Literature schoolbooks

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Literature schoolbooks are the major tool for teaching the subject and the locus par excellence where the transformation of artworks to teaching material takes place. Hence they provide an obvious starting point for our research.

There are a number of parameters involved in the making and pedagogical function of literature schoolbooks that convey the ideology of the educational system that produces them, which one needs to examine:

The procedure of compiling literature schoolbooks

By beginning to examine literature schoolbooks in order to scrutinize the uses of literature in them, one naturally tends to focus at the book itself, overlooking the procedure that has led to it.

However, this procedure is often revealing of the pedagogical purposes and ideological aims driving its compilation.

Questions that need to be asked include the following:

- Is there a purpose-designed/written book or is an already existing anthology/other book used instead?
- In the case of a purpose-designed book (which is usually the case in modern times), is it compiled by a single or multiple editor/s?
- Was/were the editor/s appointed directly by the Ministry of Education or was/were (s)he/they selected through a competition?
- If there was a competition, what sort of requirements did it focus on?
- Is there a sole compulsory book for every school or are there multiple schoolbooks available?
- In the case of multiple schoolbooks, who decides which one to use? The board of teachers? Every teacher individually? Do students have a say in this decision?

The answers to these questions may provide a first point of reference as to the level of organization and democracy characterizing a particular educational system and may alert us to a more nuanced interpretation of the book’s contents.

This kind of information can be found in educational laws and ministry documents, which are being increasingly offered online, either in Ministry of Education- or other kinds of archives.
 

For an example you can see the discussion of the case of Greek literature schoolbooks before and during the Metaxas’ dictatorship (1936-1940) in Lambros Varelas’ paper “Dictatorship and Literature Teaching in Secondary Education in Greece (1936-1940)”, pp. 1-2. 
 

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