Vocal school

The school children recited ("blabbed") their lessons out loud separately or in chorus with others as a method of learning.

[9] The schooling consisted of a teacher, with perhaps one or two books, speaking a short oral lesson and the schoolchildren reciting it back in a loud voice several times until memorized.

The very name suggests that, if anything, most observers found this mode of teaching slightly ridiculous and harbored doubts about its efficacy.

[14] Often, teachers would patrol their classrooms during recitation with a wooden switch or paddle and use it on any child not deemed to be repeating loudly enough.

[15][16] U.S. president Abraham Lincoln learned the alphabet and other basic subjects when he attended a vocal school in his youth.

[21] Another of Lincoln's teachers was Azel Waters Dorsey (1784–1858), who taught him for 6 months in 1824 in a blab school in Spencer County, Indiana.

[24] Lincoln was noted for shouting out his reading lesson on the path from his home to the blab school and could be heard for a considerable distance.

[24][27] Many times the blab school Lincoln attended did not even have a teacher; instead, the older, more advanced students, often teenagers, taught the younger children.