Textbooks and the Political System in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1945-1975

Teaching is a special form of communication and interaction between teacher and pupil in which the textbook fulfills a key role. Although classroom communication is also achieved through other mediablackboard, maps, slides, tape recorder, language laboratory, radio, film, and television, the textbook continues to occupy a central role, first, because it predates other media, and second, because its use is taken for granted by teachers, pupils, parents, the public, and publishers; for them the institution of school without textbooks would be unthinkable. This is reinforced by a strong sense of the authority of the printed word and the immediate and widespread association in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) of the book, on the one hand, with "education" and "intelligence," on the other. The textbook also represents, to some extent at least, children's only involvement with books. Almost all major studies of the leisure activities of children in the FRG have shown that passive-receptive undertakings such as doing nothing, listening to the radio, or watching television far exceed reading. Further, working-class children hardly read at all in their spare time, and in the middle class it is almost only boys who do so (Haseloff 1967, p. 38). One-third of the adults in the FRG, approximately 10 million people, do not own a