Hall’s psychological theories linked biology with social organization in ways that implicated women’s bodies in “natural” relationships between the home, school, and church as part of a divine unity: “…we shall never know the true key to her nature until we understand, how the nest and cradle are larger wombs; the home, a larger nest; the tribe, state, church and school, larger homes and irradiations from it” (Hall, 1904, p. 2). Like Dewey and Huey (1909), Hall criticized the emphasis schools placed on teaching through pencil and paper tasks and not through the “ear,” feeling that eyes could deteriorate and ears lose their receptive faculties without “moral and objective work, more stories, narratives, and even vivid readings” (Hall, 1904, p. 21). He analysed the normalcy of children through their stated reading preferences and the amount they read, careful to divide and compare boys to girls in ways that both assumed and reinforced theories of biologic essentialism that held that sex differences in boys and girls’ were natural and consistent across cultures, and that boys’ and girls’ reading practices differed as a result of their biological differences. In spite of his warnings about excesses in reading which lead to “burn out of their fires wickedly early” (p. 29), Hall nevertheless recommended domestic literacy practices embedded in the culture of the middle-class home, that would be reproduced in literacy advice for the next century:

Every youth should have his or her own library, which, however small, should be select. To seal some knowledge of their content with the delightful sense of ownership helps to preserve the apparatus of culture, keeps green early memories, or makes one of the best tangible mementoes of parental care and love. (Hall, 1904, p. 29)

Edmund Huey, a philosopher and psychologist and colleague of John Dewey, built on the ideals of progressive education and the growing importance placed on reading in shaping children’s childhood experiences. The Psychology of Reading (1909) was a breakthrough in research at the time, grounded in painstaking observation of the detriments to children’s bodies of the highly disciplined and repetitive lessons that structured formal literacy instruction in schools. However, his research findings suggesting the need for child-centred teaching methods were as embedded in the habitus of Anglo-Saxon, middle-class domesticity as they were empirical. He cited the domestic literacy management skills of a “Mrs. E.W. Scripture,” as emblematic of appropriate reading pedagogy in the home. These practices involved labeling household objects, decorating the walls with posters and written descriptions, answering children’s questions about the print in their environment (without drawing undo attention to the letters and syllables), and providing letter blocks to play with (1909, pp. 315–318). In this way, argued Huey, children would learn their letters, and learn to read many words with much less pain and suffering than they experience with the phonics methods in school that devoid print of its meaning in children’s worlds: