Wednesday, June 16, 2021

Summer writing project (Day Thirty-Two): Looking for old Guoyu textbooks

Saw a guy on Twitter say that he read a bunch of articles to write a footnote that he'll probably end up deleting, and I thought, "I need to compete with this." So today I've been on that Taiwan eBook website looking for elementary school 國語 (Mandarin) textbooks. I've found a few, but not what I'm looking for (I'm mainly interested in first-grade texts to compare with that one I found a few days ago).

I found these books, though (among others):

  • 初級小學適用國語第八冊 (for fourth grade, published Nov. 1946)
    • Lesson One is "我們是中國的少年" (We are Chinese youth)
    • Lesson Two is "怎樣做新台灣的少年" (How to be a new Taiwanese youth)
    • After some chapters on Koxinga and Taiwan, there's this amazing lesson called "巷戰" (which I'd translate as "urban warfare"). I was reading it to my wife, and she couldn't believe how violent it was, especially for a fourth-grade textbook. Here are some samples: "Everyone is both nervous and excited; they see their dear commanders and brothers [comrades] one by one injured or killed, but they are not sad; they are full of passion [hot blood] to take revenge for their dead." Then there's stuff about a soldier blowing up the enemy but accidentally killing one of his comrades, which makes him both excited to have killed the enemy and sad to lose his friend. 
  • 高級小學國語課本第二冊 (for fifth grade, published 1949)
    • This has some interesting lessons about Chongqing and Wuhan (even though this is a book for students in Taiwan, it appears they're trying to make students care about the mainland). Also there's a lesson about 伊資 (who turns out to be James Eads), a self-taught engineer who built the first bridge across the Mississippi. The textbook's introduction mentions that they want to interest students in engineering among other things. (In keeping with the Three People's Principles, of course.)
  • 初小國語教科書第二冊 (for second grade, 1938)--this text was actually for students in China, so I won't spend as much time on it right now)
  • 初小國語教科書. v.1 (I'll look at this later, too)

I've also Googled around looking for some, but evidently I haven't found the right combination of keywords to get what I want. Did find this interesting blogpost: "那些年我們讀的教科書──紀台灣二次政黨輪替." Gotta keep an eye on this blog--unlike the last one I found, this one seems alive still. 

If anyone knows where I can find some books from a bit later--like the 1950s, I'd be grateful!

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