On the Forms and Content of Moral Instruction in School Books and Children’s Reading Books of the 16th to the Early 19th Centuries. Part I

Abstract

School institutions of various levels were one of the important agents of the moral reform movement characterizing early modern European society. Schools instilled certain moral values and models of decent behavior also through elementary textbooks and children’s reading books. Despite significant conservatism of this book production, its analysis for a long period of time allows to notice several changes: in the method of reasoning about the virtuous and vicious; argumentation in favor of certain patterns of behavior; the emergence of new thematic blocks that verifies the influence of philosophical thought of that era on educational literature. The first part of the study analyzes the main forms of instructive material in school books and children’s reading books. Collections of Biblical excepts, religious-moralistic proverbs and maxims (Spruchbücher), catalogues of obligations (in form of the so-called “house-tables” (Haustafel) and threefold duties in relation to God, himself, and the neighbor), rules of decorum, instructive stories, virtuous examples, instructive visual images and collections of allegorical pictures-emblems – all these forms go back to various book genres, could coexist in the same textbook or compete with each other.