Reading Cathecisms (Vera)

8/3/2019 Reading Cathecisms (Vera)

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In this essay I attempt to illuminate the relationship between a particulakind of book and its readers. Using the category of genre as a tool thaallows me to bring together elements of textual analysis and empiricresearch of reading practices, I will study the ways in which a series educational manuals of useful knowledge oriented readings and weactually read in early independent Spanish America. Published in Londoin the 1820s by Rudolph Ackermann for a Spanish American audiencthese manuals were written in a question-and-answer form, by virtue which they became widely known as Ackermanns catechisms. I shaexplore the question-and-answer form in its historical, discursive, anmaterial dimensions in order to show how the category of literary gen

can be useful to understand processes of transmission and appropriatioof knowledge. After a brief overview of Ackermanns publishing enterprifor Spanish America, I will discuss how the category of genre may enabus to understand reading practices in general. Then I will consider thparticular characteristics and evolution of the question-and-answer genrin order to situate Ackermanns catechisms in the context of the expansioof elementary education in early nineteenth-century Britain and SpaniAmerica. In the last part I explore the ways in which this genre shape

Reading in Questions

and Answers

The Catechism as an Educational Genre

in Early Independent Spanish America

Eugenia Roldn Vera


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actual practices of reading, learning, and use in the case of Ackermanncatechisms. Drawing on my broader interest in processes of transmissioof European science in independent Spanish America, I will focus on thimplications that these practices had in particular for the transmission antransformation of knowledge about nature and the natural sciences.

Educating Spanish America

In November 1825, the English teacher Richard Jones, recently settled Mexico City, wrote a pessimistic letter to his father-in-law, the educato

Joseph Lancaster, in which he commented on the state of Mexican societAfter describing the street celebrations that followed the defeat of the laSpanish troops in the country, Jones lamented:

This is certainly a very important thing for Mexico, they havnothing left now undone but to drive the grand enemies and the onones remaining to the countryIgnorance and Superstitionthsecond of course will follow the first, and the first I fear will yswallow up the liberty and conquer the country again if not speedmeasures are taken to attack it with all the energy possible. . . .

few [laws] . . . and the diffusion of Mr. Ackermann[s] useful boothroughout the country [are needed so that] the people in about onhundred years may become a different race, but it will be a difficutask to eradicate the prejudices and superstitions which have beeaugmenting for 300 years [of Spanish domination].The preserace must first become extinct, the entire mind must be transformeand they must be moulded anew.1

For the son-in-law of the founder of the monitorial system of educationof whose writing skills Professor Lancaster would not be too proudthonly way to consolidate the precarious political freedom of the new repulic was education, in all its forms. He himself went to Mexico to work f

the promotion of the monitorial system of education and spent the rest his life doing that, as a teacher or as a government official. He was nisolated in his views about Mexican society: in fact, his politically incorrestatements were shared by many among the intellectual elites of the formcolonies, who proclaimed that under the Spanish domination SpanisAmericans had had a very limited habit of thinking, and that they hamade very little active use of their mental faculties.2 The conviction thonly education and the diffusion of knowledge would ensure moral an

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material prosperity was widespread also among these groups. All possibmeans to contribute to this civilizing mission were therefore welcomyet it is still curious that Jones conferred such quasi-redemptive power oAckermanns books, by then a novelty in Mexico and in many other Spaish American countries.

Ackermanns publications had no precedent in the limited local booproduction of Spanish America or in the sort of printed materials provideby Spain during three hundred years of economic and cultural monopoover its colonies. Published between 1823 and 1829, they consisted

nearly one hundred titles in Spanish, including four miscellaneous magzines and a series of twenty-five catechisms of all subjects from the arand sciences (excluding religion), plus a number of other didactic worknovels, and political treatises. The publication of these works was thresult of the combined efforts of a variety of people based in LondoVicente Rocafuerte, Bernardino Rivadavia, and Francisco Borja Migonthree Spanish American diplomats interested in the general enlightenmenof their compatriots, sponsored the publication of some of the books. number of Spanish liberal exiles, sympathetic to the independence of thSpanish Americans, were employed as translators and editors: Jos Joaqude Mora, Jos Nez de Arenas, Jos de Urcullu, and Joaqun Lorenzde Villanueva. They worked under the supervision of Rudolph Ackermanalready well established as an art publisher and carriage maker, who p

most of the money and contacts into incursions in the Spanish Americabook market. The original initiative of publishing for Spanish Americcame from Ackermann, who took up all the costs of the magazines ansome of the travel books; the educational, historical, and political bookwere produced mainly under the initiative or subsidy of the Spanish Ameican diplomats, but tailored, to some extent, to the requirements of thpublisher.3

Ackermanns catechisms, the most famous of his useful books, weinspired by other English series of books of useful knowledge from th1810s and 1820s, such as William Pinnocks Catechisms, Dr. MavorCatechisms, and Christopher Irvings Catechisms; some of Ackermannmanuals were clearly adapted translations of Pinnocks.4 In only half of th

cases do we know exactly who translated which book; however, the identity of the translators, or even of the original authors, becomes less relevawhen we focus our attention on the formal constraints imposed on thwriters by the catechetical genre, constraints that resulted in a relativuniformity among all the texts.

Ackermanns catechisms covered the following subjects: ancient anmodern history, domestic and rural industry, Spanish and Latin grammaliterature, morality, music, mythology, political economy, rhetoric, algebr

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arithmetic, geometry, agriculture, astronomy, chemistry, geography, annatural history. The emphasis on scientific subjects, presented in such way that they were made accessible to nonspecialized audiences, reflectsgeneralized concern for the diffusion of science in the new republics. In thperiod, the popularization of science was seen as a way both to advancmaterial progress and to operate a transformation on the ways of thinkinof the new citizensto more secular, less church-driven minds.5 Howevethis enthusiasm for the spread of science in the early independent years wnot supported by the establishment of permanent educational institution

and these initial efforts were only consolidated in the later decades of thnineteenth century in most Latin American countries, under the directioof strong, centralized governments.

Intended for young and adult readers, and for school and nonschoaudiences, Ackermanns catechisms were virtually the first texts to introduthe question-and-answer form to subjects other than religious doctrine ocivic principles in the Spanish American countries. The catechisms of aritmetic, morals, agriculture, and geography were reedited dozens of times the Spanish American countries or in France (the main provider of schotextbooks for the area in the nineteenth century), most of those editionwith considerable additions and transformations. Moreover, the catechetcal form of these texts became a model for other textbooks publishelocally throughout the nineteenth century; this style prevailed in Spani

America for a longer period than it did in England, though coexisting wiand gradually being substituted for by other narrative strategies.

In what follows, I will analyze the ways in which these manuals orientepractices of reading and learning and how they were actually appropriateby their readers. Using the category of genre as a central tool for that analsis, I will explain some of the principles involved in a process of transmision 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 thencounter between the world of the text and the world of the readerfunctions; through a combination of textual analysis with empirical rsearch into actual reading practices, historians of reading aim at reconstructing what, how, and why people read and what sense they make ouof that.6 Roger Chartier has suggested an approach that brings togethtextual criticism, bibliography, and cultural history; that is, a methodologthat articulates the analysis of texts in their discursive and material form

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the history of books as printed objects in circulation, and the practicin which these discursive forms and objects are used and appropriated bhistorically and socially situated communities of readers.7 However, and spite of these global approaches, the major theoretical difficulty of anhistory of reading remains in determining the extent to which reading anthe making of meanings are socially constrained activities or individuenterprises with a wide multiplicity of possible outcomes.

My way of dealing with this problem consists in paying attention to thformal and textual characteristics of the books themselves, treating the

not as independent and unique products, but as objects that can be classfied into certain types according to their formal structure, their intentiotheir effect, or their subject matter. My premise is that most books can bclassified into some kind ofgenre, which is an established category of writen work recognizable by the competent reader by virtue of its employmeof a series of conventionsmaterial and discursive.

As E. D. Hirsch has argued, interpretation of any speech act is possibnot only because of the interpreters ability to follow its word sequencebecause of the context in which the speech is uttered; it largely relies othe interpreters recognition of the particular genre of the utterance itselfThe interpreter understands the utterance in terms of an internalized sytem of expectations that is based on past experience derived from confronting similar types of utterances. Thus the speakeror writermu

take into consideration the interpreters system of expectations and assocations if he or she wants them to correspond with his or her ownwhenHirsch derives that genre is a shared type that constitutes and determinmeanings, a sort of implied contract of tacit knowledge between speakeand interpreter.9 Much of the recent critical theory on genre tends to bahistorical: genres are treated as immutable and universal categories, antheir appearance or disappearance might be attributed to historical resons, but they are not considered historical entities themselves.10 It is mcontention that, in order to better understand processes of production anreception of books, it is necessary not only to take into account the catgory of genre, but also to historicize it. I understand genres as dynamcategories that, as I will try to illustrate here, evolve and transform in di

ferent times and places.

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Genre plays a crucial function in the processes of production and recetion of books. First, writers are subject to the established conventions of thparticular genre in which they are writing and must remain aware of thsystems of expectations of their potential readers. Second, if we accept ththese conventions are not only discursive but also material, then publisers are also conditioned by the genres of particular books in question anat the same time, have an important role in defining their characteristic

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they have to construct and present every work as linked to others of thsame kind in order to secure them a place in the market.12 In this, pulishers have to be sensitive to readers practices, uses, and expectationskillful in orienting the writers works, and conscientious in preparing thformal characteristics of the books that are appropriate for their genreFinally, genre serves a double function in the process of the reception obooks: not only does it make understanding and interpretation possibby providing a common ground of shared conventions and assumptionbetween writers and readers, it also orients the way in which a book is t

be readreaders are to a certain extent constrained by the rules, logicand models of that particular kind of genre.

I should also add that, at least in the case I will be looking at, the notioof reading should be understood in a broad sense: reading here not onmeans individual, silent reading, but it also involves processes of oral repetition, memorization, and learning, all of which are conditioned by thconventions of the particular genre. This is particularly important in thSpanish American context, where the level of literacy remained very lothroughout the nineteenth century but where practices of collective reaing, in which one would read out loud a book or a paper to a group opeople who could not read, were not unusual. What had kept the literaclevels low during colonial times had been, more than the lack of access basic education, the lack of access to print, and thus the flow of pamphle

and books after independence developed a wide range of practices of colective reading.13

Considered in this way, the category of genre enables us to go beyonthe study of individual reading experiences by obliging us to look at thwider framework of practices and assumptions concerning the reading particular types of books. Following this line, in my analysis of Ackemanns catechisms as a genre I will explore the conventions it imposed owriters and readers, the expectations shared by the readers in confrontinthis type of book, and the redefinition of this genre in a particular histoical moment and in the social context in which it was used. I will discusin particular, the implications of these elements for the transmission knowledge about nature.

The Catechism as a Genre

Ackermanns catechisms were portable manuals in small 16, of one hudred to two hundred pages each, printed in tight and small characte

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and had no illustrations apart from the title page and an occasional platerepresenting maps or scientific instrumentsattached at the beginning othe book. They were structured as a series of short questions and mediumlength answers one after the other, forming chapters. They contained large amount of condensed information about each field, much of whic

was added in the process of translation from the English to the Spanish vesions (Fig. 1).Why were Ackermanns texts published in the form of catechisms? A

though it is known that some of the writers and sponsors had longed forseries of educational manuals, it seems likely that the form that these booktook was more a decision of the publisher.14 As the series of Pinnock, Mavoand Irving show, the catechetical genre had proved a great commerci


Figure 1. Two pages of Ackermanns Catecismo de astronoma (London:R. Ackermann, 1825). (By permission of the Syndics of Cambridge UniversityLibrary.)


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success in England during the first decades of the nineteenth century, anAckermann was aware of this. Addressed at school readers or at a dometic audience, the style appeared very appropriate for the diffusion of knowedge on a large scale, and they could be used as a model for other countrieMoreover, it appeared easier for Ackermann to commission the translatioof some of these books than to have them written from scratch in somother format.15

Although the catechetical style for nonreligious schoolbooks seemed ainnovation in the early nineteenth century, in fact the question-and-answ

genre has a long tradition, its structure and function varying widely different times and places. The catechism as a didactic method has beeassociated with two main types of texts. One is that of the philosophicdialogues of classical antiquity, dialogues that experienced a revival in thearly modern period to become a major academic, courtly, and populgenre. In the seventeenth century the style was used for reporting scientiftheories, with well-known examples in the treatises of Galileo and RobeBoyle. The other genre is that of the catechisms of Christian doctrine, usesince the Middle Ages for the instruction of the clergy but becoming estalished as manuals for children and noneducated adults in the sixteenth ceturyand of which Catholics and Protestants eventually produced theown versions.16 In the first type of text, the dialogue form served to prsent conflicting views with the didactic purpose of arriving at a convincin

truth (Platonic dialogues) or at least to achieve a balance of probabiliti(Ciceronian dialogues). In seventeenth-century scientific treatises the dilogue form served to introduce new ideas in fields dominated by rigid dotrines accepted over the centuries, by opposing different viewpoints, givinan appearance of consensus, and distancing the author from the contrversy.17 Religious catechisms, by contrast, did not convey a sense of ainteractive dialogue between the different voices but served rather to teacby indoctrination: aimed at a little-cultivated audience, they were meant tbe memorized and were commonly used as schoolbooks, as an aid in thteaching of reading.

In the eighteenth century another type of text based upon the inteaction of different voices appeared: the dialogues or conversations f

the teaching of science and general knowledge to women and childreSeries such as Evenings at Home, the Edgeworths Harry and Lucy,Marcets Conversations drew on the tradition of the Platonic dialogue wididactic purposes: they consisted of a conversation between children antheir parents or tutors in a fictional setting, in which the amusement the stories of the characters was combined with the instructive natuof knowledge. These texts provide a sense of real interplay between th

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various, well-defined characters. They were designed to be used in famicircles rather than at schools.18

Spanish-speaking countries had been familiar with a different genre question-and-answer books since the beginning of the nineteenth centurthe so-called political or civic catechisms. These texts were small manuaaimed at teaching the fundamental principles of the form of governmenor the contents of the constitution to children and little-educated adul(although some of them were profound enough to be considered politictreatises). This type of catechism is typical of countries that in this perio

were experiencing a transition from an absolutist regime to a constitutionone; they were widespread in France in the years following the Revolutioand soon after in Spain and the Spanish coloniesfirst to consolidate thprinciples of the Bourbon monarchy against the threat of French revoltionary ideas, then to disseminate the contents of the 1812 liberal consttution throughout all the corners of the empire. Once independent, thSpanish American countries employed the same genre to teach the basicof their new forms of government to their citizens.19 Civic catechisms folowed very closely the order and structure of religious catechisms, prserving the relation between the voices of master and pupil, and werlearned in schools together with and in the same manner as the latt(although in France they were meant to be taught instead of the religioumanuals).20 On the contrary, as I will show, catechisms of other subjects

the Ackermann type represent both in form and content a step away frothe religious catechisms and toward the conformation of the moderschool textbook.

Ackermanns catechisms, written in a strict question-and-answer formresemble more closely the genre of religious catechisms: there is no settinand no narrative, only questions and answers. There are not even propcharacters, since the voices have no names and no personality. This, however, constitutes a difference with respect to the religious catechisms, which the voice that asks the questions can be identified with that of thpriest to whom the child is supposed to respond with what he or she haalready memorized.21 In fact, religious catechisms could be used for learning to read in traditional schools because the students already knew th

answers (prayers, articles of faith, and so on) before they could even reathe words that expressed them, so that there was still a chance that thwould learn to read by association of the sounds with the printed symbolIn Ackermanns catechisms (as in Mavors, Irvings, and Pinnocks) threlation between the two interlocutors is reversed, with the questioninvoice constituting that of ignorance and the responding voice representinknowledge. Consider the following two examples:



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In spite of the inversion of the roles, the structure of the catechisms remainrather linear compared with that of the conversational form from the laeighteenth century. In these texts, the dialogue allowed for interruptionand digressions, and the asymmetry between the different voices was nas striking as in the catechetical genre. In conversations, children could achildrens questions and try to find answers based on their past experiencand draw their own conclusions, even conveying a sense of controverssomething that, as I will show, did not occur in a catechism.

In the light of these related genres, the question-and-answer style o

Ackermanns catechisms can be better understood as a didactic mechanisthat allowed for cheap and extensive diffusion of knowledge.22 The catchetical form, drawing on the tradition of the most well known didactgenre, proved a suitable one for the instruction of all sorts of knowledgon a large scale. At the same time, the differences between the genrdiscussed suggest that nonreligious catechisms should be characterized aa genre on their own, with their own rules, purposes, and function. In facin the case of Ackermanns manuals it is clear that their producers we

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Gaspar Astete,Catecismo de la doctrinacristiana (Madrid, 1803)

Q. Tell me the Articles.A. The Articles of Faith, etc. . . .Q. What are the articles of faith?A. The main mysteries of it.Q. If the first is to believe in God,

who is God?A. The Holy Trinity: the Father,

the Son, and the Holy Spirit,three different persons and onetrue God.

Q. Is the Father God?A. Yes, Father.Q. Is the Son God?A. Yes, Father.Q. Is the Holy Spirit God?A. Yes, Father.

Urcullu, Catecismo dehistoria natural

(London, Ackermann, 1824)

Q. Where does the Earth stand?A. On nothing; for if it was restin

on something, it would notmove.

Q. Is the globe we live in con-

stantly moving in the air?A. Yes, the same as the other

planets: its rotation movementtakes place from West to East .

Q. How far is the Earth from theSun?

A. Ninety-five millions of Englishmiles.

Q. Wouldnt it be better if the sunwas closer to us?

A. No: because it would burn theEarth to ashes, and if it wasfurther away we would freeze.

(23; my translation)


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consciously trying to define a new type of catechismand thus creatina new kind of genredistancing themselves from the books of religiodoctrine and defining modern and varied ways in which their catechismshould be used. Yet the similarity between the style of Ackermanns catchisms and that of the religious catechisms should be taken into consideation when analyzing actual practices of reading and use of the texts.

Learning Science in Questions and AnswersA textual analysis of the question-and-answer genre has led some historans of science and education to argue that underlying the use of the catchetical method in textbooks is an authoritarian structure of power. Thfact that both the answers and the questions are predetermined makes thtexts more closed than a plain narrative, in which the author does ncontrol the possible interaction with the audience. Spontaneity is reducebecause students are not given the chance to pose their own questions, anthis structure may result in a separation of the realm of those who makscience from that of those who are only to learn something about it.23 Thuse of this style in scientific textbooks in early nineteenth-century Britahas been interpreted as a way of reintroducing authoritarian social valu

that were part of the reaction against the French Revolution.24 Similarlthe use of the catechetical style in civic manuals in Spanish America in thperiod has also been understood as a way to promote the same unquetioned loyalty to the state that the religious catechisms encouraged vis-vis God and the Catholic church: paralleling their religious counterpartthe catechetical style of the civic catechisms presented constitutional artcles, laws, rights, and obligations as a political creed that students had tmemorize in order to become obedient and docile citizens.25

These interpretations, although very suggestive, explain only part of thquestion of how the catechetical genre worked and do not take into consideration how the books written in this style were actually read. Herewant to suggest that by looking at the contemporary assumptions abou

the question-and-answer genre and the ways in which its characteristidefined the role of writers and readers, it might be possible to gain a moprecise insight into how the relation between book and reader actualfunctioned.

First, it is important to notice that Ackermanns catechisms were prsented as something different from religious catechisms. The first page every text contained a note about the meaning of the word catechism;stated that this term, applied generally to books of religion . . . , is n



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devoted exclusively to religious matters, but it means indistinctly any boowritten in questions and answers. It added that in that sense it is curently used in all the Catholic and educated countries of Europe. Givethe similarity in form between these texts and the religious catechismthe editor wanted to make it clear for his readers that these books hanothing to do with religious matters and also intended to link this seculuse of the catechetical style to a new kind of genre that already existed iEuropean countries. At the same time, the editors and translators suggestenew ways of learning the catechisms that were significantly different fro

those in which the religious catechism had traditionally been learned duing the colonial period.

Ackermanns catechisms were designed with more than one kind oreader in mind. They were presented both as school textbooks and abooks for self-improvement, even for educated readers. It was precisely thcatechetical style that allowed for this wide range of audiences: on the onhand, the question-and-answer structure made them suitable for teachinin particular within the mutual system of education. On the other, thsame structure, as the translator of the catechism of natural history put allowed for the informed readers to use the texts as a kind of general anextensive index to which they can go whenever necessary, to look up cetain passages they do not recall very well, and [therefore] the indicationfound in the catechism they consult will renew in their memory everythin

they had read about that matter.26 Catechisms such as those of agricultuor political economy had a special dedication to statesmen, who could uthem as manuals to orient their policies. In fact, the texts were read by thwide range of audiences conceived of by their producers: elementary ansecondary schools in Mexico City, Guatemala, Bogot, Caracas, Lima, anBuenos Aires are known to have used at least the texts on arithmetic, chemistry, geography, and morals, which soon began to be reprinted locallSolitary readers in search of enlightening knowledge and politicians (sucas the presidents of Guatemala and Argentina) mentioned reading those geography, history, agriculture, or political economy. This varied receptiomay be accounted for both by the characteristics of the texts themselveswhich made them suitable for a wide range of audiencesand by the cha

acteristics of the publishers heterogeneous network of distribution. Ashave argued elsewhere, these books with their simple and didactic struture, symbolized for their readers the possibility to have access to knowedge that had been denied them under the Spanish domination; because this characteristic, various issues of national identity with respect to thcivilized world were defined in the process of their reading.27

Solitary readers complimented the self-contained structure of the catchisms because it allowed them to understand their content without th

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need of further explanations, be it from a teacher, a tutor, or a parenDomingo Sarmiento (181188), future president of Argentina, came acrothese books as a self-taught adolescent when he was working as a shoattendant in an isolated town in the interior. He wrote in his memoirs thimpression left by this encounter:

Peoples, history, geography, religion, morals, politics, all that walready written [in my mind] as in an index; I lacked, however, thbook that dealt with them, I felt alone in the world. . . . But the

must be books, I said to myself, especially about those matters, fochildren; and, understanding them well, one can learn with nneed of teachers; and I launched myself in search of those bookand in that remote province, at that hour of my resolution, I founwhat I was looking for, just as I had conceived it, prepared bpatriots who loved America and who, from London, had providefor that South American need for education, answering my clamoAckermanns catechisms . . . I have found them! I could shout likArchimedes, because I had foreseen them, invented them, looked fosuch catechisms.28

This enthusiastic account raises several issues. On the one hand, it givthe sense that Ackermanns catechisms filled a gap: nothing similar existe

in Spanish America that offered such a variety of accessible knowledgand it is interesting to note that Sarmiento thought that such a gap woulbe filled out at any rate, in one way or the other, because of the will of thSpanish Americans to become educated. On the other, Sarmientos worsuggest that the catechisms did indeed convey the information in suchway that it could be learned without the aid of teachers, confirming thnotion that these were comprehensive and didactic books; he also uses thidea of an index to refer to the ways in which such information waorganized. In fact, Sarmiento wrote this passage as part of a chapter on hupbringing in which he was trying to legitimize his self-taught efforts asolid as or even more so than the education of the members of the politcal and intellectual elite who had attended formal institutions.

It was also the very limited demand placed on teachers that madAckermanns catechisms suitable for school readers, especially for schooorganized according to a system of education for the masses. The editoand authors of Ackermanns texts insisted that their books were most suiable for the monitorial system of education; in doing this, they were defiing a new use for the catechetical genre, which not even in England habeen connected so vehemently to that system of teaching.29 This systewas a widely embraced novelty in early independent Spanish Americ



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although hardly ever was it applied according to all of its orthodox priciples. The monitorial, or mutual, system was specifically designed tmake the students conduct the teaching by themselves and reduce thfunctions of the teacher to a minimum: large numbers of pupils could binstructed under the supervision of one single master, and the studenlearned reading, writing, and arithmetic simultaneously. It came treplace a traditional system of elementary education in which studenlearned directly from the teacher the basic notions of reading in the firyear, writing in the second, and arithmetic in further years. Developed

Britain by Joseph Lancaster and Andrew Bell for the education of the poothe monitorial system became widespread in Spanish America (with anwithout British intervention) during the first two or three decades of indpendence, as it was seen as a cheap and efficient way to eradicate illiteracIt was used not only in elementary schools but in secondary schools as weand was applied to the teaching of a variety of subjects.30 It must be sathat since the eighteenth century there had been some elementary schoolespecially those run by the religious orders of the Jesuits and Bethlemitethat employed the mechanism of students teaching other students and othelements characteristic of the monitorial system (use of sandboxes, occsional division of the class into groups), but these were not articulateinto a systematic, quasi-military method like that established by Bell anLancaster.31

The principles of the system were more or less as follows: the scho(one large classroom) was divided into small groups of children classifieaccording to their individual progress in each subject. Each class waconducted by a monitor or instructor, who was a student slightly moadvanced in that particular subject, and who had been previously traineby the master in what he or she had to teach to the group. Lessons weshort, lasting from fifteen to thirty minutes, and students moved constantfrom one area of the classroom to another. Writing was taught while thstudents were sitting in rows, with the use of sandboxes and sticks, wherereading and arithmetic were learned by means of students standing in semcircles around teaching posts on which cards with the lessons were hunUnlike previous school systems, the mutual system allowed for writin

to be taught simultaneously with readingnamely, in separate lessontaking place the same day. This was possible thanks to the use of inexpesive materials such as sandboxes to delineate the letters instead of papand ink; in ordinary schools the teaching of writing was delayed untillater year because it required higher costs and could not be provided tlarge numbers of students (or the students parents would not be able afford it). The religious catechism was also learned in semicircles, by meanof recitation and repetition: the monitor would read the questions and th

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answers from the book, which the rest would repeat several times until thehad learned them. In more advanced classes, children were expected tknow by heart three or four pages of the text and be able to ask questionof one another and be promoted to higher places in their class (even tthe post of monitor) for their performancethis constituted part of thactive character of the system so praised by its advocates. Ideally, thwhole catechism should be memorized in that way.32 (Figs. 2 and 3). Thform of teaching the catechisms was different from the traditional onwhich was also based on memorization but in which it was the teacher wh

asked the questions for all the students to answer in unison.Catechisms of other subjects were learned in the same manner as th

religious catechism: through standing in semicircles and using recitatiorepetition, and mutual questioning. According to Jos Joaqun de Morone of the translators of Ackermanns catechisms, the advantage of thquestion-and-answer style lay in the convenience it offered to classiin the memory the various parts of the science that is being learned:

[Mutual education] consists mainly in the right division of laboand in the links and communication among the pupils, in such a wathat the most advanced ones teach the less advanced ones. Now, athese conditions are fulfilled in a catechism; of all the means thcan be invented to divide a great mass of knowledge, the alternativ

of questions and answers is the only one that, without dismembeing the unity of what hes being taught, offers its various parts tthe comprehension, judgment, and memory.33

Ackermanns science catechisms were used in a number of schools oprimary and secondary education, most of them organized under the moitorial system. The catechisms of geography and arithmetic were wideused in boys and girls, public and private, primary schools; those on naural history, agriculture, algebra, geometry, chemistry, and domestic anrural industry were employed in establishments of secondary and techncal education that were created in the early independent years under modern and liberal curriculum.34 Learning with catechisms in a monitori

school could reach high levels of sophistication. A newspaper from BuenAires gave a description of how the students learned Ackermanns catchism of geography in a particularly well-organized monitorial school (thGimnasio Argentino) in 1827:

The students learn by heart and recite in semicircles a number questions and answers from the Catecismo de geografa publishein London by Ackermann. Once they finish with this, they go t



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Figure 2. Arrangement for the teaching of reading in a monitorial school.From Joseph Lancaster, The Lancasterian System of Education, withImprovements (Baltimore: Ogden Niles, 1821), 31. (By permission of TheBritish Library; Shelfmark: 8305.f.16.)


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their benches and print on their slates what they have just learneThis can be done either by delineating or by writing. If the quetion refers to the contour of some part of the world, the location

a country within that part, or the demarcation of the limits of nation, the student delineates the object [on his or her slate osandbox]. But if the question can only be answered with words annot with pictures, the student writes down the answer. . . . A similmethod is used for the teaching of arithmetic: the theory is learnein the semicircles, and the exercises are done on the slates. The instructor dictates the exercises to correct them later, just like in thlessons of writing.35


Figure 3. Manner of teaching reading and the catechism in a monitorial schooStudents changed places within their semicircle according to the number of correanswers they gave to the monitor. From Joseph Lancaster, The LancasterianSystem of Education, with Improvements (Baltimore: Ogden Niles, 1821), 32.(By permission of The British Library; Shelfmark: 8305.f.16.)


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The author added that such division of labor and repetition of the samideas . . . ease all the difficulties involved in studying and make this task aagreeable and varied one; thus knowledge is acquired without noticing .the childrens imagination is not overwhelmed with the view of an enomous mass of information . . . and their reason is not confused under theavy weight of unintelligible and obscure issues.36 Thus, in order to beasy to memorize, the answers had to be as short and as differentiated apossible. Andrew Bell had already stated that in a monitorial school thlearning should be divided into short and varied lessons, with the purpo

of maintaining the attention of the children throughout the whole day:

When a lesson has been . . . prepared or learnt, it is said by the schoars to the teacher [or monitor] in portions by rotation: and if wesaid, they proceed to the next; if not, they must repeat the same leson, even shortened, if need be, till it be well learnt. . . . The same divsion . . . of each lesson into parts, and learning, portion by portion,observed in committing to memory the catechism, religious exerciseaddition, and multiplication tables, and throughout every branch education. The rule of the school isshort, easy, and frequelessonsdivided into short parts, gotten one by one, and well said.

Based on these principles, Ackermanns catechisms tended to make th

questions systematic and gradual, in many cases improving the order anclarity of the original English versions. In the more descriptive subjects, thquestions were of similar form for each of the various topics: the catechisof natural history asked in each lesson the same questions about the phyical appearance of each animal, its character, and its utility for humankind; likewise, the catechism of geography organized the description of eaccountry according to the following set of questions. For example: What Spain? What is the weather of Spain? What is the terrain of Spain? Whis the character of the Spaniards? What is the population of Spain? Whare the main rivers of Spain? What are the main cities of Spain? What athe main products of Spain? What is the religion of Spain?

Other subjects were structured in such a way that each new questio

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 bAstronomy:

A. The sky presents at night a countless number of luminous bodiedifferent in size, in intensity of light, and in movement. Of thebodies, some remain always at the same reciprocal distance an

Book History34


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seem farther away from the earth than the others, which varcontinuously in their reciprocal distance and move at differevelocities. The first are called fixed stars, and the second planetand they form the planetary system.

Q. What is the planetary system?A. The planetary system, also known as the solar system, is t

whole of the sun and the planets that move around that star.Q. In how many classes are the planets that move around the su

divided?

A. In three, namely: primary planets, asteroids or minor planets, ansecondary 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 ianswer constitute a unit in itself, and in the second case it also gave continuity to the information. This allowed for students to ask one anothequestions in a different order, which was a way to help fix things in thmemory. In Moras words, the questions of a catechism are laid out such a way that in addition to helping increase the difficulties in a progressive manner, they can serve to examine the students, because each que

tion contains a full sense, and does not require any of the others to bunderstandable.38

The structure of the catechisms was ideal for an essential componeof the monitorial system, the principle of order. An obsession with ordwas activated through a strict system of discipline and vigilance exertefrom every angle of the classroom. Every movement of the students wsynchronized and depended on the commands constantly uttered by thmonitors to their groups, such as: in! (to enter the classroom), handout! clean slates! write! show slates! slates down! and so oThe room was preferably on an inclined plane, to allow the teacher tsee all that happened in it; detailed registers of attendance, improvemenand behavior were taken every day by the monitors and the teache

examinations were conducted always at the end of each lesson; and scrupulous system of rewards and punishments regulated the performanof the students. Order was also the overarching principle for the graduand systematic progression of the lessons; this progression was supposeto be proportionate to the capacities of the students, whose minds workeby acquisition of successive impressions and ideas. An article in one oAckermanns magazines made the following analogy between the order the monitorial system and that of the planetary system:



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In the Lancasterian method everything is done gradually and without noticing. We could compare it to the planetary system, in whicevery celestial body attracts another of less volume, and keeps within the fixed bounds of its orbit. Everything is proportional the respective forces. A step forward means that the student hathe capacity required to do it; at the same time, the harmony anorder of the whole shape the spirit and the imagination of the pupiand provide them from an early age with a fairness of judgmenwith which later they can reject, in all realms, everything that mig

contribute to confusion and disorder.39

If the monitorial system reflected the order, harmony, and balance oNature herself, a catechism was the corresponding genre that allowed foknowledge to be presented according to the same principles: A catechisis for literature what maps are for the study of geography, or what thcamera obscura is for landscape painting: the aim of all these things is reduce the objects to small but exact dimensions keeping among them thright proportion and harmony, so that the picture does not present to thimagination the idea of Chaos.40

Confusion, disorder, and Chaos in the process of learning shoube avoided at all means. An order in method was a representation of thorder in naturewhich, in this quote, echoes the principles of the pi

turesque theoriesand, by extension, of the social order.41 The layout the catechism was particularly well suited to convey these notions in school environment organized according to the principles of the monitoial system, but it also served an equivalent function for the individual, adureader. As Joseph Blanco White, another editor of Ackermanns magazinewrote, the main advantage of the catechetical style was that it fixed thattention of the reader: in reading books where the discourse is presentein unbroken sequence, in an orational style, the attention weakens littby little, until it moves imperceptibly to other objects, without one beinable to stop it. For those who were little used to studying, it was prolematic to find clearly and distinctly the question, object, or difficulty owhat they are reading.42 However, it is important to notice that the mo

itorial system in Spanish America did not express, in this period, the samconcern with preventing the lower classes from social subversion that had in England. In Spanish America the main political and social concerwas with the need of the new states to consolidate their authority, and thuwith the importance of making citizens aware of and compliant with thnew rules and legislation. There was no fear (at least in the first years independence) of a social revolution, as there was in several Europeacountries after the French example.43

Book History36


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In any case, the catechetical method of Ackermanns textbooks seems have indeed contributed to fixing the attention of an isolated reader sucas the self-taught adolescent Domingo F. Sarmiento, for whom it also facitated memorization of the contents of the books. Thus he described thexperience in his memoirs:

There was the ancient history, and those Pyramids, and that Niof which the priest Oro [his former tutor] had told me. I learnethe history of Greece by heart, followed by that of Rome, feelin

successively that I was Leonidas and Brutus, Aristides and CamilluHarmodios and Epaminondas, and all this while I was selling yerband sugar, and I put a bad face to those who came to take me oof that world I had discovered and in which I was living. I startereading early in the mornings, just after sweeping the shop, and onMrs. Laora used to pass [in front of the shop] on her way to Churcand on her way back, and her eyes met day after day, month aftemonth, this motionless boy, insensitive to all perturbation, his eyfixed on a book; about which, shaking her head, she used to say home: This young lad cant be good! If books were good he wounot read them with so much determination!44

Keeping ones attention focused on a book seems to have been consi

ered unusual. For some it was a serious difficulty, as the following story, joke taken from a Mexican newspaper of1825, suggests:

A young, German lady, whose education had not been very wetaken care of, was sent to the court of Brunswick. Realizing thinconvenience of her ignorance, she made the resolution to studand asked the Duchess to lend her a book to start off with. ThDuchess applauded her decision and lent her a dictionary. A fedays later Her Highness asked the lady how she had liked thbookInfinitely good, she replied, this is the best book I have evseen. The phrases are all short and easy to understand; and thletters are beautifully ordered, like the soldiers in a parade. In oth

books I had seen, the letters were laid out in confusion, like thplebs; there was no pleasure in reading, and the texts could not bunderstood.45

A dictionary is similar to a catechism in its structure of short, selcontained sections and in its providing definitions of as many concepts possible. Indeed, in spite of the varied nature of these descriptions, theseem to confirm Blanco Whites opinion in the sense that the utility of th



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[catechetical] method is to confine the attention on the discourse, and toblige [the reader] to follow a certain direction, allowing no digression loss incited by the mans natural indolence.46

Ackermanns catechisms were in fact designed to provide definitions oas many concepts as possible, while using the questions to establish a graual and progressive order between them: each notion had to be understoo(or at least memorized) before the reader advanced to the next one. Thplaces them in clear contrast with the religious catechisms, in which, I mentioned before, the questions constituted not a means to articula

the different notions, but rather a test of what the children already knewHowever, in spite of the inversion of the roles, the structure of the catchisms gives the books a much more passive character than that of, foexample, conversational texts from the eighteenth century. In a converstion, the dialogue was used to suggest interruptions and real questioninand digressions, and the interaction between the different voices seememore spontaneous. Children could ask childrens questions and try find answers based in their past experiences and draw their own conclsions (although some conversations allowed for this more than others). Ia catechism, any interaction between the two voices was almost completeruled out; the voice that asked seemed to have no previous ideas and wjust ready to receive what the expert voice had to say. Consider how thnotion of gravity is explained in Evenings at Home and in AckermannCatecismo de astronoma:

Book History38

Evenings at Home(London, 1794)

WHY AN APPLE FALLS. PAPA(said Lucy) I have been readingto-day that Sir Isaac Newton wasled to make some of his great dis-coveries by seeing an apple fallfrom a tree. What was there extra-ordinary in that?

P. There was nothing extraordi-nary; but it happened to catchhis attention and set him athinking.

L. And what did he think about?P. He thought by what means the

apple was brought to theground.

Catecismo de astronoma(London, R. Ackermann, 1824)

Q.Explain some of the prelimi-nary ideas necessary for theunderstanding of the theory ofattraction and gravitation.

A. It is undeniable that there is aforce in virtue of which all thebodies taken away from the

surface of the earth then falldown onto it. The most con-vincing proof of the existenceof this property is that thebodies fall onto the surface ofthe earth in the point where wlive, in exactly the same way ait happens in the point where


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L. Why, I could have told himthatbecause the stalk gaveway and there was nothing tosupport it. . . .

P. Is an apple animate orinanimate?

L. Inanimate, to be sure!P. And can inanimate things move

of themselves?

L. NoI think notbut the applefalls because it is forced to fall.

P. Right! Some force out of itselfacts upon it, otherwise it wouldremain for ever where it was,notwithstanding it wereloosened from the tree.

L. Would it!P. Undoubtedly!for there are

only two ways in which it couldbe moved; by its own power ofmotion, or the power of some-what else moving it. Now the

first you acknowledge it has not;the cause of its motion musttherefore be the second. Andwhat that is, was the subject ofthe philosophers enquiry.

L. But every thing falls to theground as well as an apple, whenthere is nothing to keep it up.

P. Truethere must therefore bean universal cause of this ten-dency to fall.

L. And what is it?

P. Why, if things out of the earthcannot move themselves to it,there can be no other cause oftheir coming together, than thatthe earth pulls them.

L. But the earth is no more ani-mate than they are; so how canit pull?

our antipodes live. Since thedirections of the falling bodiesare diametrically opposed fromopposed points of the globe,and they show the same ten-dency to fall towards a commocenter, then we need to believethat there is in this center somecertain power that attracts them

Q.Why has the power of the eartto attract bodies been calledattraction and gravity?

A. The power of the earth toattract bodies is called attrac-tion because it is evident that ithis case the earth exerts anaction similar to that of thelodestone with iron; it has beenalso called gravity because it isknown that this power existsgenerally in all the bodies, andit is proportional to the amoun

of matter they have, no matterwhat their volume or their exterior shape are.

Q.Tell me of an experiment thatproves that matter exerts anattraction proportional to itsamount.

A. It is known that bodies fall ina straight line onto the surfaceof the earth, attracted by thetotality of their mass. In spiteof this, the mountains that exis

on the surface of the earth exeran attraction that can changethat straight line of that fallingThis has been experimented inthe mountain of Scheballien,in Scotland, and in theChimborazo, in Peru. (1516;my translation)


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Book History40

P. Well objected! This will bringus to the point. Sir IsaacNewton after deep meditationdiscovered that there was a lawin nature called attraction, byvirtue of which every particleof matter, that is, every thingof which the world is com-posed, draws towards it every

other particle of matter, with aforce proportioned to its sizeand distance. Lay two marbleson the table. They have a ten-dency to come together, and ifthere were nothing else in theworld, they would cometogether, but they are alsoattracted by the table, by theground, and by every thingbesides in the room; and thesedifferent attractions pullagainst each other. Now, the

globe of the earth is a prodi-gious mass of matter, to whichnothing near it can bear anycomparison. It draws, there-fore, with mighty force everything within its reach, whichis the cause of their falling;and this is called thegravita-tion of bodies, or what givesthem weight. When I lift upany thing, I act contrary tothis force, for which reason it

seems heavy to me; and theheavier, the more matter itcontains, since that increasesthe attraction of the earth forit. Do you understand this?(11823)


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Readers of conversational texts were expected to identify with thcharactersyoung readers with the children and adults with the parenor tutors. In these dialogues, the implied child reader was an active ancurious creature able to think by him- or herself, and the implied adureader was someone who let the pupil try and make his or her own progress though the pupil knew all the answers anyway. Catechisms, on thother hand, projected an image of a passive reader to whom everything wprovided; even the questions asked were fairly standard and bore littrelation to what had been said before.

Giving no idea of the writer behind it, Ackermanns catechisms prsented the information as a series of neat, clearly distinct concepts. Thknowledgeable voice was devoted to describing only facts, excluding asense of controversy. There was no discussion of inconsistencies among diferent theories that could lead the readers to some confusion or digresion. If something of that sort appeared in the original English catechismit tended to be eliminated in the Spanish translation. Thus did the writof the Catecismo de qumica in his adapted translation of Samuel ParkesChemical Catechism:


Samuel Parkes, A chemicalCatechism (10th ed., 1822)

Chapter X. On Metals.Has there not been great differ-ence of opinion as to the bestmode of classing the metals?There has; but as all the metalscombine with oxygen, though indifferent proportions and under dif-ferent circumstances, the mode inwhich this combination takes place,and the properties of the com-pound, furnish the best data forany division of the metals; and it is

upon these principles that the wholehave now been divided into theseven following classes: 1. Metalsthat combine with oxygen and formalkalis. 2. Metals that combine withoxygen and form alkaline earths.3. Metals that combine with oxygenand 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 withoxygen and form alkalis.2. Metals that combine withoxygen and form alkalineearths. 3. Metals that combinewith oxygen and form residuaearths. 4. Metals that absorboxygen and decompose waterat high temperature. 5. Metals

that absorb oxygen at differentemperatures, but which do nodecompose water at any tem-perature. 6. Metals that donot decompose water, butabsorb oxygen and becomeacids. 7. Metals that do notdecompose water nor absorb


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As a result of this structure, in Ackermanns texts of natural sciencthe answers were presented as though Nature herself was speaking in himpersonal, undisputed, clear voice. What she said could be memorizerepeated, and rewritten by anyone; it did not have the subjective mark othe teacher or the author of the book. Furthermore, the questions conveya sense that nature could be interrogated. This, however, did not mean ththe readers had the power to pose their own questions, despite the impresion given by the monitorial system that the students were playing aactive role in the process of questioning. Nor did this interrogation meathat nature could be tested. Experiments were completely excluded fro

the original in the translation of the chemical catechism, and even the caechism of arithmetic contained no exercises. (In fact, experiments, exerciseand problems were added in further editions of the same texts published Paris or Spanish America). Even if this exclusion was intended for the sakof brevity or simplicity, the result for the readers was a notion of knowedge that consisted of prefabricated facts, not something acquired througinvestigation. In spite of the ideal of the educated elites of teaching naural sciences to transform the ways of thinking of Spanish Americans, thassumption seemed to be that Spanish Americans, whether children oadults, were not ready to question nature by themselves. Knowledge wpresented in such a way that it seemed to confirm the notion that those necitizens were in an early stage of their development that was not suitab

for the full use of their mental faculties.

Conclusion

In this essay I have tried to make sense of the question-and-answer style nineteenth-century textbooks by considering the catechism from the poin

Book History42

that absorb oxygen and decom-pose water at high temperature.5. Metals that absorb oxygen atdifferent temperatures, but whichdo not decompose water at anytemperature. 6. Metals that do notdecompose water, but absorb oxy-gen and become acids. 7. Metalsthat do not decompose water nor

absorb oxygen from the atmos-phere at any temperature.

oxygen from the atmosphereat any temperature. (Mytranslation)


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of view of genre. I have used a definition of genre that involves the discusive and material conventions and systems of expectations shared by bothe producers and the readers of a particular type of texts. Looking speciically at the treatment of nature in Ackermanns catechisms, I have tried tilluminate the way in which a genre of texts was created, how it was reaand what its implications were for the kind of knowledge that was beinconveyed.

Ackermanns manuals were part of an emerging genre of nonreligioucatechisms in Britain, a genre that they introduced into Spanish Americ

where it acquired a foundational character. Yet this genre was defined nonly by the publishers concerns or the writers intentions, but also by thactual practices of appropriation and use by readers. Solitary readers oschool readers appropriated these texts in a sense that was partly condtioned by the conventions of the books themselves and partly by the locpractices of reading and learning. In schools, Ackermanns catechisms weadapted to a new system of education that presupposed a high degree participation of the students in the teaching process; but at the same timthe texts preserved an echo of the authoritarian and dogmatic teaching othe religious catechism.

The implications of this new definition of the catechetical genre for thlearning of natural sciences are significant. The design of these catechismand the uses they had in practice led to a disappearance of the subjectiv

element in the conveying of knowledge: all traces of an author were effacefrom the books, as were those of a teacher; it was rather as if Nature heself was speaking in the texts. At the same time, knowledge became somthing uncontroversial that anybody could learn, repeat, and communicato others. All the questions and answers were already given and spontanity in the process of learning was totally eradicated. In the Spanish Ameican context, knowledge presented in this manner seemed to corresponwith the assumption, shared by producers and readers, that Spanish Ameicans had no previous ideas about nature, that they had lived in ignoranduring three centuries of Spanish domination, and that this kind of text hathe function of filling that mental gap.

Innovative as they are in purpose and presentation, Ackermanns cat

chisms are especially revealing of the connections between genre, authoship, and readership. It is, however, my belief that the category of genrconsidered in its particular historical circumstances provides a generalapplicable and valuable tool for the analysis of the production and tranmission of books and knowledge.



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Notes

1. Richard Jones to Joseph Lancaster, Mexico, 29 November 1825. American Anquarian Society (Worcester, Mass.), Lancaster Papers, 2/4.

2. Phrases of this kind (con el poco hbito que [Amrica] tena de pensar. . . . el poco] empleo activo de las facultades mentales) color the prospectus of the instructimagazine Biblioteca Americana, published in London in 1823 by an association of SpaniAmericans in exile, known as The Society of Americans. The editors were Juan Garca dRo and Andrs Bello.

3. John Ford, Rudolph Ackermann: Culture and Commerce in Latin America. 1821828, in Andrs Bello: The London Years, ed. John Lynch (Surrey: Richmond, 19813752; Rudolph Ackermann: Publisher to Latin America, in Bello y Londres: SegunCongreso del Bicentenario, 2 vols. (Caracas: Arte, 1980), 1:197254; Vicente LloreCastillo, Liberales y romnticos: Una emigracin espaola en Inglaterra (18231834), 2d e(Madrid: Castalia, 1968); Eugenia Roldn-Vera, Useful Knowledge for Export, in Booand 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 Cachisms by Lackington and Company. Pinnocks Catechisms was published, after 1821, George B. Whittaker, who bought from Pinnock and Maunder the copyright of the serifor possibly more than thirty thousand pounds. This sum, apart from the countless numbof editions the catechisms had from the 1810s to the 1840s, speaks of the great commercsuccess of the series. See Thomas Frognall Dibdin, The Library Companion, 2d ed., 2 vo(London: Triphook and Leopard, and J. Major, 1825), 1: xiii.

5. Cf. Juan Jos Saldaa, Ciencia y felicidad pblica en la Ilustracin americana,Historia social de las ciencias en Amrica Latina, Juan Jos Saldaa, coordinator (Mxic

Universidad Nacional Autnoma de MxicoMiguel ngel Porra, 1996), 16876.6. Robert Darnton, History of Reading, in New Perspectives on Historical Writin

ed. Peter Burke (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991), 14067, es15859.

7. Chartier, Labourers and Voyagers: From the Text to the Reader, in Readers aReading, ed. and with an introduction by Andrew Bennett (New York: Longman, 19913249. (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, 196esp. chap. 3, 68126.

9. Ibid., 103. Hirsch uses this notion of genre to claim that validity in interpretatidepends on a valid inference about genre. However, in spite of his use of the notion of genas something shared between speaker (or author) and interpreter (or reader), he states thaultimately, validity requires a meaning that is stable and determinate, and that this stabiland determination emanate from the authors determining will; therefore, he concludes thall valid interpretation of every sort is founded on the re-cognition of what an author mean

(126). This conclusion, I think, narrows his initial definition of genre by disregarding the posibility of different interpretations generated within the conventions of the same type speech act.

10. Works of a structuralist vein, such as Hayden Whites influential Metahistory: THistorical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UniversPress, 1973), stand on the premise that there is a limited number of genresin this case geres or styles of historical narrativewhich, variously combined, remain constant throuhistory. Another set of texts such as the standard work of Alistair Fowler, Kinds of LiteratuAn Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes (first pub. 1982; Oxford: Clarendo

Book History44


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1985), attempt a more diachronic notion of genre but still apply modern categories to paforms of discourse. Here I am concerned with a definition of genre grounded in historical ansocial circumstances.

11. Cf. Tzvetan Todorov, The Origin of Genres, in his Genres in Discourse (Cabridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 1326. Two major works on the treatment ofliterary genre as a historical category are Ian Watt, The Rise of the English Novel (LondoHogarth, 1957); and Michael McKeon, The Origins of the English Novel(London: Radiu1988).

12. Robert Hodge and Gunther Kress provide a social definition of genre along thelines: in their view, genres are typical forms of text which link kinds of producer, consumetopic, medium, manner and occasion. In this sense, genres are socially ascribed classific

tions of semiotic form. See their Social Semiotics (Cambridge and Oxford: Polity Pre1988), 7.

13. This phenomenon has been very little studied. For a suggestive introduction, sFranois Xavier Guerra, Modernidad e independencias: Ensayos sobre las revoluciones hpanas (Mxico: MAPFRE-Fondo de Cultura Econmica, 1993); Franois Xavier GuerrAnnick Lemprire, et al., Los espacios pblicos en Hispanoamrica: Ambigedades y prolemas, siglos XVIIIXIX (Mxico: Centro Francs de Estudios Mexicanos y CentroamecanosFondo de Cultura Econmica, 1998).

14. Both the Mexican charg daffaires Vicente Rocafuerte and the Spanish editor Ackermanns first magazine for Spanish America, Joseph Blanco White, mentioned in thwritings that they had thought of a plan for such a series before Ackermann put it into pratice. See Variedades,5 (October 1824): 459; and Vicente Rocafuerte, un americano libre, prlogue and notes by Jos Antonio Fernndez de Castro (Mxico: Secretara de EducaciPblica, 1947), 49.

15. It is likely that Ackermann arranged with G. B. Whittaker for the translation a

publication of Pinnocks catechisms, something suggested by the physical similarity of boseries and the use of the same title pages; the only indication of a possible agreement betwethe two publishers is a mention in Blanco White, Student Journal, of a meeting he had wAckermann, Whittaker and William Blackwood on 6 July 1824 (University of LiverpoSidney Jones Library, Blanco White Papers, BW III/64).

16. Catechetical works for the instruction of laypeople are a product of the ReformatioIn 1529 Luther published his Deutsch Catechism and a Small Catechism (Enchiridion: Dkleine Catechismus), the former for pastors, preachers, and teachers, and the latter manual for instruction for children and laypeople; Calvin produced his Geneva Catechisfor children, in 1541; the Heidelberg Catechism of1563 (followed by the Little HeidelbeCatechism in 1585) provided the unified doctrinal standards for the Reformed churches. Afthe Council of Trent, the Catholic church also ordered the production of catechisms for chdren and simple folk. The catechisms of Peter Canisius (155657), Edmund Auger (156and, above all, Robert Bellarmines Dottrina Christiana Breve (1597) constituted an impotant tool of the Counter-Reformation and began a long tradition of catechetical manuals f

the evangelization of the peoples of the newly discovered territories. See Berard MarthaleThe Catechism Yesterday and Today: The Evolution of a Genre (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturcal Press, 1995); J. P. Marmion, The Penny Catechism: A Long Lasting Text, Paradigm(October 1998): 1924; Javier Ocampo Lpez, Los catecismos polticos en la independencde Hispanoamrica: De la monarqua a la repblica (Tunja: Universidad Pedaggica y Tenolgica de Colombia, 1988), 12;

17. See Geoffrey Cantor, The Rhetoric of Experiment, in The Uses of ExperimeStudies in the Natural Sciences, ed. David Gooding, Trevor Pinch, and Simon Schaff(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 15980; Nicholas Jardine, Demonstratio


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Book History46

Dialectic, and Rhetoric in Galileos Dialogues, in The Shapes of Knowledge from the Renasance to the Enlightenment, ed. Donald R. Kelley and Richard H. Popkin (Dordrecht: Kluw1991), 10112; and Greg Myers, Science for Women and Children: the Dialogue of PopuScience in the Nineteenth Century, in Nature Transfigured: Science and Literature, 1701900, ed. John Christie and Sally Shuttleworth (Manchester: Manchester University Pre1989), 171200.

18. Cantor, Science for Women and Children; Aileen Fyfe, Young Readers and tSciences, in Books and the Sciences in History, ed. Nick Jardine and Marina Frasca-Spa(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 27690.

19. A few civic catechisms were also published in England at the end of the eighteencentury, such as Robert Robinsons Political Catechism (London, 1782) and Randols A polical catechism of man (London, 1795). In Ireland, the Catholic Butlers Catechism addedfew questions about civil and social responsibilities in its 1802 edition. In both cases ttendency seems to have been the reinforcement of the foundations of the monarchy againsubversive ideas believed coming from revolutionary France. Marthaler, The Catechism Yterday and Today, 98.

20. For an analysis of the teaching of civic catechisms, see Eugenia Roldn-Vera, TMonitorial System of Education and Civic Culture in Early Independent Mexico, Paedgogica Historica, n. s., 35, no. 2 (1999): 297331.

21. Most religious catechisms followed this pattern, where the priest, the master, or tcatechist interrogated the disciples or pupils. An exception is Bellarmines Longer Declaratiof Christian Doctrine (Dichiarazione pui copiosa della dottrina Christiana), 1598, in whithe order is reversed: the questions are posed by the pupil and answered by the teacher. Hoever, this was a catechism specifically addressed to teachers, as a companion to his Short Caechism for children. Marthaler, The Catechism Yesterday and Today, 51.

22. In first part of the nineteenth century there were further variations of the questio

and-answer genre. One is the so-called interrogative system promoted by Sir Richard Philliin a number of textbooks. The system required two separate books (or at least two differesections in one book) for the same subject: the text-book, which provided only informtion, and the Questions, which were presented in a different order from the information the textbook and required some reasoning on the part of the students to answer themallegedly in their own words (John Issitt, Introducing Sir Richard Phillips, Paradigm[October 1998]: 2545). Eventually, most textbooks evolved to their modern form, whicessentially, combines narrative pieces with interrogative sections aimed at helping the studeunderstand and assimilate the information previously provided.

23. Greg Myers, Fiction for Facts: The Form and Authority of the Scientific DialogueHistory 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 Toand 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 inlectuales y el poder en Mxico: Memorias de la VI Conferencia de Historiadores Mexican

y Estadounidenses, ed. Roderic Ai Camp et al. (Mxico, University of California at LAngeles-El Colegio de Mxico, 1991), 491506.; Eugenia Roldn-Vera, The Monitorial Sytem of Education.

26. Jos de Urcullu, Catecismo de historia natural(London: R. Ackermann, 1826), v27. Eugenia Roldn-Vera, Book Export and the Transmission of Knowledge fro

Britain to Early-Independent Spanish America (Ph.D. diss., Department of History and Phlosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, 2001), esp. chap. 6.

28. Domingo F. Sarmiento, Recuerdos de provincia (1st ed. 1850; Buenos Aires, Losad1995), 23738. (My translation).


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29. Both Lancaster and Bell recommended the use of some nonreligious catecheticworks, but not necessarily for use in the classroom (for keeping in school libraries).

30. See Webster E. Browning, Joseph Lancaster, James Thomson, and the LancasteriSystem of Mutual Instruction, with Special Reference to Hispanic America, Hispanic Amican Historical Review 4 (1921): 4998; Rosa del Carmen Bruno-Jofre, La introduccin dsistema lancasteriano en el Per: Liberalismo, masonera y libertad religiosa, in Protestantliberales y francmasones: Sociedades de ideas y modernidad en Amrica Latina, siglo XIX

comp. Jean-Pierre Bastian (Mxico: Fondo de Cultura EconmicaComisin de Estudios Historia de la Iglesia en Amrica Latina, 1990), 8496; Roldn-Vera, The Monitorial Sytem of Education; Dorothy Tanck Estrada, La educacin ilustrada, 17861836: Educaciprimaria en la ciudad de Mxico (Mxico: El Colegio de Mxico, 1984); Edgar VaughaJoseph Lancaster en Caracas (18241827), trans. Hctor D. Mago Rodrguez, 2 vols. (Carcas: Ediciones del Ministerio de Educacin, 198789).

31. Dorothy Tanck Estrada, Las escuelas lancasterianas en la Ciudad de Mxico, Htoria Mexicana 22, no. 4 (1973): 494513; Juan Probst, La instruccin primaria durantedominacin espaola en el territorio que forma actualmente la Repblica Argentina (BuenAires: Instituto de Didctica, Facultad de Filosofa y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Air1940), 1929.

32. In general, the principles of the monitorial system in the Spanish American manufollowed very closely those of the English texts of Lancaster and Bell, although the formtended to endow some of the school practices with republican values. Bell prescribed thteaching of the religious catechism, while Lancaster recommended the memorizing of extracof the Scriptures themselves. In Spanish America the teaching of the Catholic catechism prvailed. See Roldn-Vera, The Monitorial System of Education; also Andrew Bell, An Expiment in Education, Made at the Male Asylum at Egmore, Near Madras (London: Cadell aDavies, 1805); Joseph Lancaster, The Lancasterian System of Education, with Improvemen

(Baltimore: Ogden Niles, 1821); Lucas Alamn, Instruccin para el establecimiento de esculas, segn los principios de la enseanza mutua, La Sabatina Universal(Mxico), nos. 16(SeptemberOctober 1825); Compaa Lancasteriana (Mxico), Sistema de enseanza mutpara las escuelas de primeras letras de la repblica mexicana (Mxico, 1824); series of arcles on education in El Sol (Mexico), 2427 June 1826; Manual del sistema de enseanmutua aplicado a las escuelas primarias de los nios (Bogot, 1826); Plan de enseanza paescuelas de primeras letras (Buenos Aires, 1819); Manual para las escuelas elementales nias, o resumen de enseanza mutua aplicada a la lectura, escritura, clculo y costu

(Buenos Aires: Imp. de los Expsitos, 1823).33. Museo Universal de Ciencias y Artes (London: R. Ackermann, 1825), 218. (M

translation).34. Roldn-Vera, Book Export and the Transmission of Knowledge, chap. 6.35. Crnica poltica y literaria de Buenos Aires, 9June 1827 (my translation). The auth

of this piece is Jos Joaqun de Mora, translator of some of Ackermanns books and catchisms (including the geography one) who was invited by President Bernardino Rivadavia

edit this journal.36. Crnica poltica y literaria, 9June 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

the architectural and urban reforms carried out in this period, with the aim of giving a struture to society: in some cases there was a tendency to replace the oversentimental an


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Book History48

disarrayed baroque forms of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with new harmonneoclasical designs. See, for example, Ternando Aliata y Mara La Munilla Lacasa, compCarlo 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 Mensagede 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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