SEELANGS Digest - 14 Jul 2009 (#2009-235)

[William Ryan]

'Improving' might indeed do. The following is from a website 'Genius Babies'

    Toys with an educational purpose have been around since the
    seventeenth century but didn’t actually receive the title of
    “educational toy” until the 1960s. In the article “Educational Toys,
    Creative Toys,” which appeared in a collection titled Toys, Play and
    Child Development, author Birgitta Almqvist writes, “The purpose of
    toys has practically always been educational. The bows and arrows
    that little boys in ancient Rome were given to play with were
    undoubtedly regarded as vehicles of training future mastery.”
    Although an object like a small bow and arrow given to a child was
    for practicing future adult skills, not until the seventeenth
    century were toys specifically designed with an educational purpose.
    English philosopher John Locke claimed that toys could be used in
    educating children, and he produced a set of lettered blocks to
    support his theory. The blocks, designed more for boys, had the
    original purpose of keeping children indoors to learn instead of
    outside playing in the street; girls, at this time, were expected to
    play indoors with a Nüremberg cabinet house – an early dollhouse –
    to learn homemaking skills. As the result of Locke’s letter blocks,
    the late 1700s saw an educational toy market emerge, except the toys
    were marketed as “improving toys,” which included card games and
    jigsaw puzzles. The latter, given the title of “dissected maps” at
    the time, were invented by printer John Spilsbury and were designed
    to teach geography to a child. Later, similar puzzles were designed
    to teach children history and morals.

Will Ryan



sbpearl1 at VERIZON.NET wrote:
> "Kul'turniye Igrushki".
> "kul'turniy"� is perhaps one of the many Russian words�words which are better categorised as "overlapping but not concentric" with their English counterpart, than�as "lozhniy drug".
> �If the various versions proposed have correctly captured the spirit of of the Gorky phrase, "educational toys" would certainly do.�A word which might also capture the emotive element of "scorn" in the author's use of the phrase might be "improving". In my youth , elders and betters would disparage comic books in favour of "improving" literature.
> �
> It's possible this this term may have more resonance for speakers of British English?
> �
> �
> - On Wed, 7/15/09, SEELANGS automatic digest system <LISTSERV at bama.ua.edu> wrote:
>
>
> From: SEELANGS automatic digest system <LISTSERV at bama.ua.edu>
> Subject: SEELANGS Digest - 14 Jul 2009 (#2009-235)
> To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
> Date: Wednesday, July 15, 2009, 1:00 AM
>
>
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