ABSTRACT
Public school advocates and their Catholic school counterparts have argued over the curricular ingredients necessary to transform children into productive patriotic Americans since the mid-nineteenth century. Educators — writers and teachers alike — sincerely believed that a large part of their duty was to help their students to adapt to the rigors of an industrialized society. The values implicit in public schoolbooks were recognized to contribute to success and therefore highly valued by most Americans. This chapter reviews the role of a few Catholic school books in the nineteenth century: A Spelling Primer for Children with a Catholic Catechism Annexed; The Roman Catholic Primer; The Child’s Guide to Spelling and Reading; The American Primer; Second Book of Reading Lessons; Excelsior Readers; and Catholic National Series of Readers. The Catholic Church was one of the most effective of all agencies for democracy and Americanization. Parochial education was the nucleus of this effort.
