What is the origin of the idiom on the same page?
This is the definition of the idiom from Wiktionary:
In broad agreement or sharing a common general understanding or knowledge (common in office environments). I want to make sure we're all on the same page with the game plan for the Acme account.
This is the first citation of the phrase in the OED:
[1965 H. Rhodes Chosen Few 179 ‘He..finally told me what page he was on’. ‘Is it th' same page you thought it was?’]
The next citation, which uses the phrase in its current form, is from 1979:
1979 N.Y. Times 18 Jan. b7/2 One of the things that happens when you makes as many rule changes as the National Football League has had a propensity to do in the last couple of years is that it takes a long time for everybody to get on the same page as far as the rules are concerned.
It was doubtless used in speech even before, and the paucity of written references is, I think, due both to the fact that it originated so recently and to the fact that it might have been considered slang at the time. (The OED categorizes it as colloquial, being used chiefly in the United States, and slang.) The first sentence, I think, makes somewhat clear the motivation for using such an expression.
Intuitively, I think it comes from 'common knowledge' of old school traditions. In a 'Traditional' classroom setting, ALL children were instructed by the teacher to open their text books to the SAME page. That way, the teacher insured that the students would ALL follow the lesson together and would not get distracted. Teaching methods were NOT interactive as they are today; in other words, they did not have project-based learning and were not given choices. You may watch the television show "Little House on the Prairie" to get an idea of a more traditional learning method.
I suspect that the term "on the same page" is more Jewish in origin and refers to discussion of the Torah in their religious schools. This is to ensure that their commentaries are referring to the same topis as all Torahs have the same page in any version.
The expression seems to come from the late 19th/early 19th century when it was "to sing from the same hymnal"
The idea was that if two people had different hymnals then they would be of different religions/sects and thus disagree on fundamental [religious] issues.
I found this snippet (in a business context) from 1922 in Google Books:
Reclamation Era - Page 317
Students of Main Street might surmise that Davis and I did not sing from the same hymnal. Such a surmise would be correct.
Hymnal was later replaced by hymnbook, then hymnsheet, and then simply "sheet"- and eventually page and, with the idea of singing diminishing, "being on the same page."
Thus to be on the same sheet as someone was to share their ideas, ideals, and beliefs.
I did find earlier references to singing from the same hymnal but these tend to be literal and imply, rather than state, a unity within one sect/religion.
