Picture albums and primers can be considered the main effective paedagogical tools for learning not only the alphabet and cultural and ideological norms but also for playing and socialising between very young children. In the Soviet Union this was the case for the postwar period, in particular for the decade of the 1950s and 1960s because the educational and literacy process had experienced interruptions and the organisation of nurseries and preschool institutions was still slow after the war destructions. The purpose of this presentation is to reconstruct the history of the illustrated books and primers from an interdisciplinary point of view, taking into consideration the educational, didactic and ideological and also the technological aspects of printing activity. Indeed, after the war years, it was urgent both to make children overcome the traumas of war and to restore confidence in the future, but it was also necessary to reorganize all the technological aspects of the publishing activities. For this reason, some of the most popular illustrated albums, primers and reading books will be presented in the first part and in the second parts in order to show that old and new books coexisted. They become the main tool for the regime’s pedagogy which made very young children participate in its changes: compared to the past, the image of the child became more traditional, with gender differences, but always aimed at building autonomy in the growth process, often in the absence of adults but in the company of peers/»litle comrades». Stalin’s myth of a happy childhood acquired new characteristics of a fairy tale world in which communist symbolism was diluted. As with the content of the primers, the pages of the illustrated books immersed children in a world full of references to daily life and in the family, preschool and school life. The third part will study the technological process of printing thanks to unknown archival documents: while the primers were considered more urgent and were printed immediately after the war in the German occupation zone, the printing of pictures books begun later, at the beginning of the 1950s, thanks to the importation of printing machines from abroad. This presentation would be both a contribution to the history of early education and to the history of publishing activity for very little children. Bibliography...
Pictures Books and Primers for very young children to Play and Learn in the USSR After WWII
Dorena Caroli
2022
Abstract
Picture albums and primers can be considered the main effective paedagogical tools for learning not only the alphabet and cultural and ideological norms but also for playing and socialising between very young children. In the Soviet Union this was the case for the postwar period, in particular for the decade of the 1950s and 1960s because the educational and literacy process had experienced interruptions and the organisation of nurseries and preschool institutions was still slow after the war destructions. The purpose of this presentation is to reconstruct the history of the illustrated books and primers from an interdisciplinary point of view, taking into consideration the educational, didactic and ideological and also the technological aspects of printing activity. Indeed, after the war years, it was urgent both to make children overcome the traumas of war and to restore confidence in the future, but it was also necessary to reorganize all the technological aspects of the publishing activities. For this reason, some of the most popular illustrated albums, primers and reading books will be presented in the first part and in the second parts in order to show that old and new books coexisted. They become the main tool for the regime’s pedagogy which made very young children participate in its changes: compared to the past, the image of the child became more traditional, with gender differences, but always aimed at building autonomy in the growth process, often in the absence of adults but in the company of peers/»litle comrades». Stalin’s myth of a happy childhood acquired new characteristics of a fairy tale world in which communist symbolism was diluted. As with the content of the primers, the pages of the illustrated books immersed children in a world full of references to daily life and in the family, preschool and school life. The third part will study the technological process of printing thanks to unknown archival documents: while the primers were considered more urgent and were printed immediately after the war in the German occupation zone, the printing of pictures books begun later, at the beginning of the 1950s, thanks to the importation of printing machines from abroad. This presentation would be both a contribution to the history of early education and to the history of publishing activity for very little children. Bibliography...I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
