"Good Books Make Better Children":
Nineteenth-Century Textbooks in Special Collections
Histories |
The teaching of American history saw great changes throughout the nineteenth century. Early textbooks encouraged rote learning by presenting lists of unrelated dates, events, and facts; but by the end of the century, a narrative approach was seen as more effective in engaging the young learner. |
View |
Inclusion of illustrations in textbooks had long been utilized as a tool to captivate the young reader, but it seems that some publishers were unconcerned about whether these illustrations had anything to do with the material being taught. Here, the armchair seems oddly out of place, leaving both contemporary and modern readers to wonder what exactly it has to do with the Mexican-American War being described in the accompanying text. |
 Primers |
 Readers |
 Arithmetic |
 Geographies |
 Sciences |
 Histories |