Currently among some educators there is an aversion to
textbooks. Some of the antipathy is just because some textbooks are poorly
written, sounding as if they were composed by an uninspired committee trying to
come to a routine consensus. Also prevalent is the idea that contact with great
minds and ideas should be undiluted, that the student should go straight to the
source instead of reading what others have thought on a subject. Why read a
book about Greek philosophy when you can read the philosophers’ writings
yourself? In place of the shunned textbook, original sources or living books
are preferred. Thus, if a student were studying American government, he would
not read a civics book, but only the original founding documents of the
country. If he were studying the Roman Empire, he might read Rosemary
Sutcliff’s historical novels. While there are many good elements to this
approach, is it sufficient and is it good for every subject?
A textbook is broadly defined as a manual on a particular
subject. The material therein is organized according to some kind of system
with a goal of imparting a certain level of knowledge on that subject. The
writer studies and combs through various sources until he finds the information
he thinks is pertinent to his subject and appropriate for his potential
readers. When he is satisfied with his research, he writes his own manual on
the topic. This saves the reader much time and effort, and if we find the
author reliable and honest, we can entrust him with our education on the topic.
A classic example of a textbook is St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa
Theologica. It was written as guide to those studying theology. St. Thomas
used many sources – Greek philosophers (preeminently Aristotle), Holy
Scripture, the writings of the Church Fathers (favoring St. Augustine of Hippo)
and Tradition – to compile his defense of Catholic teaching. He wrote his
arguments in a repeating pattern: the question, possible answers (called
objections) to the question, the correct answer from authority, then the same
answer with its reasoned argument, and finally the answers to the objections.
The Summa is very dense and is not read for literary enjoyment, but it
is essential to the making of good theologians and the Church has proclaimed
St. Thomas the premiere theologian because of his work. St. Thomas began the Summa
when he was a professor, in essence writing his own textbook for his students.
Through his systematization of theology, he made the subject accessible to many
more fledgling theologians.
We can imagine the textbook’s birth originating with a
simple request by a student for a written copy of the texts his professor was
quoting in class. Then the professor’s thoughts on the studies and other
sources he did not have time to pass on in class might be included in the
writings. Eventually, especially if it is popular, the work is organized into a
cohesive body of study. The famed Catholic philosopher Dr. Frederick Wilhelmsen
wrote, “Every professor of philosophy who is worth his salt writes his own text,
a text which is his course, whether he publishes it or not. The text exists in
his notes or in his head. If he does not ‘write’ this text down in one way or
another, he is not a professor because he has nothing to say about his
subject.”
A textbook is a tool – one of the many tools – in
education. In the learning relationship between teacher and pupil it can be a
good tool if chosen well and used properly. In independent or home study, a
textbook can be used as a “spine,” providing backbone or structure to the
subject.
In the study of history, where many people, events, and
ideas are converging and dispersing, it is very important to keep everything
connected in some way and have an order to follow. The reading of original
sources, biographies and historical fiction is an aid to deepening historical
knowledge and appreciation, but it cannot substitute for an organized course of
study. There are not “living books” for every important era, event, or person.
For instance, there are very few “living books” written about World War I and
the ones that exist – like All Quiet on the Western Front – are
inappropriate for children. There are saints who made great contributions to
history, but have not had biographies written about them, sometimes because
they have not captured the popular imagination. The Catholic author Louis de
Wohl wrote a biography of Pope Pius XII – a man he had met and had impressed
him deeply. Arguably, Pope Leo XIII was just as impressive a man and his reign
was filled with drama, but de Wohl did not attempt his biography. There are
many living books with the Middle Ages as the subject or background; yet given
that that time period covers 1500 years, there are proportionally fewer books
written about it in comparison to books written on the five-year American Civil
War. Some ideas which had a great influence on civilization cannot be easily understood by young readers through original sources. A sixth grader should not be required to slog through Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations or Karl Marx's Das Kapital to understand capitalism and communism and their shaping of events and peoples.
Those missing stories are found in a good textbook. Age-appropriate explanations are found in a good textbook. Such a book fills in those gaps and omissions, making for a more comprehensive
grasp of the pageant of history.
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Currently among some educators there is an aversion to
textbooks. Some of the antipathy is just because some textbooks are poorly
written, sounding as if they were composed by an uninspired committee trying to
come to a routine consensus. Also prevalent is the idea that contact with great
minds and ideas should be undiluted, that the student should go straight to the
source instead of reading what others have thought on a subject. Why read a
book about Greek philosophy when you can read the philosophers’ writings
yourself? In place of the shunned textbook, original sources or living books
are preferred. Thus, if a student were studying American government, he would
not read a civics book, but only the original founding documents of the
country. If he were studying the Roman Empire, he might read Rosemary
Sutcliff’s historical novels. While there are many good elements to this
approach, is it sufficient and is it good for every subject?
In Norse mythology an immense ash tree holds the cosmos together, its trunk reaching to the heavens and its roots to the underworld. Sacred groves and tree-worship were common among the ancient
Germans, and the chief of their holy trees was the oak. The oak was dedicated to
the strongest of their gods – Thor, the god of thunder. It was Thor who sent
rain and wind and fine weather and abundant crops. He was to the Germans what Zeus was to the Greeks and Jupiter, to the Romans. Frazer notes that the oak is more frequently struck by lightning than any of the other trees in the European forest and that pagans "might naturally account for it in their simple religious way by supposing that the great sky-god, whom they worshiped and whose awful voice they heard in the roll of thunder, loved the oak above all the trees of the wood and often descended into it from the murky cloud in a flash of lightning, leaving a token of his presence or of his passage in the riven and blackened trunk and the blasted foliage." From this worship grew numerous superstitions connected with the oak, and even the mistletoe that grew on it. One of the old German penalties for those who dared to peel the bark of a standing tree was: “The culprit’s navel was to be cut out and nailed to the part of the tree which he had peeled, and he was to be driven round and round the tree till all his guts were wound about its trunk. The intention of the punishment clearly was to replace the dead bark by a living substitute taken from the culprit; it was a life for a life, the life of a man for the life of a tree.”
