     My primary document I chose was John William Dawson’s First Lessons in Scientific Agriculture for Schools and Private Instruction written in 1864. This book was a lesson book for teachers to teach their students or for an individual to read and master scientific agriculture themselves. John William Dawson was a very smart, passionate man, keen about science. He was a middle class man from Nova Scotia, who’s parents came over from Scotland, that grew up in Pictou then later moved to Montreal, attending Mcgill University.  While analysing this text I focus more on the preface to the first chapter, focusing on the document and what it reveals about the time period, the purpose of the book and if it achieved the goal of getting information across, and also the attitudes towards the topics and the reasons for the attitudes.
     This particular textbook written by John William Dawson was published in 1864, during a time when education was still young in Canada. Comparing this textbook to modern day textbooks we have in our class now, you will notice that the writing style is different. Textbooks now mostly will stay to third person, but Dawson’s while using third person, using terms like he, his, they, the creator, and the writer, he also switches to first person using terms like we. This textbook was also gender specific. Throughout the textbook it does mention woman doing the work ,but the men doing it. In the preface of the book it mentions it’s “a manual for young men who may be pursuing the subject.” which leads me to assume that the classes were split gendered.
     The purpose of this textbook as it says in its title for schools or private instruction. Meaning that it was a tool for teachers to use to plan out the lessons in their classes, and for individuals to read on their own and learn the material themselves. I think that Dawson did a good job laying out his textbook. Looking at the table of contents the fourteen chapters are easily laid out with clearly marked subtopics underneath. Each topic is marked clearly with a detailed title then when getting to the chapter it is detailed and easy to read. So Dawson definitely achieved his goal at making this a textbook user friendly.
      Finally, I focused on the attitudes towards the topic, and obviously I can’t go back in time to see how the students taking this course like the material, but we can look at the work that Dawson did. He was a very well respected man in the education field. Starting from the bottom and then making it all the way to the top. Making his mark on the school by showing his passion for education having the Governor General at time tell the University board of governors to hand the “reins” to Dawson, a “unknown young geologist from Nova Scotia,”. All in all I think that the attitudes towards the topics would have been positive if Dawson spread his passion of education with everyone, Also he has plenty of other educational books, which makes me believe that he was good at what he was an well educated man to have more than one book.
     The First Lessons in Scientific Agriculture for Schools and Private Instruction by John William Dawson was a very interesting source to analysis, just in the areas I focused most on they were packed with information. The time period and the influence it had was immense in the document it showed us the different writing styles they had compared to now. Also the purpose of the textbook, it did its job by getting the points across that needed to be taught in a clear and detailed way. Finally the attitudes, even though we can’t go back and see for ourselves the attitudes there were towards the topic, I think that it might be safe to say that the passion that he had for bettering the education field went a lot way, since his time working there paid off when he became the principal of the Mcgill.