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 II

Abstract

On Forms and Content of Moral Instruction in School Books and Children’s Reading Books of the 16^th — Early 19^th C. The given article is the second part of the study on the role of school books and children’s reading books in the processes of changing moral consciousness and behavior of the early modern European society. Analysis of moral instruction in this book production during the 16^th — early 19^th centuries revealed a gradual rejection of the predominance of the moral-negative (that is, character traits that should have been eradicated and actions that should have been avoided), which was expressed in the numerical dominance of examples of worthy of imitation behavior. The appeal to the fear of God as the main incentive for virtuous behavior is gradually replaced by the appeal to the voice of child’s conscience and by the idea of the inevitability of reward and punishment already in this life. The appearance in the educational literature of thematic blocks “order” and “obligations”; civic virtues; the exaltation of the virtues of self-discipline, industry, and everyday ascetism reflected the influence of philosophical ideas of the Enlightenment, brings school textbooks closer to other genres of children’s literature (periodicals of the late 18^th century), and to the book production distributed in Europe as a part of the movement of the so-called folk Enlightenment.