Reading Cathecisms (Vera)

Reading in Questions and Answers
The Catechism as an Educational Genre in Early Independent Spanish America

Eugenia Roldn Vera
In this essay I attempt to illuminate the relationship between a particular kind of book and its readers. Using the category of genre as a tool that allows me to bring together elements of textual analysis and empirical research of reading practices, I will study the ways in which a series of educational manuals of useful knowledge oriented readings and were actually read in early independent Spanish America. Published in London in the 1820s by Rudolph Ackermann for a Spanish American audience, these manuals were written in a question-and-answer form, by virtue of which they became widely known as Ackermanns catechisms. I shall explore the question-and-answer form in its historical, discursive, and material dimensions in order to show how the category of literary genre can be useful to understand processes of transmission and appropriation of knowledge. After a brief overview of Ackermanns publishing enterprise for Spanish America, I will discuss how the category of genre may enable us to understand reading practices in general. Then I will consider the particular characteristics and evolution of the question-and-answer genre, in order to situate Ackermanns catechisms in the context of the expansion of elementary education in early nineteenth-century Britain and Spanish America. In the last part I explore the ways in which this genre shaped
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Book History
actual practices of reading, learning, and use in the case of Ackermanns catechisms. Drawing on my broader interest in processes of transmission of European science in independent Spanish America, I will focus on the implications that these practices had in particular for the transmission and transformation of knowledge about nature and the natural sciences.
Educating Spanish America

In November 1825, the English teacher Richard Jones, recently settled in Mexico City, wrote a pessimistic letter to his father-in-law, the educator Joseph Lancaster, in which he commented on the state of Mexican society. After describing the street celebrations that followed the defeat of the last Spanish troops in the country, Jones lamented: This is certainly a very important thing for Mexico, they have nothing left now undone but to drive the grand enemies and the only ones remaining to the countryIgnorance and Superstitionthe second of course will follow the first, and the first I fear will yet swallow up the liberty and conquer the country again if not speedy measures are taken to attack it with all the energy possible. . . . A few [laws] . . . and the diffusion of Mr. Ackermann[s] useful books throughout the country [are needed so that] the people in about one hundred years may become a different race, but it will be a difficult task to eradicate the prejudices and superstitions which have been augmenting for 300 years [of Spanish domination].The present race must first become extinct, the entire mind must be transformed and they must be moulded anew.1 For the son-in-law of the founder of the monitorial system of education of whose writing skills Professor Lancaster would not be too proudthe only way to consolidate the precarious political freedom of the new republic was education, in all its forms. He himself went to Mexico to work for the promotion of the monitorial system of education and spent the rest of his life doing that, as a teacher or as a government official. He was not isolated in his views about Mexican society: in fact, his politically incorrect statements were shared by many among the intellectual elites of the former colonies, who proclaimed that under the Spanish domination Spanish Americans had had a very limited habit of thinking, and that they had made very little active use of their mental faculties.2 The conviction that only education and the diffusion of knowledge would ensure moral and
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material prosperity was widespread also among these groups. All possible means to contribute to this civilizing mission were therefore welcome; yet it is still curious that Jones conferred such quasi-redemptive power on Ackermanns books, by then a novelty in Mexico and in many other Spanish American countries. Ackermanns publications had no precedent in the limited local book production of Spanish America or in the sort of printed materials provided by Spain during three hundred years of economic and cultural monopoly over its colonies. Published between 1823 and 1829, they consisted of nearly one hundred titles in Spanish, including four miscellaneous magazines and a series of twenty-five catechisms of all subjects from the arts and sciences (excluding religion), plus a number of other didactic works, novels, and political treatises. The publication of these works was the result of the combined efforts of a variety of people based in London. Vicente Rocafuerte, Bernardino Rivadavia, and Francisco Borja Migoni, three Spanish American diplomats interested in the general enlightenment of their compatriots, sponsored the publication of some of the books. A number of Spanish liberal exiles, sympathetic to the independence of the Spanish Americans, were employed as translators and editors: Jos Joaqun de Mora, Jos Nez de Arenas, Jos de Urcullu, and Joaqun Lorenzo de Villanueva. They worked under the supervision of Rudolph Ackermann, already well established as an art publisher and carriage maker, who put most of the money and contacts into incursions in the Spanish American book market. The original initiative of publishing for Spanish America came from Ackermann, who took up all the costs of the magazines and some of the travel books; the educational, historical, and political books were produced mainly under the initiative or subsidy of the Spanish American diplomats, but tailored, to some extent, to the requirements of the publisher.3 Ackermanns catechisms, the most famous of his useful books, were inspired by other English series of books of useful knowledge from the 1810s and 1820s, such as William Pinnocks Catechisms, Dr. Mavors Catechisms, and Christopher Irvings Catechisms; some of Ackermanns manuals were clearly adapted translations of Pinnocks.4 In only half of the cases do we know exactly who translated which book; however, the identity of the translators, or even of the original authors, becomes less relevant when we focus our attention on the formal constraints imposed on the writers by the catechetical genre, constraints that resulted in a relative uniformity among all the texts. Ackermanns catechisms covered the following subjects: ancient and modern history, domestic and rural industry, Spanish and Latin grammar, literature, morality, music, mythology, political economy, rhetoric, algebra,
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Book History
arithmetic, geometry, agriculture, astronomy, chemistry, geography, and natural history. The emphasis on scientific subjects, presented in such a way that they were made accessible to nonspecialized audiences, reflects a generalized concern for the diffusion of science in the new republics. In this period, the popularization of science was seen as a way both to advance material progress and to operate a transformation on the ways of thinking of the new citizensto more secular, less church-driven minds.5 However, this enthusiasm for the spread of science in the early independent years was not supported by the establishment of permanent educational institutions, and these initial efforts were only consolidated in the later decades of the nineteenth century in most Latin American countries, under the direction of strong, centralized governments. Intended for young and adult readers, and for school and nonschool audiences, Ackermanns catechisms were virtually the first texts to introduce the question-and-answer form to subjects other than religious doctrine or civic principles in the Spanish American countries. The catechisms of arithmetic, morals, agriculture, and geography were reedited dozens of times in the Spanish American countries or in France (the main provider of school textbooks for the area in the nineteenth century), most of those editions with considerable additions and transformations. Moreover, the catechetical form of these texts became a model for other textbooks published locally throughout the nineteenth century; this style prevailed in Spanish America for a longer period than it did in England, though coexisting with and gradually being substituted for by other narrative strategies. In what follows, I will analyze the ways in which these manuals oriented practices of reading and learning and how they were actually appropriated by their readers. Using the category of genre as a central tool for that analysis, I will explain some of the principles involved in a process of transmission of knowledge from a metropolitan center to a peripheral area.
Books, Genres, and Histories of Reading

For the most part, histories of reading are attempts to understand how the encounter between the world of the text and the world of the reader functions; through a combination of textual analysis with empirical research into actual reading practices, historians of reading aim at reconstructing what, how, and why people read and what sense they make out of that.6 Roger Chartier has suggested an approach that brings together textual criticism, bibliography, and cultural history; that is, a methodology that articulates the analysis of texts in their discursive and material forms,
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the history of books as printed objects in circulation, and the practices in which these discursive forms and objects are used and appropriated by historically and socially situated communities of readers.7 However, and in spite of these global approaches, the major theoretical difficulty of any history of reading remains in determining the extent to which reading and the making of meanings are socially constrained activities or individual enterprises with a wide multiplicity of possible outcomes. My way of dealing with this problem consists in paying attention to the formal and textual characteristics of the books themselves, treating them not as independent and unique products, but as objects that can be classified into certain types according to their formal structure, their intention, their effect, or their subject matter. My premise is that most books can be classified into some kind of genre, which is an established category of written work recognizable by the competent reader by virtue of its employment of a series of conventionsmaterial and discursive. As E. D. Hirsch has argued, interpretation of any speech act is possible not only because of the interpreters ability to follow its word sequence or because of the context in which the speech is uttered; it largely relies on the interpreters recognition of the particular genre of the utterance itself.8 The interpreter understands the utterance in terms of an internalized system of expectations that is based on past experience derived from confronting similar types of utterances. Thus the speakeror writermust take into consideration the interpreters system of expectations and associations if he or she wants them to correspond with his or her ownwhence Hirsch derives that genre is a shared type that constitutes and determines meanings, a sort of implied contract of tacit knowledge between speaker and interpreter.9 Much of the recent critical theory on genre tends to be ahistorical: genres are treated as immutable and universal categories, and their appearance or disappearance might be attributed to historical reasons, but they are not considered historical entities themselves.10 It is my contention that, in order to better understand processes of production and reception of books, it is necessary not only to take into account the category of genre, but also to historicize it. I understand genres as dynamic categories that, as I will try to illustrate here, evolve and transform in different times and places.11 Genre plays a crucial function in the processes of production and reception of books. First, writers are subject to the established conventions of the particular genre in which they are writing and must remain aware of the systems of expectations of their potential readers. Second, if we accept that these conventions are not only discursive but also material, then publishers are also conditioned by the genres of particular books in question and, at the same time, have an important role in defining their characteristics:
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Book History
they have to construct and present every work as linked to others of the same kind in order to secure them a place in the market.12 In this, publishers have to be sensitive to readers practices, uses, and expectations, skillful in orienting the writers works, and conscientious in preparing the formal characteristics of the books that are appropriate for their genres. Finally, genre serves a double function in the process of the reception of books: not only does it make understanding and interpretation possible by providing a common ground of shared conventions and assumptions between writers and readers, it also orients the way in which a book is to be readreaders are to a certain extent constrained by the rules, logics, and models of that particular kind of genre. I should also add that, at least in the case I will be looking at, the notion of reading should be understood in a broad sense: reading here not only means individual, silent reading, but it also involves processes of oral repetition, memorization, and learning, all of which are conditioned by the conventions of the particular genre. This is particularly important in the Spanish American context, where the level of literacy remained very low throughout the nineteenth century but where practices of collective reading, in which one would read out loud a book or a paper to a group of people who could not read, were not unusual. What had kept the literacy levels low during colonial times had been, more than the lack of access to basic education, the lack of access to print, and thus the flow of pamphlets and books after independence developed a wide range of practices of collective reading.13 Considered in this way, the category of genre enables us to go beyond the study of individual reading experiences by obliging us to look at the wider framework of practices and assumptions concerning the reading of particular types of books. Following this line, in my analysis of Ackermanns catechisms as a genre I will explore the conventions it imposed on writers and readers, the expectations shared by the readers in confronting this type of book, and the redefinition of this genre in a particular historical moment and in the social context in which it was used. I will discuss, in particular, the implications of these elements for the transmission of knowledge about nature.
The Catechism as a Genre

Ackermanns catechisms were portable manuals in small 16, of one hundred to two hundred pages each, printed in tight and small characters
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Figure 1. Two pages of Ackermanns Catecismo de astronoma (London: R. Ackermann, 1825). (By permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.)
and had no illustrations apart from the title page and an occasional plate representing maps or scientific instrumentsattached at the beginning of the book. They were structured as a series of short questions and mediumlength answers one after the other, forming chapters. They contained a large amount of condensed information about each field, much of which was added in the process of translation from the English to the Spanish versions (Fig. 1). Why were Ackermanns texts published in the form of catechisms? Although it is known that some of the writers and sponsors had longed for a series of educational manuals, it seems likely that the form that these books took was more a decision of the publisher.14 As the series of Pinnock, Mavor, and Irving show, the catechetical genre had proved a great commercial
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success in England during the first decades of the nineteenth century, and Ackermann was aware of this. Addressed at school readers or at a domestic audience, the style appeared very appropriate for the diffusion of knowledge on a large scale, and they could be used as a model for other countries. Moreover, it appeared easier for Ackermann to commission the translation of some of these books than to have them written from scratch in some other format.15 Although the catechetical style for nonreligious schoolbooks seemed an innovation in the early nineteenth century, in fact the question-and-answer genre has a long tradition, its structure and function varying widely in different times and places. The catechism as a didactic method has been associated with two main types of texts. One is that of the philosophical dialogues of classical antiquity, dialogues that experienced a revival in the early modern period to become a major academic, courtly, and popular genre. In the seventeenth century the style was used for reporting scientific theories, with well-known examples in the treatises of Galileo and Robert Boyle. The other genre is that of the catechisms of Christian doctrine, used since the Middle Ages for the instruction of the clergy but becoming established as manuals for children and noneducated adults in the sixteenth centuryand of which Catholics and Protestants eventually produced their own versions.16 In the first type of text, the dialogue form served to present conflicting views with the didactic purpose of arriving at a convincing truth (Platonic dialogues) or at least to achieve a balance of probabilities (Ciceronian dialogues). In seventeenth-century scientific treatises the dialogue form served to introduce new ideas in fields dominated by rigid doctrines accepted over the centuries, by opposing different viewpoints, giving an appearance of consensus, and distancing the author from the controversy.17 Religious catechisms, by contrast, did not convey a sense of an interactive dialogue between the different voices but served rather to teach by indoctrination: aimed at a little-cultivated audience, they were meant to be memorized and were commonly used as schoolbooks, as an aid in the teaching of reading. In the eighteenth century another type of text based upon the interaction of different voices appeared: the dialogues or conversations for the teaching of science and general knowledge to women and children. Series such as Evenings at Home, the Edgeworths Harry and Lucy, or Marcets Conversations drew on the tradition of the Platonic dialogue with didactic purposes: they consisted of a conversation between children and their parents or tutors in a fictional setting, in which the amusement of the stories of the characters was combined with the instructive nature of knowledge. These texts provide a sense of real interplay between the
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various, well-defined characters. They were designed to be used in family circles rather than at schools.18 Spanish-speaking countries had been familiar with a different genre of question-and-answer books since the beginning of the nineteenth century: the so-called political or civic catechisms. These texts were small manuals aimed at teaching the fundamental principles of the form of government or the contents of the constitution to children and little-educated adults (although some of them were profound enough to be considered political treatises). This type of catechism is typical of countries that in this period were experiencing a transition from an absolutist regime to a constitutional one; they were widespread in France in the years following the Revolution, and soon after in Spain and the Spanish coloniesfirst to consolidate the principles of the Bourbon monarchy against the threat of French revolutionary ideas, then to disseminate the contents of the 1812 liberal constitution throughout all the corners of the empire. Once independent, the Spanish American countries employed the same genre to teach the basics of their new forms of government to their citizens.19 Civic catechisms followed very closely the order and structure of religious catechisms, preserving the relation between the voices of master and pupil, and were learned in schools together with and in the same manner as the latter (although in France they were meant to be taught instead of the religious manuals).20 On the contrary, as I will show, catechisms of other subjects of the Ackermann type represent both in form and content a step away from the religious catechisms and toward the conformation of the modern school textbook. Ackermanns catechisms, written in a strict question-and-answer form, resemble more closely the genre of religious catechisms: there is no setting and no narrative, only questions and answers. There are not even proper characters, since the voices have no names and no personality. This, however, constitutes a difference with respect to the religious catechisms, in which the voice that asks the questions can be identified with that of the priest to whom the child is supposed to respond with what he or she has already memorized.21 In fact, religious catechisms could be used for learning to read in traditional schools because the students already knew the answers (prayers, articles of faith, and so on) before they could even read the words that expressed them, so that there was still a chance that they would learn to read by association of the sounds with the printed symbols. In Ackermanns catechisms (as in Mavors, Irvings, and Pinnocks) the relation between the two interlocutors is reversed, with the questioning voice constituting that of ignorance and the responding voice representing knowledge. Consider the following two examples:
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Book History
Gaspar Astete, Catecismo de la doctrina cristiana (Madrid, 1803) Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Tell me the Articles. The Articles of Faith, etc. . . . What are the articles of faith? The main mysteries of it. If the first is to believe in God, who is God? The Holy Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, three different persons and one true God. Is the Father God? Yes, Father. Is the Son God? Yes, Father. Is the Holy Spirit God? Yes, Father.
Urcullu, Catecismo de historia natural (London, Ackermann, 1824) Q. Where does the Earth stand? A. On nothing; for if it was resting on something, it would not move. Q. Is the globe we live in constantly moving in the air? A. Yes, the same as the other planets: its rotation movement takes place from West to East . . . Q. How far is the Earth from the Sun? A. Ninety-five millions of English miles. Q. Wouldnt it be better if the sun was closer to us? A. No: because it would burn the Earth to ashes, and if it was further away we would freeze. (23; my translation)
Q. A. Q. A. Q. A.
In spite of the inversion of the roles, the structure of the catechisms remains rather linear compared with that of the conversational form from the late eighteenth century. In these texts, the dialogue allowed for interruptions and digressions, and the asymmetry between the different voices was not as striking as in the catechetical genre. In conversations, children could ask childrens questions and try to find answers based on their past experiences and draw their own conclusions, even conveying a sense of controversy, something that, as I will show, did not occur in a catechism. In the light of these related genres, the question-and-answer style of Ackermanns catechisms can be better understood as a didactic mechanism that allowed for cheap and extensive diffusion of knowledge.22 The catechetical form, drawing on the tradition of the most well known didactic genre, proved a suitable one for the instruction of all sorts of knowledge on a large scale. At the same time, the differences between the genres discussed suggest that nonreligious catechisms should be characterized as a genre on their own, with their own rules, purposes, and function. In fact, in the case of Ackermanns manuals it is clear that their producers were
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consciously trying to define a new type of catechismand thus creating a new kind of genredistancing themselves from the books of religious doctrine and defining modern and varied ways in which their catechisms should be used. Yet the similarity between the style of Ackermanns catechisms and that of the religious catechisms should be taken into consideration when analyzing actual practices of reading and use of the texts.
Learning Science in Questions and Answers

A textual analysis of the question-and-answer genre has led some historians of science and education to argue that underlying the use of the catechetical method in textbooks is an authoritarian structure of power. The fact that both the answers and the questions are predetermined makes the texts more closed than a plain narrative, in which the author does not control the possible interaction with the audience. Spontaneity is reduced because students are not given the chance to pose their own questions, and this structure may result in a separation of the realm of those who make science from that of those who are only to learn something about it.23 The use of this style in scientific textbooks in early nineteenth-century Britain has been interpreted as a way of reintroducing authoritarian social values that were part of the reaction against the French Revolution.24 Similarly, the use of the catechetical style in civic manuals in Spanish America in that period has also been understood as a way to promote the same unquestioned loyalty to the state that the religious catechisms encouraged vis-vis God and the Catholic church: paralleling their religious counterparts, the catechetical style of the civic catechisms presented constitutional articles, laws, rights, and obligations as a political creed that students had to memorize in order to become obedient and docile citizens.25 These interpretations, although very suggestive, explain only part of the question of how the catechetical genre worked and do not take into consideration how the books written in this style were actually read. Here I want to suggest that by looking at the contemporary assumptions about the question-and-answer genre and the ways in which its characteristics defined the role of writers and readers, it might be possible to gain a more precise insight into how the relation between book and reader actually functioned. First, it is important to notice that Ackermanns catechisms were presented as something different from religious catechisms. The first page of every text contained a note about the meaning of the word catechism; it stated that this term, applied generally to books of religion . . . , is not
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Book History
devoted exclusively to religious matters, but it means indistinctly any book written in questions and answers. It added that in that sense it is currently used in all the Catholic and educated countries of Europe. Given the similarity in form between these texts and the religious catechisms, the editor wanted to make it clear for his readers that these books had nothing to do with religious matters and also intended to link this secular use of the catechetical style to a new kind of genre that already existed in European countries. At the same time, the editors and translators suggested new ways of learning the catechisms that were significantly different from those in which the religious catechism had traditionally been learned during the colonial period. Ackermanns catechisms were designed with more than one kind of reader in mind. They were presented both as school textbooks and as books for self-improvement, even for educated readers. It was precisely the catechetical style that allowed for this wide range of audiences: on the one hand, the question-and-answer structure made them suitable for teaching, in particular within the mutual system of education. On the other, this same structure, as the translator of the catechism of natural history put it, allowed for the informed readers to use the texts as a kind of general and extensive index to which they can go whenever necessary, to look up certain passages they do not recall very well, and [therefore] the indications found in the catechism they consult will renew in their memory everything they had read about that matter.26 Catechisms such as those of agriculture or political economy had a special dedication to statesmen, who could use them as manuals to orient their policies. In fact, the texts were read by the wide range of audiences conceived of by their producers: elementary and secondary schools in Mexico City, Guatemala, Bogot, Caracas, Lima, and Buenos Aires are known to have used at least the texts on arithmetic, chemistry, geography, and morals, which soon began to be reprinted locally. Solitary readers in search of enlightening knowledge and politicians (such as the presidents of Guatemala and Argentina) mentioned reading those of geography, history, agriculture, or political economy. This varied reception may be accounted for both by the characteristics of the texts themselves which made them suitable for a wide range of audiencesand by the characteristics of the publishers heterogeneous network of distribution. As I have argued elsewhere, these books with their simple and didactic structure, symbolized for their readers the possibility to have access to knowledge that had been denied them under the Spanish domination; because of this characteristic, various issues of national identity with respect to the civilized world were defined in the process of their reading.27 Solitary readers complimented the self-contained structure of the catechisms because it allowed them to understand their content without the
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need of further explanations, be it from a teacher, a tutor, or a parent. Domingo Sarmiento (181188), future president of Argentina, came across these books as a self-taught adolescent when he was working as a shop attendant in an isolated town in the interior. He wrote in his memoirs the impression left by this encounter: Peoples, history, geography, religion, morals, politics, all that was already written [in my mind] as in an index; I lacked, however, the book that dealt with them, I felt alone in the world. . . . But there must be books, I said to myself, especially about those matters, for children; and, understanding them well, one can learn with no need of teachers; and I launched myself in search of those books, and in that remote province, at that hour of my resolution, I found what I was looking for, just as I had conceived it, prepared by patriots who loved America and who, from London, had provided for that South American need for education, answering my clamor: Ackermanns catechisms . . . I have found them! I could shout like Archimedes, because I had foreseen them, invented them, looked for such catechisms.28 This enthusiastic account raises several issues. On the one hand, it gives the sense that Ackermanns catechisms filled a gap: nothing similar existed in Spanish America that offered such a variety of accessible knowledge; and it is interesting to note that Sarmiento thought that such a gap would be filled out at any rate, in one way or the other, because of the will of the Spanish Americans to become educated. On the other, Sarmientos words suggest that the catechisms did indeed convey the information in such a way that it could be learned without the aid of teachers, confirming the notion that these were comprehensive and didactic books; he also uses the idea of an index to refer to the ways in which such information was organized. In fact, Sarmiento wrote this passage as part of a chapter on his upbringing in which he was trying to legitimize his self-taught efforts as solid as or even more so than the education of the members of the political and intellectual elite who had attended formal institutions. It was also the very limited demand placed on teachers that made Ackermanns catechisms suitable for school readers, especially for schools organized according to a system of education for the masses. The editors and authors of Ackermanns texts insisted that their books were most suitable for the monitorial system of education; in doing this, they were defining a new use for the catechetical genre, which not even in England had been connected so vehemently to that system of teaching.29 This system was a widely embraced novelty in early independent Spanish America,
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Book History
although hardly ever was it applied according to all of its orthodox principles. The monitorial, or mutual, system was specifically designed to make the students conduct the teaching by themselves and reduce the functions of the teacher to a minimum: large numbers of pupils could be instructed under the supervision of one single master, and the students learned reading, writing, and arithmetic simultaneously. It came to replace a traditional system of elementary education in which students learned directly from the teacher the basic notions of reading in the first year, writing in the second, and arithmetic in further years. Developed in Britain by Joseph Lancaster and Andrew Bell for the education of the poor, the monitorial system became widespread in Spanish America (with and without British intervention) during the first two or three decades of independence, as it was seen as a cheap and efficient way to eradicate illiteracy. It was used not only in elementary schools but in secondary schools as well, and was applied to the teaching of a variety of subjects.30 It must be said that since the eighteenth century there had been some elementary schools, especially those run by the religious orders of the Jesuits and Bethlemites, that employed the mechanism of students teaching other students and other elements characteristic of the monitorial system (use of sandboxes, occasional division of the class into groups), but these were not articulated into a systematic, quasi-military method like that established by Bell and Lancaster.31 The principles of the system were more or less as follows: the school (one large classroom) was divided into small groups of children classified according to their individual progress in each subject. Each class was conducted by a monitor or instructor, who was a student slightly more advanced in that particular subject, and who had been previously trained by the master in what he or she had to teach to the group. Lessons were short, lasting from fifteen to thirty minutes, and students moved constantly from one area of the classroom to another. Writing was taught while the students were sitting in rows, with the use of sandboxes and sticks, whereas reading and arithmetic were learned by means of students standing in semicircles around teaching posts on which cards with the lessons were hung. Unlike previous school systems, the mutual system allowed for writing to be taught simultaneously with readingnamely, in separate lessons taking place the same day. This was possible thanks to the use of inexpensive materials such as sandboxes to delineate the letters instead of paper and ink; in ordinary schools the teaching of writing was delayed until a later year because it required higher costs and could not be provided to large numbers of students (or the students parents would not be able to afford it). The religious catechism was also learned in semicircles, by means of recitation and repetition: the monitor would read the questions and the
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answers from the book, which the rest would repeat several times until they had learned them. In more advanced classes, children were expected to know by heart three or four pages of the text and be able to ask questions of one another and be promoted to higher places in their class (even to the post of monitor) for their performancethis constituted part of the active character of the system so praised by its advocates. Ideally, the whole catechism should be memorized in that way.32 (Figs. 2 and 3). This form of teaching the catechisms was different from the traditional one, which was also based on memorization but in which it was the teacher who asked the questions for all the students to answer in unison. Catechisms of other subjects were learned in the same manner as the religious catechism: through standing in semicircles and using recitation, repetition, and mutual questioning. According to Jos Joaqun de Mora, one of the translators of Ackermanns catechisms, the advantage of the question-and-answer style lay in the convenience it offered to classify in the memory the various parts of the science that is being learned: [Mutual education] consists mainly in the right division of labor and in the links and communication among the pupils, in such a way that the most advanced ones teach the less advanced ones. Now, all these conditions are fulfilled in a catechism; of all the means that can be invented to divide a great mass of knowledge, the alternative of questions and answers is the only one that, without dismembering the unity of what hes being taught, offers its various parts to the comprehension, judgment, and memory.33 Ackermanns science catechisms were used in a number of schools of primary and secondary education, most of them organized under the monitorial system. The catechisms of geography and arithmetic were widely used in boys and girls, public and private, primary schools; those on natural history, agriculture, algebra, geometry, chemistry, and domestic and rural industry were employed in establishments of secondary and technical education that were created in the early independent years under a modern and liberal curriculum.34 Learning with catechisms in a monitorial school could reach high levels of sophistication. A newspaper from Buenos Aires gave a description of how the students learned Ackermanns catechism of geography in a particularly well-organized monitorial school (the Gimnasio Argentino) in 1827: The students learn by heart and recite in semicircles a number of questions and answers from the Catecismo de geografa published in London by Ackermann. Once they finish with this, they go to
Figure 2. Arrangement for the teaching of reading in a monitorial school. From Joseph Lancaster, The Lancasterian System of Education, with Improvements (Baltimore: Ogden Niles, 1821), 31. (By permission of The British Library; Shelfmark: 8305.f.16.)
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Figure 3. Manner of teaching reading and the catechism in a monitorial school. Students changed places within their semicircle according to the number of correct answers they gave to the monitor. From Joseph Lancaster, The Lancasterian System of Education, with Improvements (Baltimore: Ogden Niles, 1821), 32. (By permission of The British Library; Shelfmark: 8305.f.16.)
their benches and print on their slates what they have just learned. This can be done either by delineating or by writing. If the question refers to the contour of some part of the world, the location of a country within that part, or the demarcation of the limits of a nation, the student delineates the object [on his or her slate or sandbox]. But if the question can only be answered with words and not with pictures, the student writes down the answer. . . . A similar method is used for the teaching of arithmetic: the theory is learned in the semicircles, and the exercises are done on the slates. The instructor dictates the exercises to correct them later, just like in the lessons of writing.35
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The author added that such division of labor and repetition of the same ideas . . . ease all the difficulties involved in studying and make this task an agreeable and varied one; thus knowledge is acquired without noticing . . . the childrens imagination is not overwhelmed with the view of an enormous mass of information . . . and their reason is not confused under the heavy weight of unintelligible and obscure issues.36 Thus, in order to be easy to memorize, the answers had to be as short and as differentiated as possible. Andrew Bell had already stated that in a monitorial school the learning should be divided into short and varied lessons, with the purpose of maintaining the attention of the children throughout the whole day: When a lesson has been . . . prepared or learnt, it is said by the scholars to the teacher [or monitor] in portions by rotation: and if well said, they proceed to the next; if not, they must repeat the same lesson, even shortened, if need be, till it be well learnt. . . . The same division . . . of each lesson into parts, and learning, portion by portion, is observed in committing to memory the catechism, religious exercises, addition, and multiplication tables, and throughout every branch of education. The rule of the school isshort, easy, and frequent lessonsdivided into short parts, gotten one by one, and well said.37 Based on these principles, Ackermanns catechisms tended to make the questions systematic and gradual, in many cases improving the order and clarity of the original English versions. In the more descriptive subjects, the questions were of similar form for each of the various topics: the catechism of natural history asked in each lesson the same questions about the physical appearance of each animal, its character, and its utility for humankind; likewise, the catechism of geography organized the description of each country according to the following set of questions. For example: What is Spain? What is the weather of Spain? What is the terrain of Spain? What is the character of the Spaniards? What is the population of Spain? What are the main rivers of Spain? What are the main cities of Spain? What are the main products of Spain? What is the religion of Spain? Other subjects were structured in such a way that each new question served to connect the previous answer with a new topic. This is an example taken from the catechism of astronomy (1824): Q. Provide a general idea of the celestial bodies considered by Astronomy: A. The sky presents at night a countless number of luminous bodies, different in size, in intensity of light, and in movement. Of these bodies, some remain always at the same reciprocal distance and
35
seem farther away from the earth than the others, which vary continuously in their reciprocal distance and move at different velocities. The first are called fixed stars, and the second planets, and they form the planetary system. Q. What is the planetary system? A. The planetary system, also known as the solar system, is the whole of the sun and the planets that move around that star. Q. In how many classes are the planets that move around the sun divided? A. In three, namely: primary planets, asteroids or minor planets, and secondary planets or satellites. Q. What are the primary planets? A. Mercury, Venus, the Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Herschel . . . (4; my translation) These ways of structuring the information made each question with its answer constitute a unit in itself, and in the second case it also gave continuity to the information. This allowed for students to ask one another questions in a different order, which was a way to help fix things in the memory. In Moras words, the questions of a catechism are laid out in such a way that in addition to helping increase the difficulties in a progressive manner, they can serve to examine the students, because each question contains a full sense, and does not require any of the others to be understandable.38 The structure of the catechisms was ideal for an essential component of the monitorial system, the principle of order. An obsession with order was activated through a strict system of discipline and vigilance exerted from every angle of the classroom. Every movement of the students was synchronized and depended on the commands constantly uttered by the monitors to their groups, such as: in! (to enter the classroom), hands out! clean slates! write! show slates! slates down! and so on. The room was preferably on an inclined plane, to allow the teacher to see all that happened in it; detailed registers of attendance, improvement, and behavior were taken every day by the monitors and the teacher; examinations were conducted always at the end of each lesson; and a scrupulous system of rewards and punishments regulated the performance of the students. Order was also the overarching principle for the gradual and systematic progression of the lessons; this progression was supposed to be proportionate to the capacities of the students, whose minds worked by acquisition of successive impressions and ideas. An article in one of Ackermanns magazines made the following analogy between the order of the monitorial system and that of the planetary system:
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Book History
In the Lancasterian method everything is done gradually and without noticing. We could compare it to the planetary system, in which every celestial body attracts another of less volume, and keeps it within the fixed bounds of its orbit. Everything is proportional to the respective forces. A step forward means that the student has the capacity required to do it; at the same time, the harmony and order of the whole shape the spirit and the imagination of the pupils and provide them from an early age with a fairness of judgment with which later they can reject, in all realms, everything that might contribute to confusion and disorder.39 If the monitorial system reflected the order, harmony, and balance of Nature herself, a catechism was the corresponding genre that allowed for knowledge to be presented according to the same principles: A catechism is for literature what maps are for the study of geography, or what the camera obscura is for landscape painting: the aim of all these things is to reduce the objects to small but exact dimensions keeping among them the right proportion and harmony, so that the picture does not present to the imagination the idea of Chaos.40 Confusion, disorder, and Chaos in the process of learning should be avoided at all means. An order in method was a representation of the order in naturewhich, in this quote, echoes the principles of the picturesque theoriesand, by extension, of the social order.41 The layout of the catechism was particularly well suited to convey these notions in a school environment organized according to the principles of the monitorial system, but it also served an equivalent function for the individual, adult reader. As Joseph Blanco White, another editor of Ackermanns magazines, wrote, the main advantage of the catechetical style was that it fixed the attention of the reader: in reading books where the discourse is presented in unbroken sequence, in an orational style, the attention weakens little by little, until it moves imperceptibly to other objects, without one being able to stop it. For those who were little used to studying, it was problematic to find clearly and distinctly the question, object, or difficulty of what they are reading.42 However, it is important to notice that the monitorial system in Spanish America did not express, in this period, the same concern with preventing the lower classes from social subversion that it had in England. In Spanish America the main political and social concern was with the need of the new states to consolidate their authority, and thus with the importance of making citizens aware of and compliant with the new rules and legislation. There was no fear (at least in the first years of independence) of a social revolution, as there was in several European countries after the French example.43
37
In any case, the catechetical method of Ackermanns textbooks seems to have indeed contributed to fixing the attention of an isolated reader such as the self-taught adolescent Domingo F. Sarmiento, for whom it also facilitated memorization of the contents of the books. Thus he described the experience in his memoirs: There was the ancient history, and those Pyramids, and that Nile of which the priest Oro [his former tutor] had told me. I learned the history of Greece by heart, followed by that of Rome, feeling successively that I was Leonidas and Brutus, Aristides and Camillus, Harmodios and Epaminondas, and all this while I was selling yerba and sugar, and I put a bad face to those who came to take me out of that world I had discovered and in which I was living. I started reading early in the mornings, just after sweeping the shop, and one Mrs. Laora used to pass [in front of the shop] on her way to Church and on her way back, and her eyes met day after day, month after month, this motionless boy, insensitive to all perturbation, his eyes fixed on a book; about which, shaking her head, she used to say at home: This young lad cant be good! If books were good he would not read them with so much determination!44 Keeping ones attention focused on a book seems to have been considered unusual. For some it was a serious difficulty, as the following story, a joke taken from a Mexican newspaper of 1825, suggests: A young, German lady, whose education had not been very well taken care of, was sent to the court of Brunswick. Realizing the inconvenience of her ignorance, she made the resolution to study and asked the Duchess to lend her a book to start off with. The Duchess applauded her decision and lent her a dictionary. A few days later Her Highness asked the lady how she had liked the bookInfinitely good, she replied, this is the best book I have ever seen. The phrases are all short and easy to understand; and the letters are beautifully ordered, like the soldiers in a parade. In other books I had seen, the letters were laid out in confusion, like the plebs; there was no pleasure in reading, and the texts could not be understood.45 A dictionary is similar to a catechism in its structure of short, selfcontained sections and in its providing definitions of as many concepts as possible. Indeed, in spite of the varied nature of these descriptions, they seem to confirm Blanco Whites opinion in the sense that the utility of this
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Book History
[catechetical] method is to confine the attention on the discourse, and to oblige [the reader] to follow a certain direction, allowing no digression or loss incited by the mans natural indolence.46 Ackermanns catechisms were in fact designed to provide definitions of as many concepts as possible, while using the questions to establish a gradual and progressive order between them: each notion had to be understood (or at least memorized) before the reader advanced to the next one. This places them in clear contrast with the religious catechisms, in which, as I mentioned before, the questions constituted not a means to articulate the different notions, but rather a test of what the children already knew. However, in spite of the inversion of the roles, the structure of the catechisms gives the books a much more passive character than that of, for example, conversational texts from the eighteenth century. In a conversation, the dialogue was used to suggest interruptions and real questioning and digressions, and the interaction between the different voices seemed more spontaneous. Children could ask childrens questions and try to find answers based in their past experiences and draw their own conclusions (although some conversations allowed for this more than others). In a catechism, any interaction between the two voices was almost completely ruled out; the voice that asked seemed to have no previous ideas and was just ready to receive what the expert voice had to say. Consider how the notion of gravity is explained in Evenings at Home and in Ackermanns Catecismo de astronoma: Evenings at Home (London, 1794) WHY AN APPLE FALLS. PAPA (said Lucy) I have been reading to-day that Sir Isaac Newton was led to make some of his great discoveries by seeing an apple fall from a tree. What was there extraordinary in that? P. There was nothing extraordinary; but it happened to catch his attention and set him a thinking. L. And what did he think about? P. He thought by what means the apple was brought to the ground. Catecismo de astronoma (London, R. Ackermann, 1824) Q.Explain some of the preliminary ideas necessary for the understanding of the theory of attraction and gravitation. A. It is undeniable that there is a force in virtue of which all the bodies taken away from the surface of the earth then fall down onto it. The most convincing proof of the existence of this property is that the bodies fall onto the surface of the earth in the point where we live, in exactly the same way as it happens in the point where
39
L. Why, I could have told him thatbecause the stalk gave way and there was nothing to support it. . . . P. Is an apple animate or inanimate? L. Inanimate, to be sure! P. And can inanimate things move of themselves? L. NoI think notbut the apple falls because it is forced to fall. P. Right! Some force out of itself acts upon it, otherwise it would remain for ever where it was, notwithstanding it were loosened from the tree. L. Would it! P. Undoubtedly!for there are only two ways in which it could be moved; by its own power of motion, or the power of somewhat else moving it. Now the first you acknowledge it has not; the cause of its motion must therefore be the second. And what that is, was the subject of the philosophers enquiry. L. But every thing falls to the ground as well as an apple, when there is nothing to keep it up. P. Truethere must therefore be an universal cause of this tendency to fall. L. And what is it? P. Why, if things out of the earth cannot move themselves to it, there can be no other cause of their coming together, than that the earth pulls them. L. But the earth is no more animate than they are; so how can it pull?
our antipodes live. Since the directions of the falling bodies are diametrically opposed from opposed points of the globe, and they show the same tendency to fall towards a common center, then we need to believe that there is in this center some certain power that attracts them. Q.Why has the power of the earth to attract bodies been called attraction and gravity? A. The power of the earth to attract bodies is called attraction because it is evident that in this case the earth exerts an action similar to that of the lodestone with iron; it has been also called gravity because it is known that this power exists generally in all the bodies, and it is proportional to the amount of matter they have, no matter what their volume or their exterior shape are. Q.Tell me of an experiment that proves that matter exerts an attraction proportional to its amount. A. It is known that bodies fall in a straight line onto the surface of the earth, attracted by the totality of their mass. In spite of this, the mountains that exist on the surface of the earth exert an attraction that can change that straight line of that falling. This has been experimented in the mountain of Scheballien, in Scotland, and in the Chimborazo, in Peru. (1516; my translation)
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P. Well objected! This will bring us to the point. Sir Isaac Newton after deep meditation discovered that there was a law in nature called attraction, by virtue of which every particle of matter, that is, every thing of which the world is composed, draws towards it every other particle of matter, with a force proportioned to its size and distance. Lay two marbles on the table. They have a tendency to come together, and if there were nothing else in the world, they would come together, but they are also attracted by the table, by the ground, and by every thing besides in the room; and these different attractions pull against each other. Now, the globe of the earth is a prodigious mass of matter, to which nothing near it can bear any comparison. It draws, therefore, with mighty force every thing within its reach, which is the cause of their falling; and this is called the gravitation of bodies, or what gives them weight. When I lift up any thing, I act contrary to this force, for which reason it seems heavy to me; and the heavier, the more matter it contains, since that increases the attraction of the earth for it. Do you understand this? (11823)
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Readers of conversational texts were expected to identify with the charactersyoung readers with the children and adults with the parents or tutors. In these dialogues, the implied child reader was an active and curious creature able to think by him- or herself, and the implied adult reader was someone who let the pupil try and make his or her own progress though the pupil knew all the answers anyway. Catechisms, on the other hand, projected an image of a passive reader to whom everything was provided; even the questions asked were fairly standard and bore little relation to what had been said before. Giving no idea of the writer behind it, Ackermanns catechisms presented the information as a series of neat, clearly distinct concepts. The knowledgeable voice was devoted to describing only facts, excluding all sense of controversy. There was no discussion of inconsistencies among different theories that could lead the readers to some confusion or digression. If something of that sort appeared in the original English catechism, it tended to be eliminated in the Spanish translation. Thus did the writer of the Catecismo de qumica in his adapted translation of Samuel Parkess Chemical Catechism: Samuel Parkes, A chemical Catechism (10th ed., 1822) Chapter X. On Metals. Has there not been great difference of opinion as to the best mode of classing the metals? There has; but as all the metals combine with oxygen, though in different proportions and under different circumstances, the mode in which this combination takes place, and the properties of the compound, furnish the best data for any division of the metals; and it is upon these principles that the whole have now been divided into the seven following classes: 1. Metals that combine with oxygen and form alkalis. 2. Metals that combine with oxygen and form alkaline earths. 3. Metals that combine with oxygen and form residual earths. 4. Metals Catecismo de qumica (1824) Chapter X. On Metals. Q. How are metals classified? A. In seven classes, namely: 1. Metals that combine with oxygen and form alkalis. 2. Metals that combine with oxygen and form alkaline earths. 3. Metals that combine with oxygen and form residual earths. 4. Metals that absorb oxygen and decompose water at high temperature. 5. Metals that absorb oxygen at different temperatures, but which do not decompose water at any temperature. 6. Metals that do not decompose water, but absorb oxygen and become acids. 7. Metals that do not decompose water nor absorb
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that absorb oxygen and decompose water at high temperature. 5. Metals that absorb oxygen at different temperatures, but which do not decompose water at any temperature. 6. Metals that do not decompose water, but absorb oxygen and become acids. 7. Metals that do not decompose water nor absorb oxygen from the atmosphere at any temperature.
oxygen from the atmosphere at any temperature. (My translation)
As a result of this structure, in Ackermanns texts of natural sciences the answers were presented as though Nature herself was speaking in her impersonal, undisputed, clear voice. What she said could be memorized, repeated, and rewritten by anyone; it did not have the subjective mark of the teacher or the author of the book. Furthermore, the questions conveyed a sense that nature could be interrogated. This, however, did not mean that the readers had the power to pose their own questions, despite the impression given by the monitorial system that the students were playing an active role in the process of questioning. Nor did this interrogation mean that nature could be tested. Experiments were completely excluded from the original in the translation of the chemical catechism, and even the catechism of arithmetic contained no exercises. (In fact, experiments, exercises, and problems were added in further editions of the same texts published in Paris or Spanish America). Even if this exclusion was intended for the sake of brevity or simplicity, the result for the readers was a notion of knowledge that consisted of prefabricated facts, not something acquired through investigation. In spite of the ideal of the educated elites of teaching natural sciences to transform the ways of thinking of Spanish Americans, the assumption seemed to be that Spanish Americans, whether children or adults, were not ready to question nature by themselves. Knowledge was presented in such a way that it seemed to confirm the notion that those new citizens were in an early stage of their development that was not suitable for the full use of their mental faculties.
Conclusion
In this essay I have tried to make sense of the question-and-answer style in nineteenth-century textbooks by considering the catechism from the point
43
of view of genre. I have used a definition of genre that involves the discursive and material conventions and systems of expectations shared by both the producers and the readers of a particular type of texts. Looking specifically at the treatment of nature in Ackermanns catechisms, I have tried to illuminate the way in which a genre of texts was created, how it was read, and what its implications were for the kind of knowledge that was being conveyed. Ackermanns manuals were part of an emerging genre of nonreligious catechisms in Britain, a genre that they introduced into Spanish America, where it acquired a foundational character. Yet this genre was defined not only by the publishers concerns or the writers intentions, but also by the actual practices of appropriation and use by readers. Solitary readers or school readers appropriated these texts in a sense that was partly conditioned by the conventions of the books themselves and partly by the local practices of reading and learning. In schools, Ackermanns catechisms were adapted to a new system of education that presupposed a high degree of participation of the students in the teaching process; but at the same time the texts preserved an echo of the authoritarian and dogmatic teaching of the religious catechism. The implications of this new definition of the catechetical genre for the learning of natural sciences are significant. The design of these catechisms and the uses they had in practice led to a disappearance of the subjective element in the conveying of knowledge: all traces of an author were effaced from the books, as were those of a teacher; it was rather as if Nature herself was speaking in the texts. At the same time, knowledge became something uncontroversial that anybody could learn, repeat, and communicate to others. All the questions and answers were already given and spontaneity in the process of learning was totally eradicated. In the Spanish American context, knowledge presented in this manner seemed to correspond with the assumption, shared by producers and readers, that Spanish Americans had no previous ideas about nature, that they had lived in ignorance during three centuries of Spanish domination, and that this kind of text had the function of filling that mental gap. Innovative as they are in purpose and presentation, Ackermanns catechisms are especially revealing of the connections between genre, authorship, and readership. It is, however, my belief that the category of genre considered in its particular historical circumstances provides a generally applicable and valuable tool for the analysis of the production and transmission of books and knowledge.
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Notes
1. Richard Jones to Joseph Lancaster, Mexico, 29 November 1825. American Antiquarian Society (Worcester, Mass.), Lancaster Papers, 2/4. 2. Phrases of this kind (con el poco hbito que [Amrica] tena de pensar. . . . [y el poco] empleo activo de las facultades mentales) color the prospectus of the instructive magazine Biblioteca Americana, published in London in 1823 by an association of Spanish Americans in exile, known as The Society of Americans. The editors were Juan Garca del Ro and Andrs Bello. 3. John Ford, Rudolph Ackermann: Culture and Commerce in Latin America. 1822 1828, in Andrs Bello: The London Years, ed. John Lynch (Surrey: Richmond, 1982), 13752; Rudolph Ackermann: Publisher to Latin America, in Bello y Londres: Segundo Congreso del Bicentenario, 2 vols. (Caracas: Arte, 1980), 1:197254; Vicente Llorens Castillo, Liberales y romnticos: Una emigracin espaola en Inglaterra (18231834), 2d ed. (Madrid: Castalia, 1968); Eugenia Roldn-Vera, Useful Knowledge for Export, in Books and the Sciences in History, ed. Marina Frasca-Spada and Nicholas Jardine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 33853. 4. Irvings Catechisms was published by Longman and Company, and Mavors Catechisms by Lackington and Company. Pinnocks Catechisms was published, after 1821, by George B. Whittaker, who bought from Pinnock and Maunder the copyright of the series for possibly more than thirty thousand pounds. This sum, apart from the countless number of editions the catechisms had from the 1810s to the 1840s, speaks of the great commercial success of the series. See Thomas Frognall Dibdin, The Library Companion, 2d ed., 2 vols. (London: Triphook and Leopard, and J. Major, 1825), 1: xiii. 5. Cf. Juan Jos Saldaa, Ciencia y felicidad pblica en la Ilustracin americana, in Historia social de las ciencias en Amrica Latina, Juan Jos Saldaa, coordinator (Mxico: Universidad Nacional Autnoma de MxicoMiguel ngel Porra, 1996), 16876. 6. Robert Darnton, History of Reading, in New Perspectives on Historical Writing, ed. Peter Burke (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991), 14067, esp. 15859. 7. Chartier, Labourers and Voyagers: From the Text to the Reader, in Readers and Reading, ed. and with an introduction by Andrew Bennett (New York: Longman, 1995), 13249. (First published in Diacritics, 22, no. 2 (1992): 4961, trans. J. A. Gonzlez). 8. E. D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), esp. chap. 3, 68126. 9. Ibid., 103. Hirsch uses this notion of genre to claim that validity in interpretation depends on a valid inference about genre. However, in spite of his use of the notion of genre as something shared between speaker (or author) and interpreter (or reader), he states that, ultimately, validity requires a meaning that is stable and determinate, and that this stability and determination emanate from the authors determining will; therefore, he concludes that all valid interpretation of every sort is founded on the re-cognition of what an author meant (126). This conclusion, I think, narrows his initial definition of genre by disregarding the possibility of different interpretations generated within the conventions of the same type of speech act. 10. Works of a structuralist vein, such as Hayden Whites influential Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), stand on the premise that there is a limited number of genresin this case genres or styles of historical narrativewhich, variously combined, remain constant through history. Another set of texts such as the standard work of Alistair Fowler, Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes (first pub. 1982; Oxford: Clarendon,
45
1985), attempt a more diachronic notion of genre but still apply modern categories to past forms of discourse. Here I am concerned with a definition of genre grounded in historical and social circumstances. 11. Cf. Tzvetan Todorov, The Origin of Genres, in his Genres in Discourse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 1326. Two major works on the treatment of a literary genre as a historical category are Ian Watt, The Rise of the English Novel (London: Hogarth, 1957); and Michael McKeon, The Origins of the English Novel (London: Radius, 1988). 12. Robert Hodge and Gunther Kress provide a social definition of genre along these lines: in their view, genres are typical forms of text which link kinds of producer, consumer, topic, medium, manner and occasion. In this sense, genres are socially ascribed classifications of semiotic form. See their Social Semiotics (Cambridge and Oxford: Polity Press, 1988), 7. 13. This phenomenon has been very little studied. For a suggestive introduction, see Franois Xavier Guerra, Modernidad e independencias: Ensayos sobre las revoluciones hispanas (Mxico: MAPFRE-Fondo de Cultura Econmica, 1993); Franois Xavier Guerra, Annick Lemprire, et al., Los espacios pblicos en Hispanoamrica: Ambigedades y problemas, siglos XVIIIXIX (Mxico: Centro Francs de Estudios Mexicanos y CentroamericanosFondo de Cultura Econmica, 1998). 14. Both the Mexican charg daffaires Vicente Rocafuerte and the Spanish editor of Ackermanns first magazine for Spanish America, Joseph Blanco White, mentioned in their writings that they had thought of a plan for such a series before Ackermann put it into practice. See Variedades, 5 (October 1824): 459; and Vicente Rocafuerte, un americano libre, prologue and notes by Jos Antonio Fernndez de Castro (Mxico: Secretara de Educacin Pblica, 1947), 49. 15. It is likely that Ackermann arranged with G. B. Whittaker for the translation and publication of Pinnocks catechisms, something suggested by the physical similarity of both series and the use of the same title pages; the only indication of a possible agreement between the two publishers is a mention in Blanco White, Student Journal, of a meeting he had with Ackermann, Whittaker and William Blackwood on 6 July 1824 (University of Liverpool, Sidney Jones Library, Blanco White Papers, BW III/64). 16. Catechetical works for the instruction of laypeople are a product of the Reformation. In 1529 Luther published his Deutsch Catechism and a Small Catechism (Enchiridion: Der kleine Catechismus), the former for pastors, preachers, and teachers, and the latter as manual for instruction for children and laypeople; Calvin produced his Geneva Catechism, for children, in 1541; the Heidelberg Catechism of 1563 (followed by the Little Heidelberg Catechism in 1585) provided the unified doctrinal standards for the Reformed churches. After the Council of Trent, the Catholic church also ordered the production of catechisms for children and simple folk. The catechisms of Peter Canisius (155657), Edmund Auger (1563), and, above all, Robert Bellarmines Dottrina Christiana Breve (1597) constituted an important tool of the Counter-Reformation and began a long tradition of catechetical manuals for the evangelization of the peoples of the newly discovered territories. See Berard Marthaler, The Catechism Yesterday and Today: The Evolution of a Genre (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1995); J. P. Marmion, The Penny Catechism: A Long Lasting Text, Paradigm 26 (October 1998): 1924; Javier Ocampo Lpez, Los catecismos polticos en la independencia de Hispanoamrica: De la monarqua a la repblica (Tunja: Universidad Pedaggica y Tecnolgica de Colombia, 1988), 12; 17. See Geoffrey Cantor, The Rhetoric of Experiment, in The Uses of Experiment: Studies in the Natural Sciences, ed. David Gooding, Trevor Pinch, and Simon Schaffer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 15980; Nicholas Jardine, Demonstration,
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Dialectic, and Rhetoric in Galileos Dialogues, in The Shapes of Knowledge from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, ed. Donald R. Kelley and Richard H. Popkin (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1991), 10112; and Greg Myers, Science for Women and Children: the Dialogue of Popular Science in the Nineteenth Century, in Nature Transfigured: Science and Literature, 1700 1900, ed. John Christie and Sally Shuttleworth (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989), 171200. 18. Cantor, Science for Women and Children; Aileen Fyfe, Young Readers and the Sciences, in Books and the Sciences in History, ed. Nick Jardine and Marina Frasca-Spada (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 27690. 19. A few civic catechisms were also published in England at the end of the eighteenth century, such as Robert Robinsons Political Catechism (London, 1782) and Randols A political catechism of man (London, 1795). In Ireland, the Catholic Butlers Catechism added a few questions about civil and social responsibilities in its 1802 edition. In both cases the tendency seems to have been the reinforcement of the foundations of the monarchy against subversive ideas believed coming from revolutionary France. Marthaler, The Catechism Yesterday and Today, 98. 20. For an analysis of the teaching of civic catechisms, see Eugenia Roldn-Vera, The Monitorial System of Education and Civic Culture in Early Independent Mexico, Paedagogica Historica, n. s., 35, no. 2 (1999): 297331. 21. Most religious catechisms followed this pattern, where the priest, the master, or the catechist interrogated the disciples or pupils. An exception is Bellarmines Longer Declaration of Christian Doctrine (Dichiarazione pui copiosa della dottrina Christiana), 1598, in which the order is reversed: the questions are posed by the pupil and answered by the teacher. However, this was a catechism specifically addressed to teachers, as a companion to his Short Catechism for children. Marthaler, The Catechism Yesterday and Today, 51. 22. In first part of the nineteenth century there were further variations of the questionand-answer genre. One is the so-called interrogative system promoted by Sir Richard Phillips in a number of textbooks. The system required two separate books (or at least two different sections in one book) for the same subject: the text-book, which provided only information, and the Questions, which were presented in a different order from the information in the textbook and required some reasoning on the part of the students to answer them, allegedly in their own words (John Issitt, Introducing Sir Richard Phillips, Paradigm 26 [October 1998]: 2545). Eventually, most textbooks evolved to their modern form, which, essentially, combines narrative pieces with interrogative sections aimed at helping the student understand and assimilate the information previously provided. 23. Greg Myers, Fiction for Facts: The Form and Authority of the Scientific Dialogue, History of Science 30 (1992): 22147; and Greg Myers, Science for Women and Children. 24. James Secord, Newton in the Nursery: Tom Telescope and the Philosophy of Tops and Balls, 17611838, History of Science 23 (1985): 12751, esp. 144. 25. Anne Staples, El catecismo como libro de texto durante el siglo XIX, in Los intelectuales y el poder en Mxico: Memorias de la VI Conferencia de Historiadores Mexicanos y Estadounidenses, ed. Roderic Ai Camp et al. (Mxico, University of California at Los Angeles-El Colegio de Mxico, 1991), 491506.; Eugenia Roldn-Vera, The Monitorial System of Education. 26. Jos de Urcullu, Catecismo de historia natural (London: R. Ackermann, 1826), vvi. 27. Eugenia Roldn-Vera, Book Export and the Transmission of Knowledge from Britain to Early-Independent Spanish America (Ph.D. diss., Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, 2001), esp. chap. 6. 28. Domingo F. Sarmiento, Recuerdos de provincia (1st ed. 1850; Buenos Aires, Losada, 1995), 23738. (My translation).
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29. Both Lancaster and Bell recommended the use of some nonreligious catechetical works, but not necessarily for use in the classroom (for keeping in school libraries). 30. See Webster E. Browning, Joseph Lancaster, James Thomson, and the Lancasterian System of Mutual Instruction, with Special Reference to Hispanic America, Hispanic American Historical Review 4 (1921): 4998; Rosa del Carmen Bruno-Jofre, La introduccin del sistema lancasteriano en el Per: Liberalismo, masonera y libertad religiosa, in Protestantes, liberales y francmasones: Sociedades de ideas y modernidad en Amrica Latina, siglo XIX, comp. Jean-Pierre Bastian (Mxico: Fondo de Cultura EconmicaComisin de Estudios de Historia de la Iglesia en Amrica Latina, 1990), 8496; Roldn-Vera, The Monitorial System of Education; Dorothy Tanck Estrada, La educacin ilustrada, 17861836: Educacin primaria en la ciudad de Mxico (Mxico: El Colegio de Mxico, 1984); Edgar Vaughan, Joseph Lancaster en Caracas (18241827), trans. Hctor D. Mago Rodrguez, 2 vols. (Caracas: Ediciones del Ministerio de Educacin, 198789). 31. Dorothy Tanck Estrada, Las escuelas lancasterianas en la Ciudad de Mxico, Historia Mexicana 22, no. 4 (1973): 494513; Juan Probst, La instruccin primaria durante la dominacin espaola en el territorio que forma actualmente la Repblica Argentina (Buenos Aires: Instituto de Didctica, Facultad de Filosofa y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1940), 1929. 32. In general, the principles of the monitorial system in the Spanish American manuals followed very closely those of the English texts of Lancaster and Bell, although the former tended to endow some of the school practices with republican values. Bell prescribed the teaching of the religious catechism, while Lancaster recommended the memorizing of extracts of the Scriptures themselves. In Spanish America the teaching of the Catholic catechism prevailed. See Roldn-Vera, The Monitorial System of Education; also Andrew Bell, An Experiment in Education, Made at the Male Asylum at Egmore, Near Madras (London: Cadell and Davies, 1805); Joseph Lancaster, The Lancasterian System of Education, with Improvements (Baltimore: Ogden Niles, 1821); Lucas Alamn, Instruccin para el establecimiento de escuelas, segn los principios de la enseanza mutua, La Sabatina Universal (Mxico), nos. 1618 (SeptemberOctober 1825); Compaa Lancasteriana (Mxico), Sistema de enseanza mutua para las escuelas de primeras letras de la repblica mexicana (Mxico, 1824); series of articles on education in El Sol (Mexico), 2427 June 1826; Manual del sistema de enseanza mutua aplicado a las escuelas primarias de los nios (Bogot, 1826); Plan de enseanza para escuelas de primeras letras (Buenos Aires, 1819); Manual para las escuelas elementales de nias, o resumen de enseanza mutua aplicada a la lectura, escritura, clculo y costura (Buenos Aires: Imp. de los Expsitos, 1823). 33. Museo Universal de Ciencias y Artes (London: R. Ackermann, 1825), 218. (My translation). 34. Roldn-Vera, Book Export and the Transmission of Knowledge, chap. 6. 35. Crnica poltica y literaria de Buenos Aires, 9 June 1827 (my translation). The author of this piece is Jos Joaqun de Mora, translator of some of Ackermanns books and catechisms (including the geography one) who was invited by President Bernardino Rivadavia to edit this journal. 36. Crnica poltica y literaria, 9 June 1827. (My translation). 37. Andrew Bell, The Madras School (London: T. Bensley, 1808), 4244. 38. Museo Universal de Ciencias y Artes (1825), 218. (My translation). 39. Ibid., 271. (My translation). 40. Urcullu, Catecismo de historia natural, vvi. (My translation). 41. The concern with order in early independent Spanish America was also reflected in the architectural and urban reforms carried out in this period, with the aim of giving a structure to society: in some cases there was a tendency to replace the oversentimental and
48
Book History
disarrayed baroque forms of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with new harmonic, neoclasical designs. See, for example, Ternando Aliata y Mara La Munilla Lacasa, comps., Carlo Zucchi y el neoclasicismo en el Ro de la Plata, (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 1998). 42. [Joseph Blanco White], Catecismos de geografa y qumica, Variedades o Mensagero de Londres (London: R. Ackermann), no. 6 (1824): 460. (My translation). 43. Roldn-Vera, The Monitorial System of Education. 44. Recuerdos de provincia, 23738. (My translation). 45. Aguila mejicana, 31 julio 1825, 4. (My translation). 46. [Joseph Blanco White], Catecismos de geografa y qumica, 460. (My translation).

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oxygen from the atmosphere at any temperature. (My translation)

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