Rewards of merit

Historical/Biographical Note

Historical/Biographical Note

The reward of merit is a small piece of paper given to school children for good behavior. Usually it features a pleasant image; whether decorated by hand, with watercolors, or chromolithography. The cards were used to commend regular attendance, exemplary deportment, studiousness and more. The practice of giving motivational rewards of merit to school children originated in America at the turn of the nineteenth century, and was practiced into the early twentieth; the decades which saw printer matter come into ubiquity.

Early on, teachers would hand-decorate tokens, sometimes awarding samples of their own calligraphy, but by the 1850s it had become more usual to purchase sheets of pre-fabricated rewards from local stationers. These had dotted lines for names and dates and almost always carried the headline “Reward of Merit”. As Maurice Rickards points out in Encyclopedia of Ephemera, “Reward-of-merit cards were a major sideline for the chromolithography industry; many commercial trade cards and personal calling card blanks required no greater adaption than the addition of the words 'Reward of Merit' in place of a name. The rewards of merit therefore reveal much about the printing industry, about its art, its audience, and its makers.

Alongside progress in printing was progress in education, as attendance laws began to mandate that children attend school regularly. Now faced with larger classrooms, some teachers sought effective means to motivate their students without copious physical discipline. Rewards of merit were a useful and inexpensive option. Especially in the early decades of the nineteenth century, poor and Puritanical homes tended to be free of decoration, and for this reason the vivid drawings on rewards of merit were highly desirable to children. Rewards of merit were also apt vehicles for moral messages: many carry biblical verses which were meant to be memorized and recited, and others have religious messages such as “Look to Jesus” or “Be kindly affectioned to one another”. Some rewards depict children roaming through graveyards; a scene intended to nudge pupils into mentally preparing for an early death. These and others were used in American Sunday schools.

In addition to bearing attractive pictures and moral messages, the reward of merit also functions as a receipt. It is proof that a student went to school for a time: something that made families proud. Perhaps this is why so many have survived for our examination.

Sources

Fenn, P., & Malpa, A. P. (1994). Rewards of merit: Tokens of a child's progress and a teacher's esteem as an enduring aspect of American religious and secular education. Schoharie, NY: Ephemera Society of America.
Hudson, G. S. (2008). The design & printing of ephemera in Britain & America, 1720-1920. London: British Library.
Johnson, H. E. (1925). Old Time Rewards of Merit. Old Time New England, 16(1), 41st ser., 11-17.
Pierce, S., Slautterback, C., & Barnhill, G. B. (1997). Early American lithography: Images to 1830. Boston, MA: Boston Athenaeum.
Rickards, M., Twyman, M., Beaumont, S. D., & Tanner, A. (2000). Reward of merit. In The encyclopedia of ephemera: A guide to the fragmentary documents of everyday life for the collector, curator, and historian (pp. 271-273). New York: Routledge.