In this study I examine twenty-five reading textbooks published in America between 1785 and 1819 for their rhetorical theory, pedagogy, and approach to language in order to discover more about the origins of modern writing instruction. The reading textbooks were selected for popularity, needing to go through at least three editions. I also examine four early writing textbooks, all published 1816 and earlier, and compare them to the reading textbooks on the same points.My results show that the dominant rhetorical theorist before 1800 is James Burgh, and not Hugh Blair. After 1800, rhetorical theory in these textbooks is dominated by Blair and John Walker. An emphasis on grammatical correctness is inherent in both writing and speech instruction, meaning the public associated grammatical correctness with writing instruction even in the eighteenth century. Correctness went beyond grammar into vocabulary and pronunciation because language instruction was primarily a matter of imitating the upper class. The reading textbooks, designed for teaching speech, show no evidence of the transition to writing instruction that occurred in the nineteenth century. My examination of the writing textbooks shows that writing instruction developed separately from speech instruction because the elocutionary pedagogy dominant in these years could not be applied to writing instruction. The early writing textbooks have the same emphasis on grammatical correctness, and add inventional schemata that are wholly absent from the reading textbooks. / Department of English

The purposes of this study are to (1) determine the extent of bias in elementary textbooks in terms of frequency of reference to various work modes, and (2) to determine if qualitative bias exists in the portrayal of work modes.

This thesis analyses the historical development of Czech elementary reading and writing textbooks from 1900 to 1999. It comes from the listing of the elementary reading and writing methods from the beginning to the present, it continues with the description and the evaluation of the most of textbooks used in the last century and tells the life stories of main authors. In the conclusions it follows the changes in the character of the textbooks and of the reading education. Key words reading, reading education, writing education, reading textbooks, first books

Il libro scolastico, nella sua duplice fisionomia di supporto didattico e di prodotto editoriale e sociale, costituisce una preziosa fonte per la ricostruzione della storia pedagogica e didattica, culturale e politica dalla seconda metà del Settecento sino al primo ventennio del Novecento. Sulla base di questa premessa la tesi si propone di evidenziare la valenza educativa e didattica della letteratura scolastica per l’infanzia e il ruolo ricoperto dalla scuola nella formazione dei fanciulli italiani tramite l’analisi quantitativa e qualitativa dei principali libri di lettura editi in Lombardia tra Otto e Novecento. Dopo una panoramica generale sulla produzione editoriale scolastica della realtà italiana, la ricerca fa emergere i contenuti, l’apparato iconografico e la forma linguistica di 65 libri di lettura, adottati a livello nazionale nelle scuole elementari e pubblicati nei decenni postunitari (1871-1923) da case editrici lombarde di notevole rilievo, quali Agnelli, Risveglio Educativo, Trevisini e Vallardi. / The textbook, in its dual aspect of educational support and publishing and social product, is a precious source to reconstruct educational, teaching, cultural and political history from the second half of the eighteenth century to the first decades of the twentieth century. This thesis aims to underline the educational and teaching value of school literature and the role played by school in the education of Italian children through a quantitative and a qualitative analysis of the main reading textbooks published in Lombardy between the nineteenth and the twentyth centuries. After a general overview of the editorial school production of the Italian situation, the research focus on the contents, the iconography and linguistic form of 65 reading textbooks, adopted nationally in the elementary schools and published in the decades after the unification (1871-1923) by important Lombard publishers, such as Agnelli, Risveglio Educativo, Trevisini and Vallardi.