CHAPTER VIII

THE TEXT-BOOK

THE history of what has become known as the text-book forms an important part of the annals of American education in the last halfcentury. The name indicates the idea that a book represents the essential teachings concerning a subject, as the text of the sermon represents, or is supposed to represent, the chief doctrines of the discourse itself.

The text-book is the teacher of teachers. If it is not a force which the teacher may substitute for himself, as it often, and perhaps too often, is, it is at least a condition through which the teacher presents a subject to the class. The wise teacher and large uses many text-books for his own training and for suggesting to himself the most effective methods of teaching. The text-book also remains for the student a permanent treasure-house where he may refresh his own declining memory, and whence he may draw specific facts for his own use. The more obvious change in the character

of text-books in recent years relates to the part of the publisher. The book has become a far better book, both to the eye and the hand. The paper is firmer, the ink blacker, the type easier for the eye, and the different forms of type serve to represent more clearly and impressively the primary and the subordinate truths presented. The composition is also fairer, the binding more lasting and more artistic. The illustrations and plates of many sorts are chosen with greater care, with better adjustment to the text, and are executed with higher taste.

The fundamental change, however, wrought in the text-book during this period, is that it is written for the purpose of teaching the pupil and not for the purpose of presenting a subject. The point of view has absolutely changed. The author of the text-book of the former time desired to give a scientific statement regarding his subject; the author of the present time desires to teach students. It is important, imperatively important, to make at times a scientific statement of a subject, but that work is distinct from the purpose of teaching boys and girls. A better psychology has come to prevail. The text-book represents a desire to

adjust truths and the presentation of truths to the mind of the pupil. A careful study has been made by the makers of books of the content of children's minds. They have sought to adjust the progress of their instruction to the enlarging growth and the increasing power of those who are to use the book. The best text-book of the present generation represents the union of two elements, of a proper knowledge of the subject and a proper knowledge of the mind of the child.

Two types of the English grammar fittingly illustrate this difference. The earlier grammar began with an interpretation, more or less scientific, of principles and rules, stated with careful elaborateness. The book was of value, it helped the student to understand and appreciate the usages of English speech and writing. Its method was, on the whole, deductive. The later type has regard primarily for the general powers of the mind of the pupil. It begins where he himself is in his knowledge and in his use of words. It proceeds by easy stages to adjust to his growing power rules and principles. Its method, on the whole, is inductive.

Allied to this psychological condition is also

the fact that the text-book has come to relate itself to the present or future needs of the student. The authors of these modern volumes have pictured to themselves the lives which these boys and girls are to live, and the work which they are to do. They have sought to make their books of practical value, adopting a clear interpretation of the ability of pupils. They have also found it not difficult to try to be of special service in their future careers. They have recognized that these boys are to be clerks and merchants, these girls heads of homes and heads of schoolrooms, as well as daughters at home. Under this conception of the student's future, changes revolutionary have been made in the text-books in almost every subject.

The old and absorbing subject of arithmetic illustrates how fundamental and characteristic is the change which has occurred. It has resulted in simplifying the whole treatment of numbers. It has cast out "true discount," which was never "true," and has given real discount, which is constantly used. It has eliminated that trying topic of "equation of payments," a topic quite useless in our present currency, and also "permutations" and "combinations." It has resulted in introducing

into the problems of arithmetic facts which are immediate and vital. In one practical text-book under problems of magnitude are introduced questions on the building and the furnishing of a house. Amount of lumber, cost of plastering, of carpets, of papering, of laying out a garden and grounds are the topics considered.

In geography the change is hardly less fundamental. School geography has ceased to be concerned with mere facts and with exterior descriptions, and has become an interpretation of the world and of its peoples. It has come to represent reasoning processes about the globe and its inhabitants; it has become physical; the physical has become physiographical, and both have become commercial and social.

History, too, has taken on the elements of a story of the life, the customs, and the thoughts of nations and peoples. Wars no longer consume a large part of the interest. Kings and queens do not command so great a share of the student's attention. The way in which people live, day by day, the way they sit at meat, the books they read, the way they earn and spend their money, and the amount of money they earn or spend, the houses in which they live,