- Reading Primers International No 2 S I G Newsletter 05 10

RPI 2, May 2010, page 15
Gerhard Bethlehem, Wilhelm Steffens (eds.): Der fröhliche Wagen. Eine neue Fibel zum Lesen-
und Schreibenlernen [The jolly carriage. A new primer for learning to read and write]. Düsseldorf:
Bagel, Hirt & Viehweg 1969, p. 86
What is the message of this story? What were North Rhine-Westphalian abecedarians
in 1969 – two years after the creation of the European Communities
– supposed to learn about their Dutch neighbours? What were they
supposed to learn about “us and them”, about traditional and modern life?
In his work Social change with respect to culture and original nature, published
in 1922, the American sociologist William F. Ogborn coined the term
cultural lag, pointing to the delay of adaptive culture vis-à-vis the change of
material culture. The “Trip to Holland” may well serve as an example where
this concept can be applied to the sphere of education and textbooks: as far
as textbook content lags behind social change and passes on outdated stereotypes.
In Profile American Primers: The Collections of Richard Lawrence Venezky
By Robert C. Calfee, Stanford University
This note is about Stanford‟s online collection, American Primers and Readers:
The Words and Collections of Richard Venezky,
http://venezky.stanford.edu, an introduction to arguably the most extensive
and certainly the most extensively documented primer collection in the United
States. A Google search of “primers” places Venezky as the first entry,
followed by leads to other significant collections, including those at Indiana
University (www.libraries.iub.edu/index?pageId=1000646 ), the University of
Pittsburgh (www.digital.library.pitt.edu/nietz), and the Chall archives at Harvard
(www.lib.harvard.edu/libraries/0029FULL ). The latter collections con-