibit Shown,\u201d Los Angeles Times<\/em>, August 7, 1932, sec. A, 1.) Far from solving problems teachers faced in their classrooms, stamps were adopted as pedagogical tools to help students learn about geo-political boundaries and difference from the 1880s through the 1930s.<\/p>\n

Some philatelists viewed international stamps as visual press releases of changes in governance and believed in the power of a stamp to relay that information: \u201cUpon the simple postage stamp can be studied the rise, decline, and fall of empires, kingdoms, and republics.\u201d ((\u201cTaught by a Stamp,\u201d Chicago Daily Tribune<\/em>, August 26, 1894, 27.)) Stamps illustrated who was in power, but stamps alone could not challenge readers to investigate complicated stories behind the changes in empires, kingdoms, and republics, or why empires expanded. Teachers could, however, ask students to look at a stamp and then find its country of origin on a map. Mary Branch\u2019s poem offered anecdotal evidence that stamp collecting successfully taught world geography.<\/p>\n

Three months ago he did not know
\nHis lesson in geography;
\nThough he could spell and read quite well,
\nAnd cipher, too, he could not tell
\nThe least thing in topography.<\/p>\n

But what a change! How passing strange!
\nThis stamp-collecting passion
\nHas roused his zeal, for woe or weal,
\nAnd lists of names he now can reel
\nOff in amazing fashion.<\/p>\n

\u2026And now he longs for more Hong Kongs,
\nA Rampour, a Mauritius,
\nGreece, Borneo, Fernando Po,–
\nAnd how much else no one can know;
\nBut be, kind fates, propitious. ((Mary L. B. Branch, \u201cThe Little Stamp-Collector (poem),\u201d St. Nicholas, An Illustrated Magazine for Young Folks<\/em> 12, no. 10 (August 1885): 732. This poem was reprinted in Washington Post<\/em>, November 11, 1888.))<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The type of knowledge gleaned from stamps reflected a style of history and geography commonly taught in schools in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century that rewarded rote memorization of \u201cfacts\u201d such as political leaders or world capitals. Philatelists taught that to understand and classify stamps properly, collectors must know “where each stamp-issuing country is located, and by what government it is ruled.\u201d Mary Branch observed that students learned basic information about a country. Students learned to see that stamps represented nations and highlighted geo-political differences among them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the turn of the century, Burk\u2019s research and philatelists encouraged teachers to incorporate stamp collecting into classroom activities. Stamps appealed to educators because of their availability, color, and imagery printed from around the world. Teachers in New York public schools encouraged their students to collect stamps as early as 1885 because, teachers remarked their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":370,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-388","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stampingamericanmemory.org\/2014version\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stampingamericanmemory.org\/2014version\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stampingamericanmemory.org\/2014version\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stampingamericanmemory.org\/2014version\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stampingamericanmemory.org\/2014version\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stampingamericanmemory.org\/2014version\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/388\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stampingamericanmemory.org\/2014version\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stampingamericanmemory.org\/2014version\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}