Rules for the Behaviour of Children with the Reasons for Them ([c. 1840])

Inexpensive religious texts for the young formed a substantial segment of the publishing market during the long nineteenth century. The growth in educational opportunities for working-class children, and the concomitant rise in literacy from the late eighteenth century onwards, owed much to the belief that the ability to read the Bible for oneself was important to salvation – and that the task of socializing the young was not to be left to parents alone. First, the text does not distinguish between principles appropriate to boys and those appropriate to girls. Second, the reader’s attention is consistently drawn to higher authorities such as parents, teachers, scripture and, above all, God, reflecting a hierarchical world view in which obedience is central to virtue. The assumption behind this text is evidently that adults have only to articulate their expectations unmistakably in order to have children internalize them.