Making Nationals Through Writing of Commonsense Knowledge in Literacy Textbooks

For out-of-school adults, literacy textbooks may be the first or even the only books they own. Following the ancient motto of "reading books to gain insights", they are more likely to accept the value choices and given concepts conveyed by textbooks. As a vehicle, literacy textbooks carry many considerations such as "who" determines, "whose" knowledge is conveyed, what kind of knowledge is conveyed and the value orientation of this knowledge. Literacy textbooks thus construct a unique discourse system which not only imparts basic literacy skills, but also shapes the nationals, endowing the act of literacy a social and political significance. Using the textbooks of "Thousand Characters" edited by the editorial office of the Ministry of Education in 1930s as the data sources, this paper analyses how the government and the intellectual elites framed and modified the values of the out-of-school population through literacy textbooks, and reveals how commonsense knowledge were reproduced through literacy textbooks.