Chapter II
It can be difficult to differentiate between historical and
ideological investigations, but such a distinction is made in
this survey. Historical investigations include studies which
have no express ideological aims and which explicitly apply
historical viewpoints of a fundamentally different nature. In
addition, the source material must consist of books that are
historical in the sense that they are no longer in use, or of
such books compared with titles in use when the
investigations were carried out. Consequently, historical
investigations may include monographs, biographies, general
genre histories, or histories of particular subjects or
disciplines insofar as these may be gleaned from the books.
There are few comprehensive studies of individual works.
Any individual books that have received much attention have
nearly always been titles that have dominated their times.
They might be readers such as P.A. Jensen's or Nordahl
Rolfsen's (Sanderud 1951, Sletvold 1971) in Norway, classics
such as Noah Webster's dictionaries and language books
(Johnson 1904, Carpenter 1963) in the USA, standard works
such as von Rochow's Der Kinderfreund (Tischer 1970) in
Germany, or readers like Bruno's (Maingueneau 1979) or
historical works such as Lavisse's (Nora 1962) in France.
Common to all of these titles is that they are included in
comprehensive, general studies. This is not a question of
monographs. Books about individual authors and their works
exist only as exceptions. One example is McGuffey and his
readers, which dominated the US school system for more than
a century (Vail 1911, Minnich 1936).
Other prominent series of readers have also been analyzed
over a period of time - based on the readers' degree of
readability. The authors investigate how this changes with
new editions and new editors. When an individual work is
discussed in the literature on textbooks, the point of
departure is usually more educational or philosophical than
historical or biographical. Characteristically, the only large-
scale monograph about a single textbook title that I have
come across concerns Selma Lagerlöf's geographical reader,
the tale of Nils Holgersson (Ahlström 1942). This story is
mostly fiction, and it acquired a significant reading public
outside of the school as well. One thorough monograph,
although on a more modest scale, is Lars Furuland's analysis
of The Primary School Reader (Furuland 1987, see page 241).
In France there is a rare example of constructive textbook
criticism - with an historical perspective - based on a
particular work. G. Bruno's reader, originally published in
1877, was called Le tour de France par deux enfants and
dominated the market throughout three genera-tions. Both
the protagonists were boys. In 1978-79 Anne Pons published
Le tour de France par Camille et Paul, deux enfants
d'aujourd'hui. Pons follows in Bruno's footsteps
geographically, but challenges what she regards as prejudices.
Just as a curiosity, I might mention that Munksgaard, the
Danish publisher, has chosen to include some facsimiles of
old school books in their history book series for primary and
lower secondary schools. The facsi-miles are to be used as a
basis for exercises in which pupils are asked to evaluate
language and presentation (Holm 1986).
The two most comprehensive studies of Swedish and
Danish history instruction (Andolf 1972, Møller 1986) do not
concede the authors/works that have dominated the classroom
(Pallin, Schotte and Munch) a correspondingly dominant
position.
There is a remarkable lack of comprehensive, independent
historical analyses of individual titles or authorships. There
may be several explanations for this. Perhaps investigators
have been restricted by a tradition that limits such
comprehensive individual commentary to fiction. Or perhaps
the primary, but less than flattering, explanation is that
individual textbooks do not constitute a sufficiently rich or
distinctive material for it to be natural to undertake more
extensive analyses. In any case, the fact that no individual
textbook has been found worthy of analysis on a higher level
may be seen as a symptom of low literary status. The view
that there is no analytical apparatus capable of dealing with
individual works must be seen against this background.
Strictly speaking, however, such a model was proposed in Lee
J. Cron-bach's work already in 1955 (Cronbach 1955).
One of the few exceptions is Turid Henriksen's study of
the development of foreign language education in Norway
(Henriksen 1989), which is specifically based on an analysis
of Sigurd and Gunnar Høst's French books through three
generations. The analysis addresses the special literary and
subject didactic characteristics of the books and looks at their
contents in relation to social development and production
conditions. In principle, this is an approach that saw a
breakthrough in a number of literary communities in the late
1960s.
The history of textbooks themselves, i.e., the story of what
they have contained and of how they have been put together
and looked at various times - of their distinct literary
character - is a rare phenomenon, limited in most countries
to the history of readers.
As mentioned, however, there is a limited tradition in the
USA (Johnson 1904, Nietz 1961, Carpenter 1963). Ian
Westbury has outlined how Comenius' textbook from 1658,
Orbis Sensualium Pictus, has been normative for the
formulation of Latin textbooks in the USA right up to our
own time (Westbury 1982). In Denmark, Gyldendal published
a book to commemorate its 200th anniversary of textbook
publication, which contained four historical essays that
presented more than 130 titles in chronological order
(Skovgaard-Petersen 1970). Harald L. Tveterås made a major
contribution in Norway when he wrote almost 100 pages
about the textbooks published by Cappelen throughout a
period of nearly 150 years (Tveterås 1979). The titles are
systematically arranged by subject and presented
chronologically. The book includes information about the
authors and provides some background information, placing
the various titles within the context of both cultural and
publishing house policy. The work is one of a kind in
Norway. Even though the book deals with the country's oldest
and for quite some time largest textbook publisher, its
significance is limited because of this relationship.
If we include literature on the history of textbook
production and textbook policies in this group, the USA
stands out for having independent and relatively old
traditions. In 1931, The National Society for the Study of
Education published a book devoted to the textbook in
instruction (NSSE 1931). In the main, it deals with the
textbook as a moral and economic link in the societal system.
J. W. Ong has written a dissertation on the historical role
of
textbook culture in the development of the school's
transmission of knowledge (Ong 1958, mentioned here on the
basis of Westbury 1982). Ong's point of departure is the art
of book printing, and he points out how it changed the
conditions for teaching. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the
medieval processual method of learning, characterized by
dialogue and direct intellectual contact, was replaced by
(...) the mastery and memorization of the fixed
bodies of
knowledge represented in books. Ong argues that this
development, which he associates with the work of the
French scholar, Peter Ramus (1515-72), and the associated
movement of Ramism, had the effect of shifting teaching
(and intellectual work itself) away from a "person world"
(associated with voice and auditory perception) to an
"object world" (associated with visual perception). He
links the development of both "subjects", within
education and the related movement of "encyclopaedism",
and modern science, with its concern for the understanding
of an ordered "objective" universe, to this development of
the "textbook" tradition. (Westbury 1982, p. 7.)
This viewpoint is referred to here because it is unusual to
allot such an important role to textbooks in the history of
schooling, where tradition emphasizes educational philosophy,
laws, plans and/or political systems to explain fundamental
changes (Engelsen 1990). Ong's work is also unusual because
of the emphasis it attaches to textbooks' physical role.
Anthologies
If we delve deep into the educational system and far back in
time, we encounter a genre problem that also affects
registration:
It is difficult, however, and will perhaps prove impossible,
usefully to make any general distinction between works
written with a specifically pedagogical purpose and those
written for entertainment. (...) This is especially true of
stories and verse written for children; it is also true of
anthologies, from which it can be more concisely
illustrated. A group of 27 eighteenth-century anthologies,
inspected at random, ranges from collect-ions made
without stated pedagogical intent to those which are
offered as school texts. (Michael 1979, p. 202.)
Books devoted to the history of genres are extremely rare.
Such books might very likely represent a valuable approach
in some subjects. In his book about mother tongue instruction
in England, David Shayer looks at the selection of literature,
mainly in light of the traditional conflict between classical
and contemporary literature (Shayer 1972). He also calls for
an evaluation of the relationship between fiction and non-
fiction in the selections (pp. 171-179). He does not go into the
anthology as a genre in that context. Nevertheless, he asks
whether the selection of literature can be influenced by
tradition; whether the anthology as a genre helps determine
the selection, and possibly even part of the reader experience.
The grounds for claiming that genre determines content -
in the field of anthologies for example - was established by
Dora V. Smith (1933), Patrick Quéréel (1982) and Boel
Englund (1991), among others. One central issue, if this is
true, involves the relationship between an established and
vital genre tradition on one hand and new curricula (with
new objectives and revised methods) on the other.
Nick Jones has written an essay on the development of
poetry anthologies in Great Britain since the 1950s (Jones
1983). His intention was to investigate how the selection of
contemporary poetry has changed in recent decades. His focus
is the "pattern of values with which each anthology is
necessarily inscribed" (p. 40). Jones systematizes the material
with the help of an anthology typology which is particularly
interesting because it includes published selections of
literature from both within and outside of the school system.
The model is composed of three groups: "First Order
anthology" is "polemical", "innovative" and "partisan"; it
is consciously exploratory and rejuvenative and can often
manifest itself in magazine form. "Second Order anthology"
is "judicial"; this is where the greats are firmly enshrined
and a few new candidates assessed. "Third Order anthology"
is school anthologies. They are
(...) almost entirely distinct from those through which the
main poetic tradition is established. A Third Order
anthology is produced by an educational publisher (Harrap,
Arnold, Murray), and is aimed directly and exclusively at
the school market. It is therefore essentially a distributive
anthology, which aims to select, from the available
tradition, a body of work conforming to the highly specific
perceived requirements of a targeted (and captive)
readership, which may be further identified by age-band
and "ability level". (P. 44.)
Rather than dividing the material into time periods, Jones
writes about the form and function of anthologies in general.
He develops this further in a later essay in which he works
out a general genre description of the school anthology (Jones
1984, pp. 69-72). Two core characteristics are the poems'
length (they are short) and the consistent recurrence of the
same poems and authors.
There is a German work which, like Jones' essays, is partly
historical and partly descriptive. It is the most thorough and
copious work on the anthology as a genre that exists in
German: Die deutschsprachige Anthologie 1-2 (Bark - Pforte
1970). This analysis, like Björck's work (see page 372),
includes all types of literary anthologies and does not single
out school anthologies. A major portion of it, however, is
Dietger Pforte's 120-page discussion of the principles for
editing anthologies. This is a profound analysis with
viewpoints that are directly applicable to school anthologies.
The study itself is also outstanding. Bark and Pforte have
registered 1998 titles, which have been systematized by
structure. Then the text selections in all the anthologies have
been systematized by theme, literary form and readership.
The latter comprises the categories profession, interest group
and age.
Together with Pforte's analysis, this survey makes up the
first volume. Volume 2 is a collection of articles. Most of the
articles have some kind of historical approach. They deal with
everything from religious anthologies to collections of
political election propaganda. One special feature is that they
include several more socio-literary contributions from
bookdealers and publishers.
Another noteworthy characteristic of the work is that one
long article deals with how anthologies were "received" by
various periodicals in the last century. Gerhard Trott writes
about the comments anthologies received during three
different periods; around 1813-1815 (during the wars of
independence against Napoleon), just before and after 1848
(the February Revolution) and around 1870-1871 (the
Franco-Prussian war) (Trott 1970). The point of departure is
that "socio-political changes in the social substance affect
production and the design of the anthology and its reception
in journalistic publications." (P. 246.) The article discusses
the reviews under the heading "Socio-political Anthologies".
But before he arrives at this point, Trott writes an
introduction: "The Anthology as an Expression of Apolitical
Awareness". Here he claims that anthologies with proclaimed
non-political goals also must be considered to be "socio-
literary objectivizations" (p. 249) of and within the society
in which they are published.
Historical anthology studies have also been conducted in
the Nordic countries. One example is Annica Danielsson's
doctoral dissertation "Three Anthologies - Three Realities"
(Danielsson 1988), which discusses the three readers that
dominated the Swedish upper secondary school from 1945 to
1975. Danielsson, too, emphasizes the question of what
national or societal image emerges from the text selections.
Like Göran Andolf and Karin Tarschys, she wishes to
illuminate several aspects of the subject's development and
therefore draws upon material from school history, school
policy, socio-literary and genre theory in her presentation.
In the first, traditional reader, which held sway until into
the 1950s, Danielsson draws attention to the same pattern of
God-fearing patriotism that Herbert Tingsten found in
history books and readers (see page 102). Then that "reality"
gave way to a more international and social-democratic
direction throughout the 1960s. In the 1970s, the leading
anthology was influenced by the consumer society and the
book itself assumed in many ways the characteristics of a
supermarket, including a hitherto unthinkable range of
literary qualities, genres, cultures and topics.
Taken to the extreme, the term anthology includes the so-
called school editions of classical and/or modern literature.
They comprise booklets or books containing texts specifically
adapted for school use. As a rule, they deal with one author;
more rarely with epochs or movements. France has especially
rich traditions in this area. Julia Lilienthal investigated a
selection of anthologies, attaching emphasis to the educational
approach to classical literature (Lilienthal 1974). Her
objective was to "reveal the general characteristics of the
genre and their literary-didactic principles" (p. 3). Lilienthal
studied extra-textual enhancements, lay-out, commentary,
evaluations and information in the form of quotations of
secondary literature, for example. She placed the greatest
emphasis on series of questions and problems. She drew
conclusions about "die pädagogische Fiction" which supports
the contention that the inclusion of fiction in a text adapted
for school use in some way or another attaches some sort of
additional authorship to the literature.
History of Particular Subjects
Textbooks play a supporting role in some studies of this type
and a main role in others. Some of the most important are
classified here according to that scale; that is, the most
textbook-oriented studies appear last.
In Karin Tarschys' comprehensive work on Swedish as a
school subject (Tarschys 1955), textbooks are little more than
a backdrop for a general briefing on official statutes,
curricula, educational policy and educational debate. In a
Norwegian thesis on the evolution of physics as a subject in
secondary schools, textbooks are dealt with in chronological
order in a separate survey chapter (Engeseth 1984). Textbooks
are less peripheral in a standard work on the teaching of
English as a foreign language, A History of English Language
Teaching (Howatt 1984). This survey covers the period from
the renaissance up to modern times. It is distinguished from
most other such studies in that it includes fairly detailed
biographies of the authors. There is one clear tendency in the
presentation which is quite common in historical surveys,
especially those involving mother tongue or foreign language
teaching: The earlier we find ourselves in history, the more
important textbooks are as primary sources. The best example
of this is Ian Michael's standard work in this field (see page
373). The further we progress into our own century, the
smaller the relative percentage of pages devoted to textbooks.
One primary reason for this is, of course, that textbooks in
the 17th and 18th centuries faced few of today's competitors
in the form of curricula, periodicals, polemical literature,
research reports, methodological guides and other printed
teaching aids. A possible contributory cause may be that
school history researchers anno 1980 do not attribute the same
importance to their own or their children's textbooks as they
do to 300-year-old books that are almost impossible to obtain.
If so, this may have a simple psychological explanation, but
it may also be an expression of the prevailing attitude - of
the age and of the academic environment - to such books.
In his treatise on history instruction in the upper secondary
school (Andolf 1972) Göran Andolf uses the same broad
variety of materials as Karin Tarschys and A.P.R. Howatt.
But whereas Tarschys consistently and Howatt increasingly
use sources other than books, Andolf's work goes a long way
in the direction of a pure textbook analysis. Approximately
four-fifths of the book deals with textbook texts and
circumstances directly affecting them.
Andolf's analysis embraces a period of 145 years (1820-
1965), Tarschys' one of over 100 years (1800-1912). Andolf
has therefore had access to an even more comprehensive
corpus than Tarschys. That books are Andolf's most
important source for the history of the discipline is also
apparent from a methodological factor. Quantitative
measurements from a number of text categories taken from
textbooks are the basis for the most important of his
conclusions.
Tarschys and Andolf undertook historical studies from
approximately the same time period and with access to the
same kinds of source material. The goals for their
investigations were also the same: to describe the subject's
contents seen in relation to the prevailing mentality at any
given time, in terms of ideology and methodology, behind
and within the subject.
In this context we are concerned with two fundamentally
different attitudes toward the relationship between textbooks
and subject (history). To the extent one can speak of
traditions in textbook research, Tarschys represents the line
that sees textbooks as important secondary sources where one
finds verification of ideas, systems and regulations. Her
paramount goal is to expose this superstructure, and her work
is largely based on sources other than textbooks. Textbooks
nevertheless acquire a central position thanks to their
exemplification or documentation function. The presentation
of the development of mother tongue instruction in Great
Britain in this century, which is most predominantly based on
textbooks, is entirely in keeping with this view. David Shayer
(Shayer 1972) writes about English teaching, particularly at
the junior and secondary level, from 1900 to 1970. His point
of departure is clear:
It would be almost impossible to determine in exact detail
(by visiting several hundred schools over whole terms) the
kind of English teaching which is going on in this country
now, in 1971; still less is it possible to say exactly what
kind of English work was going on in the nation's
classrooms in 1910, or in 1925, or throughout the decade
1900-1910. In the absence of such direct observation we
must fall back on other forms of evidence, almost wholly
of a written kind, which can provide information at
second-hand. (...) I refer to such items connected with
English teaching as method books, textbooks, examination
papers and syllabuses, Board and Ministry Reports, the
memoranda of other official and professional bodies, and
the comments and statements of informed contemporary
opinion. (P. 1.)
Shayer's study is arranged by decades. The chapters are based
partly on official statements and reports, partly on general
educational trends during the period, and partly on statements
from people who played major roles in the subject. The book
may be regarded as a long essay. It gradually becomes
apparent that the personalized model which Shayer depicts in
this way is woven through with textbook titles. But based on
the author's point of departure, the books are neither
regarded as a separate literary tradition nor as anything but
transformations of viewpoints found in method books (which
are often mentioned along with examples from textbooks).
The textbook titles are generally presented in large groups
and used as symptoms and "fair game" in the hunt for
longed-for verifications; their justification consists largely in
the fact that they are mentioned.
Göran Andolf, who completed his study 17 years after
Tarschys, but at the same time as Shayer, represents a newer
trend whereby textbooks are regarded as the most reliable
sources for learning about what thought processes and
motives have actually predominated, and about what
implications this has had for content. That, in turn, means
that content analysis is the most important means of shedding
light on the subject's ideological and methodological
development. The question of the choice and use of method
thus becomes a far more central issue for Andolf than for
Tarschys or Shayer.
In Jørgen Møller's study (Møller 1983),
the role of
textbooks as a source of information on the history of the
subject of history is as dominating as in Andolf's. Møller has:
(...) created a survey of the history books available for
upper secondary school during the past hundred years, has
noted the dissemination of the books, and has tried through
the books (in connection with approval schemes, etc.) to
form a picture of the content and character of history
teaching and history scholarship - and to note their
relationship to research. (From an introduction to the book
by Søren Kjørup, then member of the National Humanities
Research Council. (Kjørup 1983, p. 15.)
Møller's departure point is thus identical with Andolf's.
Møller divides his material into three main groups: Formalia
(laws, schemes, etc.), teaching materials (primarily textbooks)
and polemical and general literature on educational theory
(pp. 23-24). Like Andolf, Møller performed extensive
registration work. As far as methodology is concerned,
however, he differs from his predecessors in many ways (see
page 378). It might be appropriate to mention by way of
conclusion that neither of these two textbook analyses uses
the word "textbook" in their main titles. However, Andolf
mentions the word in the subtitle ("Teaching and Textbooks
1820-1965").
Andolf's subtitle could also have been applied to a large-
scale older study from the USA. Tyler Kepner's survey of
textbooks in geography and history in American schools from
1784 to 1922 is one of the rare examples of investigations that
used the books primarily to uncover trends in the
development of teaching methods (Kepner 1935):
In this survey the writer proposes (1) to trace the
interrelations between methodology and textbooks in
geography and history, (2) to describe briefly the chief
characteristics of significant textbooks, for technique
cannot safely be dissociated from organization, and (3) to
call attention by implication to those pioneers in textbook
writing whose names should be better known. (P. 143.)
Kepner believed he could decipher the shifting view of
teaching and methodology during the period. On this point
there was no complete congruence between the subjects.
Notwithstanding, there were so many common characteristics
that the classifications could be done in much the same way
in geography (the first attempts 1784-1821/ "educational"
geography 1821-1850/ "philosophical" geography 1850-
1890/ thematic and region-oriented geography 1890-1921)
and history (the first attempts 1787-1822/ "educational"
history 1822-1850/ the advent of the large series"1850-1890/
theme-oriented history books 1890-1921).
As is apparent, the classification has not been carried out
according to uniform criteria, something the author himself
points out in his discussion of the registration and selection
problem. Underway, however, Kepner gives examples of the
degree to which one can or cannot use textbooks for a subject
as a basis for drawing conclusions about the development of
education and educational philosophy. Two certain
conclusions drawn from his own investigation are: First, that
there is a mutual influence between books and methodology
and that the balance of power between them varies and,
second, that throughout the period geography books have
been far more strongly influenced than history books by
educational trends (p. 172).
Staffan Selander takes a big step further in the same
direction as Andolf, Møller and Kepner. (Selander 1988; see
page 80). In addition to sharing their view on the importance
of textbooks as sources for subject viewpoint and method, he
chooses a few books and a few passages from each of them in
order to show what changes have occurred in the course of 50
years (1925/1975). The work of Peter Damerow, who has
investigated the image of geometry as a subject, as reflected
in various textbooks from the period 1960-1980, is based on
a similar principle (Damerow 1980).Such solutions are rare
insofar as studies of the histories of particular subjects are
concerned. There are titles that discuss five to ten books, but
not two. A broader perspective is achieved if one chooses two
titles from each year, such that each pair represents two
different countries: What do they have in common and what
is different in the development of the subject in two
different countries during the period in question? Such a
study is currently underway; it concerns Swedish and French
literature anthologies for the upper secondary school level
from the 1920s and 1980s (Englund 1991).
One relatively common type of investigation involves
comparing the development of a subject, syllabuses and
curricula with the development of textbooks, with an eye to
the degree of correspondence. The 1970s saw an increase in
the criticism of textbooks in the USA, both on ideological
and educational grounds (Library of Congress 1981).
Curricula were changed in state after state. Against this
background a number of studies were undertaken in the
1980s that compared books from the 1960s with those from
the 1980s. There is an outline of a dozen such studies in
David Elliott's article "Textbooks and the Curriculum in the
Postwar Era: 1950-1980" (Elliott 1990). The investigation
focuses on books in history, social studies and mathematics.
According to Elliott, books have seldom been changed to
conform to the new intentions about fostering pupils'
independence and critical sense. To the extent that changes
have occurred, they have chiefly taken place on the technical
level.
It is evident from Elliott's outline that several such studies
have not covered more than 10 to 15 years. Some might feel
this is too short a time span. Nevertheless, it is clear that
there has been no contemporary or immediate change in the
(school) authority/subject expertise/publisher relationship.
Two recent Swedish analyses are less critical of textbooks
as literature and more directly trained in the direction of
subject history. In 1989 the Institute for Educational Text
Research at Härnösand published a special issue of the
periodical SPOV. It contains several contributions on
textbooks, two of which are devoted to the subjects
needlework for girls and nursing. In the first area three
different authors' teachers' guides, published at different
times (1892, 1919, 1932), were analyzed from a subject
history perspective (Trotzig 1989). Then, in an article on five
textbooks in nursing, the books' presentation of nutrition and
food preparation was analyzed from a corresponding
perspective (Heyman 1989).
Gerhard Meyendorf's account of the history of chemistry
books in the secondary school in Germany during the past
150 years is unique (Meyendorf 1989). The work is limited by
the fact that post-1945 textbooks from West Germany were
not examined. In other respects it is a very comprehensive
survey in which the author emphasizes the interaction
between the subject - both in and out of school - and the
books:
Through the presentation of the history of textbooks in
chemistry, other features of the history of the subject itself
emerge. This corroborates yet again the view that textbook
analyses can provide a great deal of information about the
objectives, content and form of the teaching for which
these books are intended. (P. 130.)
In Meyendorf's analysis the books are regarded as both
influenced and influencing. The venue is a process of
historical development which, in grossly simplified terms, has
gone from the lexical to the pupil-friendly ("a book for the
pupils"). Like Tarschys and Andolf, he stresses the
importance of subject didactic and methodological literature.
But Meyendorf believes that development trends can only be
explained by comparing them to social conditions and general
political development, educational philosophy, school policy
and book culture. Thus the elucidation of the history of the
subject of chemistry and of chemistry books involves a very
complex process.
One salient question, which is not discussed separately or
as a matter of principle either by Meyendorf or in other
historical investigations, is the question of textbooks'
potential for supplementing other sources and developing
general historical perspectives.
History
of Particular Disciplines
Textbooks have been used as source material for studies of
how particular disciplines have developed within a subject,
but extensive investigations are rare. There are many studies
that deal with strictly limited topics, but their objective is to
see how the topic is represented at a given point in time in
various books for the same grade level and/or to measure
what pupils retain of the material. As an example,
comprehensive measurements have been taken of what pupils
comprehend and learn on the topic of evaporation and the
water cycle as it is presented in natural science books in the
former West Germany and East Germany and Hungary
(Nestler 1990). But such comparative studies seldom have an
historical focus. The same is true of studies of history
textbooks: History studies are only based on large units, such
as whole subjects, long periods of time or large stocks of
books. Strongly delimited topics, shorter individual texts or
one title are rare in this context. However, the fact that such
approaches could actually be fruitful was demonstrated by
the science philosopher Nils Roll-Hansen in an introduction
to a reprint of G. C. Raff's Natural History for Children from
1831 (Roll-Hansen 1988). The distance from the perception
of nature in our own day is shown to be both so great and so
small that it in itself is worth examining. More important
than the cultural history dimension however, is the fact that
the text from 1831 is normative in a way that illuminates the
problem of descriptive versus normative in modern
presentations of biological issues. Raff's natural history was
not an authorized textbook, even if it was probably to some
degree used as one - something which in turn invites
reflection over the relationship between non-fiction books
for children and textbooks for children.
The question of historical studies of disciplines is
connected to educational level. There are few such studies
from primary school. One must go some way up in the system
before subjects are split into disciplines, insofar as they are
ever regarded as anything other than one integral discipline.
Even the term discipline has become more controversial in
recent decades. Yet it is clear that at least some of the most
comprehensive school subjects have traditionally had what
has been perceived as disciplinary divisions. It is also clear
that more specialized "disciplines" are accompanied by a
greater awareness of the relationship between school subject
and academic subject. In the sizeable bibliography of
Woodward, Elliott and Nagel (1988), "arithmetic" is listed
under the main grouping "mathematics". There, reference is
made to a study which reviewed 153 elementary books
published between 1900 and 1957 (Dooley 1960). The goal
was to investigate which aspects of the arithmetic presented
in the textbooks were affected by new research results and
which were not. The author found that writers and publishers
were quick to incorporate the new - often within five years
after incontrovertible new material was available. But this
was always on the condition that the new material was "clear,
concise and exact" (bibliography p. 99) - that it in one way
or another had to reach the authors in a popularized (my
expression) form. A number of important innovations in the
subject did not get into the books because they had not been
adequately adapted.
Disciplines
within Mother Tongue Instruction
Mother tongue instruction is the most typical example of a
multi-discipline subject. Further, what this subject calls a
"discipline" usually corresponds to a "subject" at a higher
level. Grammar and literary history are separate academic
subjects at colleges and universities, not only at departments
for linguistics and literary science, but also at the separate
institutes for mother tongue and foreign language instruction.
Instead of "individual disciplines", perhaps one ought to
speak of studies of more delimited subject or topic areas.
With a view to a subject like mother tongue instruction,
grammar, writing skills and literary history would thus be
prominent in the sense that they have received a certain
amount of attention in the field of textbooks.
Elementary reading training, with a vast number of
historical primer studies, dominates the field. However, many
would insist that reading must be considered more as a
separate subject than as a discipline.
The problem of subject/discipline has been thoroughly
dealt with in a study made by William Riley Parker: "Where
do English Departments Come From?" (Parker 1967; see
Applebee 1974, p. 16.)
Grammar Books
Although one cannot speak of any general tradition, studies
on the evolution of the grammar book have been made in
certain countries. As early as 1929, Elizabeth Baker's study of
the development of "elementary English language textbooks"
(Baker 1929) was available in the USA. It analyzed changes
that occurred from 1840 to 1929, but has not since been
followed up. This is remarkable in that mother tongue
instruction, especially the discipline of "grammar", has
played a major role in the various states' curriculum
guidelines for English. There is no rich tradition in this area
in Germany either, although they do have standard works
that have exerted influence on grammar book studies in other
countries, e.g. Hans Glinz' work on sentence elements (Glinz
1969).
There is a stronger tradition in France. Some of the French
studies make little distinction between levels, especially for
the 18th and 19th centuries. Others try to limit themselves to
school grammars, for example, although it can be hard to
distinguish school grammars from other grammars, especially
those published in the centuries prior to our own. In this field
André Chervel's work, Histoire de la grammaire scolaire
(Chervel 1977) is the standard. The exposition is chiefly a
description of the relationship between academic subjects and
school subjects. Chervel's thesis is that much of the
descriptive grammar and the information about fundamental
grammar problems has been lost from school books. On the
other hand Chervel finds a positive correlation in the opposite
direction. He shows that the repeated efforts to make school
grammars understandable and functional, in both the 19th
and 20th centuries, has been an important impetus to
research. But trends in research and views on language have
only superficially been embodied in grammar books.
According to Chervel, this is mainly attributable to
educational considerations, first and foremost the
requirement that grammar books should help teach writing
skills, especially orthography. The book has the subtitle: ... et
il fallut apprendre à écrire à tous les petits
Français (... and all
French children had to learn to write).
In this way Chervel's survey becomes a study of what can
happen when science is popularized. Since this also deals with
a science in which more than one movement or school of
thought has always exerted influence, the study also raises
questions about educational policy. Chervel personally comes
to a conclusion that is typical for grammar book studies,
whether they are undertaken with an historical or
contemporary perspective: Grammar as a separate discipline
should, and can, enrich both linguistic ability and reading
pleasure. Yet it does not appear to have done so, and it still
does not appear to be doing so.
France's other sizeable work on school grammars builds on
Chervel's study to some extent. This is Stéphane Karabétian's
Théories et Pratiques des Grammaires from 1988. The work
primarily consists of a systematic historical survey and a
classification of grammar books based on their educational
approaches. Like Chervel, Karabétian considers the
relationship between "old" and "new" with a certain
skepticism as to the frequency of updating.
In the Nordic countries, Frøydis Hertzberg presented
her
doctoral dissertation " `" and this Science has been named
Grammar' " in 1991 (Hertzberg 1990). One-third of the study
is an historical account of syntax in the tradition of school
grammars throughout 300 years. Hertzberg's point of view is
primarily linguistic, but she also uses the history of school
conditions in her description of the changes that have
occurred. The books are analyzed in light of domestic debate
and European trends against the background of developments
in the school system in general. In line with this
interdisciplinary approach, she finds an inner trend that is
primarily connected with "a transition from pure word
analysis to pure sentence element analysis", and an outer line
attached to "the mother tongue grammar's position as an
educational and research discipline" (p. 118).
In another large segment of her dissertation Hertzberg
comments on the relationship between new and old as she sees
it, based on the debate surrounding the discipline's role in
mother tongue instruction:
(...) one cannot help but be struck by how features from
earlier times suddenly pop up again as new. Still, this does
not mean that history repeats itself. In the interplay
between ideas and material conditions, any period of
history can display characteristics that are quite genuine
for that particular period, and an argument which is
presented at one point in time might have a completely
different meaning than if it were presented fifty years
later. (P. 319.)
Bernt Fossestøl has investigated the descriptions of word
classes and syntax in Norwegian grammars from the 1800s
(Fossestøl 1987). Norwegian authors published more than
sixty titles during this period, and "Nearly all 19th century
Norwegian grammars were intended for use in school" (p.
51). Fossestøl tries to uncover the grammatical train of
thought, its preconceptions and development, as it emerges in
the books. His objective is not primarily to evaluate the books
as teaching aids. However, on that point Fossestøl concludes
with an observation that corresponds to Chervel's: "On the
whole, grammars that do not pretend to be scholarly will
nearly always serve to confirm views that are already well
established in research. In actual practice, they will therefore
come to function as a defense of the preceding generation's
stylistic and linguistic ideals" (p. 262).
It is apparent from the introduction that Fossestøl regards
his study as a history of the subject. (P. 7.) He points out that
interest in subject history has two sides. First, one wants to
discover the background for the currently prevailing views.
Second, one wants to determine what views and scientific
parameters one's predecessors worked under: "That is, both
the real history of the subject and the way of writing about
the subject come into focus" (p. 7). The latter viewpoint
complements Hertzberg's emphasis on the importance of an
interdisciplinary approach.
Indirectly speaking, school grammars may be regarded as
a way of writing about the subject, and the science-
popularization dichotomy is an important theme for both
Chervel and Fossestøl. However, at one point Fossestøl
touches on another descriptive function that such books have,
or that they could have:
Despite the debate (i.e., about language and philosophy), in
which several authors eagerly participated, it is a
remarkably unbiased world we meet in grammars. In
pedagogical terms, they are rather stereotyped, and the
examples cited are not very closely connected to
contemporary reality, but they often have a clear moralistic
purpose. (P. 52.)
Fossestøl's investigation was never intended to deal with
precisely this point. Looking at grammar studies as a whole,
however, it is remarkable that no one has elected to
investigate the world or "reality" delineated by all these
examples. If patterns exist, they should command interest in
terms of education, ideology and cultural history. And should
no such patterns exist, that is also an important characteristic
- inter alia for the assessment of the influence exerted by the
examples used in the various systems and paradigms.
Writing Skills Books
One problem for anyone who wants to carry historical studies
of school grammars forward into our own time is the trend
toward books that combine an introduction to grammar with
extensive practical exercises. During the past few decades, the
discipline "language writing skills" has become a regular
feature or a major component of such grammars. However,
several European countries have traditions of separate writing
skills or composition books that go back more than one
hundred and fifty years. They include everything from
exercise books, which need be nothing more than reprints of
old examination papers, to workbooks or theoretical and/or
practical introductions to the art of writing. When one
considers the prestige and weight attached to the discipline
with regard to examinations and grades, it is surprising that
such books have scarcely been examined in an historical
perspective. In their bibliography of textbook research in the
USA, Woodward, Elliott and Nagel (Woodward, et al., 1988)
make the following comment:
The fact that there are only two articles in this section
appears to illustrate very well the problem, mentioned
above, of the textbook not being recognized as an
important factor influencing the quality of classroom
instruction. (P. 16.)
This point loses some of its weight, though, when we realize
that this same bibliography devotes several pages of
references to textbook analyses in each of many other
disciplines. The question of why exactly basic writing skills
books are underrepresented may possibly be attributable to
some extent to the fact that these books have been presented
and perceived as teaching aids and workbooks. Yet this
situation also applies to comparable publications in a number
of other subjects, not least science and mathematics, where
quite a bit of such literature has been analyzed, even
historically.
The two authors referred to in the American bibliography
are B. von B. Donsky (Donsky 1984) and D. H. Graves
(Graves 1977). The former has investigated three popular
basic English composition books from three different periods
between 1900 and 1969. He finds the treatment of form and
sentence structure unchanged. On the other hand, he
identifies a clear trend toward placing greater emphasis on
oral rather than written usage. Graves compared eight basic
books from various levels and periods. He concluded that as
far as the question of presentation method was concerned, it
had not changed or developed since the turn of the century.
(Just ten years later a new study would show a different
result. Debate and concern about written culture and
functional illiteracy in the USA in the 1980s (Hirsch 1987)
gave rise to an avalanche of new writing skills books based
largely on so-called creative and/or process-oriented writing
theory.)
In the introduction to his standard work on the history of
the school essay in Germany, Otto Ludwig discusses the
source material (Ludwig 1988). He decries the lack of
primary source material, that is the essays written by pupils
themselves. He also points out many gaps in the information
about how and how much writing has taken place. Accounts
from teachers and pupils, reports and regulations are too few
and too unreliable. The most important sources are
The works dealing with the didactics and methodology of
essays, the manuals, guidelines and recommendations for
teaching stylistics and essay writing, rhetoric and stylistics
for school use, the countless example books which came on
the market, especially in the 19th century, contain so many
references to teaching that they form a basis upon which
the history of the school essay may be built. (Pp. 5-6.)
Of these sources, Ludwig, like Tarschys, emphasizes didactic
and methodological expositions. Textbooks appear
sporadically in literature lists and are to some extent part of
the presentation, occasionally under separate headings.
Ludwig also analyzes the train of methodological thought
independent of the topics, content or attitudes in the essay
texts.
Books on Literary History
Books on literary history have had a wider distribution than
pure grammar books in upper secondary schools in our
century. Despite the fact that most Western European
countries have produced a fair amount of research literature
on literary criticism and the writing of literary history in
recent decades, no research has been done in the area of
literary histories for the school - at least not in Scandinavia.
In the introduction to his study "On Books on the History of
Norwegian Literature" (Kittang-Meldahl-Skei 1983), Per
Meldahl writes that he especially wants to investigate
(...) that portion of Norwegian literary historiography that
has contributed to creating a tradition. This chiefly
means
that we limit ourselves to the more "professional" literary
history writing. Little will therefore be said about literary
histories for school use, which are, of course, also a part
of
Norwegian literary historiography. Let us nevertheless
mention that school books (anthologies and literary history
commentary) play a significant role when the writing of
Norwegian literary history begins to find its form.
(Meldahl 1983, p. 113.)
The relationship between the presentation in long, "adult"
literary histories and in textbooks, which need not necessarily
be a popularization of the former, has not been investigated.
Anyone attempting to study it will encounter the problem of
the boundary between academic subjects and school subjects
just as Chervel, Fossestøl and Hertzberg did in connection
with the history of grammars. It has sometimes been difficult
recently to determine whether a grammar was written
primarily to transmit knowledge to a particular age group or
to present a particular view of grammar. As the above
quotation suggests, it may appear as if literary histories for
the school do not demonstrate as much independence as many
school grammars have done. Nevertheless, Meldahl does not
quite let go of the idea that the school textbooks have also
played "a significant part".
In this connection, an observation made by Øystein Eek
in
his master's thesis on the writing of literary history in upper
secondary textbooks (Eek 1982) is of interest. He points out
that the concept of neo-realism was introduced and used
systematically in Simon Wright Hofgaard's literary history for
the school (5th printing 1920 with Hans Eitrem) before it was
adopted into other literary histories (Eek, pp. 88"89). A study
would probably reveal that Hofgaard's literary history
exhibited a certain uniqueness, representing innovation from
the very first printing.
Lars Brink's study of the literary history book's position in
Swedish upper secondary schools analyzes the view of
literature and the topic and author selection in the most
popular books used from 1910 to 1945 (Brink 1992). His work
is a doctoral dissert-ation which tries to ascertain why and
how selections and values have changed in schoolbooks (the
study also includes anthologies and school editions). Brink
also tries to determine the motives for publishing new books,
thus giving a composite profile both of literary canons and of
editors' role in the school system.
Both Brink's study and those of others seem to indicate
certain historical patterns as regards literary histories' attitude
to literature and to textbook readers. This pattern is outlined
by Bengt-Göran Martinsson in his doctoral dissertation
entitled Tradition and Meaning (Martinsson 1989): The
idealistic/empirical, historical and psychological/symbolic
approach. It is remarkable that Martinsson's three historical
literary viewpoint strata are not primarily revealed through
textbooks, but through pupils' written responses throughout
the corresponding period.
Two individual works can stand as a general summary of
procedures. One is Choppin's "L'histoire des manuels
scolaires: Une approche globale" (Choppin 1980). It is the
only somewhat larger theoretical study that exists on the
subject. (For Choppin's most recent publication, see page
151.)
The other work is Andolf 1972, which covers most of the
perspectives from other historical studies. Andolf's methods
and results will also be examined more closely as an
appropriate transition to the next chapter where my
discussion of the quanti-tative methods he uses in his
summary are further elucidated.
A selection of Choppin's most important points are
presented in this context because they illuminate several
aspects of the works in the above survey and because they are
generally quite applicable to historical textbook research in
other countries as well:
- Authors who have written about the history of textbooks
have rarely taken time to define the term "textbook". It
may seem as though the general familiarity attached to the
phenomenon has given it "une réalité indiscutable
et des
contours précis" (p. 2).
- The many designations for textbooks (livres élémentaires,
livres classiques, livres de classe, livres scolaires, ouvrages
classiques, manuels, manuels scolaires...) may seem
arbitrary, but they are related to the development of both
production conditions and legislation/approval.
- Choppin reiterates two authoritative definitions, one from
UNESCO and one from Bibliographie de la France, and
shows that they are not only at odds with each other, but
that they also - to the extent that they otherwise might
each be adequate on their own - can only be applied to the
situation or purpose in question, which is to quantify
production: "School books are all books created for the
purpose of helping to teach" (Bibliographie de la France,
1969); "School textbooks: books prescribed for pupils
receiving education at the first and second levels"
(UNESCO 1968).
- If the purpose of carrying out textbook research is to give
a complete picture of the knowledge the school has
transmitted through printed books, one must include both
those which are expressly designed for the school and all
the books which, without being produced for such a
purpose, have nevertheless become school books through
use and convention.
- During periods with official authorization schemes,
directives and booklists will be important sources of book
titles and viewpoints on textbooks. In the first place, they
will tell something about the central authorities' general
view on educational policy. Second, they might also say
something about influence and pressure from various
groups - political parties, religious bodies, educational
movements and economic forces.
- Since the 1960s textbooks' share of publishers' sales have
sunk. At the same time, the interest in textbooks as
research objects has increased. A survey of theses for
school history ("mémoires de maîtrise en histoire
de
l'éducation") from 1968 to 1979 shows that 24 of 283
theses were written on school books (Caspard - Huguet
1979).
Tentatively, Choppin concludes by presenting a survey of
different kinds of research, both completed and neglected. In
keyword form, the list is as follows:
- Content analyses have dominated French textbook research
(to a certain degree studies of individual works or authors,
but mainly studies of books from a particular period or on
a particular theme as presented in several different books).
- The angle of approach has usually been sociological; one
questioned ideologies, value systems, ways of describing
society.
- Textbooks for primary school have been far more
frequently investigated than textbooks for secondary
school.
- The individual subjects whose development has been
described using textbook analyses have comprised French
mother tongue instruction, philosophy and geography, but
above all history (historians and sociologists would
probably encounter major problems if faced with the task
of analyzing books in mathematics and physics).
- One neglected area has been the distribution of textbooks,
their lifetime and place of use, their origins and their
authors' backgrounds.
- Another neglected area is the study of textbooks'
development as an educational tool. At one time textbooks
were usually written by a single author, today almost all
titles are co-authored. How and why has this come about?
Are there clear trends in the relationship between school
subjects and academic subjects? Between textbooks and
curricula? How were the books used in their time? What do
the prefaces say about this, for example? How were/are
they read and used?
- Other neglected areas include the books' historical
development as objects and printed matter, publishing
history and approval schemes and - in a more recent
perspective - the relationship between the presentation of
crucial international questions in various countries'
textbooks.
Göran Andolf's study (Andolf 1972) stands out among the
investigations of the history of particular subjects. It is a
study of history teaching illuminated primarily with the aid
of the textbooks' contents. Andolf's quantitative method is
generally characterized by its meticulous registration of
primary and secondary sources, including the charting of
circulars, regulations, ordinances, debates, etc., as well as a
summary of all the material in the units of the individual
chapters. His analysis is descriptive, emphasizing the
following categories: The arrangement of material in the
books, the selection of material and the extent to which it is
representative, the use of names and dates, the use of
evaluations, causal explanations, genre ("epic" versus
"descriptive"; p. 317) and sources. These categories are
measured by number, frequency and degree. Tables and
appendices provide running documentation for the analysis.
The objective is to discover what historical material pupils
have read - and read most of - through the years. For
example, the tables list the number of times the names of
military leaders and battles are mentioned, citing the line
count, in each book's treatment of the conflict surrounding
the succession to the throne of Spain (p. 206). Andolf's work,
published 17 years after Tarschys' history of mother tongue
instruction, relies on methodological theories published for
the most part after 1955 (Berelson 1952, Thavenius 1966,
Holsti 1969). Andolf discusses the method in a separate
chapter in which it is apparent that he places great emphasis
on the scientific aspect of his work:
Characteristic for what are usually called scientific results
is that they should be independent of their authors and that
they should be verifiable by others. This has not always
been true of the methods of investigating text that have
been common thus far. The researcher has read the text
and has described it on the basis of his impressions. (...)
In
this way the researcher uses his own personality as a gauge,
and what he reads from the gauge are his own experiences.
(P. 136.)
Instead, Andolf wants the reader to be presented with
information that is as accurate as possible, so he has the
opportunity to examine critically the grounds for the data and
the conclusions drawn: "In this way quantitative content
analysis yields systematic and accurate results." (Pp. 136-37.)
Andolf is certainly not without reservations regarding the
method; he refers to the same difficulties that Togeby
discusses (see page 125), among other things. These problems
include the choice of objects for measurement and the
establishment of the connection between that which is
measured and that which one believes or feels it ought to
describe. Nevertheless Andolf believes the method offers
many advantages over "the essayistic impressionistic methods
that have prevailed thus far" (p. 137); this is especially true
as regards "showing how different kinds of material are
distributed, i.e., the choices the textbook author has made,
and the principles that lie behind them." (P. 137.)
It is not difficult to find objections to the method - or at
any rate to the application of it - based on the impersonal
scientific platform that is Andolf's point of departure (see
above). In the introduction he writes that in their books on
history teaching, authors such as Herbert Tingsten and Göran
Palm proceed on "the impressions they have gotten from
reading, and they occasionally support what they say with
quotations. What they choose to include in each book is
subjective; particularly the last two studies mentioned may be
said to describe their authors better than their objectives." (P.
2.) But even Andolf builds on subjective impressions.
Although he chooses among subjects and periods and justifies
his choices, they are all based on the assumption that the
periods and events that take up a large number of pages in
books also dominate instruction. In addition, his categories
change for reasons which are not always equally apparent.
For example, based on line counts, the cultural aspect is more
dominant in the discussion of Egypt, while the political
aspect comes to the fore in presentations of the French
revolution. In order to systematize material from several
different textbooks when making his comparative analysis,
Andolf has occasionally found it necessary to divide the
textbooks' material and their arrangement of that material to
accommodate the categories in his own survey. What we can
be sure of is that the content and categories in the books,
carefully and judiciously selected by Andolf on the basis of
his reading of secondary literature, have had the dimensions
that Andolf bases his conclusions upon their having. This is
verified by measurements and tables. But that form of
statistical science does not preclude the "author's" decisive
influence, even in this presentation.
Andolf uses his corpus to demonstrate inter alia his view of
the theory that the content of and objectives for history
teaching can be read from the books. Ergo, he analyzes them
as expressions of views of teaching - possibly. For, as he
himself writes, we lack an analysis of the relationship
between history as a subject and educational trends (p. 135).
We are no more certain today than we were in 1972 about
the degree to which Andolf is right in his fundamental
assumption that "most pupils learn more about what
textbooks devote a lot of attention to than about what they
neglect" (p. 1). For instance, we do not know much more
about which types of language and style have had the greatest
impact. Andolf touches upon this area as well, but that
discussion constitutes no more than six percent of the
exposition.
Göran Andolf has shown how one can use quantitative
methods to describe some of the contents of textbooks and,
on that basis, to say something significant about the shifting
view of history in the school. However, the degree to which
his empirically based analysis is an expression of actual
teaching might still be an open question.
The many ways in which a subject is presented, in
different books and by different teachers, make it difficult
to feel that a subject's - or discipline's - "inner" history is
identical with the development of the school book version. On
the other hand, it would be interesting to investigate whether
these books have their own history, some strong genre
tradition which might compete with and/or determine the
school version. As mentioned earlier, Chervel discusses this
interplay briefly, but gives it no systematic treatment. The
relationship should be clarified, not least because in the larger
context of educational politics and social philosophy, one
might raise the question of which view of language and
reality holds the field at any given time: the school's own
language and history or those of the academic subjects.
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