Publisher's Synopsis
Although children's Bibles have been read in family and school for centuries, they are a forgotten source in historical educational research. Marcel Naas examines them for the first time as teaching aids of a certain time and deduces the didactic constructions of the child behind them. The selection of stories, the didactic structure and the language of the children's Bibles, which were used in the schools of the exemplary cantons of Zurich, Bern and Lucerne between 1800 and 1850, show impressively how different the ideas of the child were. Biblical stories such as The Fall and Sodom and Gomorrah are analyzed with a view to morality and sin, dealing with sexuality and violence or the description of miracles and their explanations. The work provides results on general changes in the child's image between 1800 and 1850 as well as on school history developments and denominational differences, which are reflected in the didactic construction of the child.
