Didaktische Konstruktion des Kindes in Schweizer Kinderbibeln

Children’s bibles are a forgotten source in historical research on education. Nevertheless, they have been used in schools and families for centuries and their selected stories, the way of presenting them to children, and the use of language give evidence on the author’s implicit perception of the child. The presented work focuses on historical children’s bibles that were used in schools of exemplary chosen Swiss cantons between 1800 and 1850 to analyze their didactical constructions. Selected bible stories as “the fall of man”, “Sodom and Gomorrha”, “David and Bathseba” or the “Sufferings of Jesus Christ” show how differently these stories were written. Topics like moral, sin, violence, sexuality, the way of treating wonders, or the implementation of scientific knowledge in children’s bibles are analyzed to extract the didactical construction of the child. The results include some general tendencies concerning the change of the perception of the child within the analyzed time span as well as several interesting cantonal and confessional differences.