Textbooks

The Role of Textbooks in America's Classrooms

It is widely recognized, though not always viewed favorably, that the teacher is at the center of the classroom and the textbook the teacher's most frequently used tool. Textbooks are the primary resource for teachers for several practical reasons. In early American education, students were instructed individually using a variety of books brought from home. Innovators, including Horace Mann, viewed this practice as impractical and proposed the use of common textbooks as a means of facilitating group instruction. Through the years, the use of common textbooks has provided the organization and structure necessary to instruct groups of students. Textbooks are also viewed as a source of accurate subject matter content and helpful instructional strategies, especially for teachers who may not be strong in a particular subject area.

In addition to being used for instructional purposes, schoolbooks have served to both form and defend America's image of itself. Schools in America have always been viewed in part as a means of presenting to children moral, political, cultural, social, and economic concepts. The provision of free public education and free textbooks provided a means of presenting those concepts deemed desirable by textbook authors and the public. The textbook as both an instructional tool and a way of influencing the values of children has changed through the years.

History

The first American textbooks were similar to their English counterparts and were compilations of selections from diverse sources. The “primers,” as all elementary books for children were called, were united by the teaching of religion and reading. The selections were chosen to represent the best literature, but they were ill-suited for students to acquire a taste for reading or to learn about the world.

From the late eighteenth century and to the middle of the nineteenth century, textbooks began to take into account the interests and needs of children and to appeal to the middle class. Around 1790, Noah Webster published a reader that contained familiar stories in common language. Webster also published a speller that helped to standardize spelling, helped to reform the language, and took a leading place among spellers for decades. In the 1830s, books began to be written to reflect better teaching strategies. The McGuffey Eclectic Reader, which appeared in 1836, and Warren Colburn's Intellectual Arithmetic, published in 1821, contributed to improved instruction in their fields.

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