The analysis of manuals in pedagogy written in Québec between 1850 and 1983 enables us to interrelate the two main approaches to teaching presented by their authors, the near to far method and the concentric method. In a paper written in 1989, Ferras and Clary have presentend these methods as conflicting ones, by describing them differently compared to authors of manuals of pedagogy published in Québec. Our analysis has shown that rather than being conflicting, these methods are complementary in nature. In fact, the first method puts forward a pedagogical method which takes into account the student's learning level while the other deals more with the information content of the discipline.