Contents
Foreword by Wolfgang Strauss
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Glossary
Prologue: Creating Young Comrades
Introduction: Ideology as Core Curriculum
Part I Of Politics and Letters—and Numbers
1. German for the East Germans: Language and Literature
2. Terra Verde, Terra Rosso: Geography
3. My Country, Left or Wrong? Civics
4. Progressive Lessons of the Past: History
5. Socialist Science: Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics
Part II The Voices Behind the Page: Conversations about Post-Communist Education and Eastern German Life with Faculty and Students
6. Arts and Humanities
7. Physical and Social Sciences
8. Education for Tolerance: Of Ideology, Identity, and Intolerance, or Among (German and Jewish) Schoolchildren
Epilogue: Curriculum Without a Core
Notes
Bibliography
Index
John Rodden is Adjunct Professor in Speech Communication at the University of Texas. His books include Repainting the Little Red Schoolhouse: A History of Eastern German Education, 1945–1995 (2002) and Performing the Literary Interview: How Writers Craft Their Public Selves (2001).
“Put Rodden's new book on education in East Germany, Textbook Reds,
next to his earlier one, Repainting the Little Red Schoolhouse, and
you have all the library you need to understand the dynamics of the
former German Democratic Republic, in every aspect, from its
beginning to its end. Not even more specialized studies range as
far and probe as deep, thanks to Rodden's astonishing versatility
as a historian. He moves deftly from analysis of textbooks to
personal interviews, from the teaching of the high-school
disciplines to the corruption and the cult of personality in the
GDR. The interviews bring an immediacy one seldom finds in a book
so scholarly, and the scholarship is thorough across a spectrum of
approaches. Make no mistake—using the educational system as a
starting point does not narrow the perspective but opens out whole
horizons instead. Comprehensive, brilliant, and vivid.”—Vincent
Kling,La Salle University
“A perceptive and creative study of eastern German education. The
sections on Wolfgang Harich and of hopeful reformers among the
technical intelligentsia are very well done. I especially liked the
treatment of the World Youth Games, held in East Berlin in 1973,
which I attended during my first trip to the GDR. The Games were
exactly as John Rodden describes them, with thousands of eager,
blue-shirted FDJ students swarming among the city. Oddly, Angela
Davis was the celebrity speaker for the event, who seemed at last
to have found a receptive audience for her tirades.”—A. James
McAdams,Director, Nanovic Institute for European Studies,
University of Notre Dame
“Rodden eschews scholarly cautiousness and is both epic and
personal in his approach to German history. I was especially
impressed by his ability to link the founding and history of the
GDR to the ups and downs of Soviet policy, all of which is executed
in the context of a richly textured narrative of German cultural
and social history. But this is not a history of education in the
usual sense. Rodden is both critical of the GDR system and its
current effort to mold its citizens and also deeply sympathetic
with the many GDR citizens who were victims of the Marxist-Leninist
hoax that their leaders perpetrated on them.”—Sterling
Fishman,University of Wisconsin at Madison
“The scope of this book goes beyond previous investigations of the
subject, both in the sense of its comprehensive inclusiveness of
topics beyond education in narrowly conceived terms, and in its
extension of the historical narrative to post-GDR life. Never
before have the intricate interactions among educational programs,
ideological motivations, and the exigencies of practical politics
in the GDR been demonstrated so thoroughly and with such rich
documentation. Rodden’s illumination of the interconnections among
educational programming, social engineering, and political power
make this study a significant contribution not just to German
studies, but to the sociology of nation-building as well. But this
work does not merely demonstrate the centrality of education to
Marxist nation-building, it also shows the reasons and conditions
leading to the successive failures and ultimate undoing of this
communist project.One of the most appealing features of Textbook
Reds is Rodden’s lively, witty, and forceful writing style. This
style is thoroughly compatible with the book’s sound scholarship,
because it serves to highlight his basic themes by giving dramatic
power to various anecdotes, personal encounters, and historical
scenes. Most engaging is Rodden’s very personal viewpoint in his
portraits of the East Germans that he interviewed. His vignettes
show vividly the fateful determination of German lives by history,
and the poignant, sometimes humorous tone brings his nuanced yet
sympathetic American perspective into the foreground, often
mitigating the gloom and endowing the tragedy with promise and
hope.”—Walter Sokel,University of Virginia
“Because I was a professor during the GDR era and contributed
toward the formation of East German education, I am thoroughly
familiar with the stories and events that John Rodden relates. His
book is fascinating, sometimes even thrilling to read, and it
addresses a public far beyond academic specialists. It is
accessible to the general reader and deserves the widest possible
audience. I have been most impressed by Rodden's scholarly
expertise, profound philosophical grasp, and power of verbal and
intellectual expression. He has an unusual stance that is both
sympathetic and critical at the same time, and it facilitates his
penetrating understanding of the essential purposes and aspirations
of GDR education and cultural politics. I say all this as a man who
himself lived through most of the history of GDR educational and
cultural politics, first as a supporter of the regime and then,
beginning in the mid-1980s, increasingly in opposition to the
dictatorship—and who experienced the events of 1989–90 as a
personal and intellectual liberation from an ideological
straitjacket. I can, therefore, on the basis of my own intimate
knowledge of that history, evaluate with great confidence the
outstanding achievement of this book as a work of scholarship and
human empathy. This book exhibits an amazingly detailed knowledge
of the German situation, not just with regard to its educational
institutions but in its grasp of the entire cultural and
philosophical context of the former GDR and eastern
Europe.”—Wolfgang Strauss,University of Jena
“I simply cannot praise this book enough. It is a truly impressive
work. It is beautifully conceived and executed, as well as
intellectually and morally engaging. Above all, it is so very, very
well written with a lively style, a tempered wit, a remarkable
literary and historical erudition, and a refreshing human empathy.
The portraits are robust and dominant. I could swear that some of
Rodden’s conversation partners have crossed my path over the years,
under different names to be sure. This is the kind of work that
teachers can use in a seminar on recent German or European history
and politics. It will certainly stimulate interest and discussion
among all students in these areas.”—Christian Söe,California State
University at Long Beach
“This book makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of
the functioning of dictatorship as well as to the general processes
of social change. I am most impressed by the beautiful essayistic
style and sovereign command of German jokes, conversational
language, and everyday slang. This is an excellent book that will
be of great value to the scholar and general reader
alike.”—Karl-Heinz Fuessl,Institute for Education and History,
Humboldt University, Berlin
“This stimulating book is written with grace. It is a fascinating
portrait gallery of GDR life. I was particularly intrigued with the
latter material given my extensive contact with GDR citizens from
1988 on.”—Randall Bytwerk,Calvin College
“The interviews he recorded with both teachers and students soon
after reunification, reproduced in a section entitled ‘The Voices
Behind the Page’ and encompassing nearly half the book, represent
some of the most insightful original sources we have on this
enigmatic process. Textbook Reds should be included on every
reading list dealing with East German politics and culture. A
German translation would make a valuable contribution to the
ongoing—and excruciatingly slow—renegotiation of German culture and
society since 1989.”—Alan Nothnagle Slavic Review
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