Skip to main content icon/video/no-internet
icon backReturn to Entries

Textbooks, History of

Textbooks are an invention of the early modern period and reflect the emergence of the new technology of the book, as well as the realization that children have separate needs and lives from adults. Over the years, textbooks have covered more and more subjects, and they have become increasingly subject to controversy. This entry looks at the history of textbooks, particularly in the United States, and examines some of the more recent and powerful controversies.

Early Texts

Although catechisms were common by the end of the sixteenth century, the first modern textbook is widely recognized as being lohn Amos Comenius's Orbis Sensualium Pictus. The Orbis Pictus was approximately 400 pages, with an illustrated text, originally published in both Czech and Latin. It literally had as its purpose introducing the child to all of the major objects and things found in the world. The Orbis Pictus is important because it identifies the child not only as a subject to be educated, but also as someone who can be shaped by the technology of print and an illustrated text. The influence of Comenius's work is clear when one looks at the first textbook used in the American colonies, The New England Primer.

The New England Primer was first published about 1690 by Benjamin Harris. A small book that could easily be held in the palm of a child's hand, the text was heavily illustrated and incorporated many elements into its content, such as an illustrated alphabet, found in the Orbis Pictus. The book, as textbooks in general, reflected the values and beliefs of the culture for which it was produced: in this case, a conservative Protestant and biblically oriented tradition. The book begins with a prayer, followed with lists of words, many with religious overtones, such as benediction and purification, for the children to recite. Even its famous rhyming alphabet was religious in nature.

Early textbooks were primers, spellers, or reading books. Primers provided learners with a basic introduction to reading, whereas spelling books dealt with more advanced word and sentence construction. Spellers typically concluded with simple reading passages—in particular, fables. Readers, as their name suggests, provided advanced reading material, often increasingly difficult in its content.

A New Nation

Prior to the American Revolution, British textbooks were used in colonial schools such as those by Lindley Murray. With the success of the American Revolution, the need to develop American textbooks with distinctive American versus British themes came to be seen as increasingly urgent. Most important of these efforts was the work of Noah Webster (1758–1843), who published the three-volume Grammatical Institutes of the English Language in 1783. This work, whose first volume eventually came to be known as “The Blue Back Speller” because of its blue covers, was deliberately political in its content (anti-British and pro-American).

Later known as The American Spelling Book, and, after 1829, as the Elementary Spelling Book, Webster's spellers continued to be used into the twentieth century and sold tens of millions of copies. Webster's speller was not the only textbook published after the Revolution that had a political agenda. Jedidiah Morse's Geography Made Easy (1784) very consciously promoted political, social, and moral values—ones that were consciously American.

...

  • Loading...
locked icon

Sign in to access this content

Get a 30 day FREE TRIAL

  • Watch videos from a variety of sources bringing classroom topics to life
  • Read modern, diverse business cases
  • Explore hundreds of books and reference titles

Read next

More like this

Sage Recommends

We found other relevant content for you on other Sage platforms.

close

Have you created a personal profile? Login or create a profile so that you can save clips, playlists and searches

close
close
close Signed In to profile You are signed in as:
close
Logged in Institution Institution