McGuffey Readers Research Articles

Democracy's Schools: The Rise of Public Education in America by Johann N. Neem

Reviewed by: Democracy's Schools: The Rise of Public Education in America by Johann N. Neem Mark Boonshoft (bio) Democracy's Schools: The Rise of Public Education in America. By Johann N. Neem. ( Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017. Pp. 256. Cloth, $54.95; paper, $22.95.) Historians do not know how to talk about the common school movement. Conservatives spent the last half century deriding "government schools." Meanwhile, from the Left, Michael Katz and the "revisionist" education historians of the 1960s and 1970s cast public schools as institutions bent on controlling the masses. Thanks to Johann Neem's wonderful new book, we are free of this stagnant debate. [End Page 523] In the first two chapters of his thematically organized book, Neem recovers the democratic vision of common school advocates. The push for public education began in the founding era, to be sure. For Neem, though, democratic education really took shape in the late 1830s. The later reformers hoped common schools would not only make citizens, but also enable all boys and girls to develop themselves and live a fulfilling life. The Boston Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing made the most powerful case for this idea in an 1838 lecture called "Self-Culture." Neem borrows Channing's term throughout the book. To Channing, "self-culture was the right and duty of every child" because it was "the essence of being American" (15). It fell to others to bring this liberating experience to the masses, namely Horace Mann, who in 1837 became the first secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education. Common schools aimed at "nothing less than democratizing access to imagination" (18). Reformers designed a curriculum to realize their lofty goals. They conceived of knowledge—everything from the three Rs to the classics—as the "building blocks." On this base of knowledge, students "deepened their appreciation of Creation, enriched their experience of the world and their own inner lives, and developed the higher faculties of their minds" (53–54). Even the supposed bastions of an older style of education reinforced these new values. Historians usually argue that the McGuffey Readers—the most popular schoolbooks of the day, the first of which were published in 1836—inculcated values of hard work and patriotism in passive students. To Neem, the McGuffey Readers helped students learn to "reason, imagine, and love" (46). All the while, as Neem argues in the book's final three chapters, idealistic advocates of democratic education confronted the realities of "education in a democracy" (76). First of all, localities were already building schools. Mann and others could hardly be reformers if it were otherwise. Drawing on work by Nancy Beadie, Neem argues that reformers regularly relied on this existing social capital. To them, "localism was a tactic for state building" (70). This is precisely why reform proved difficult. People could and did contest the experts. Jacksonian Democracy raised the question: "What role was there for uncommon sense in an era of the common man?" (33). Similarly, Mann and Channing saw education as counterweight to a degrading capitalist economy. Other Americans embraced schooling to help them get ahead in that very economy. Where the rubber really hit the road was where the ruler hit the knuckles. Reformers envisioned classrooms as temples of self-making. Bored students and undertrained and unsupported teachers alike, though, "saw the schoolroom as a battlefield" (101). Reformers criticized teachers for [End Page 524] continuing to rely on rote memorization and threat of the rod. These complaints undermined their own efforts to make teaching a respected profession through the founding of normal schools. Ultimately, enough Americans built public schools that the question became how to make them truly common in an increasingly diverse society. At first, the challenge was religious. Reformers believed religion had a role in schools. They settled on nonsectarian Protestant teaching as the way forward. That seemed reasonable to most Protestants, though not to the large and growing population of Catholics. Catholics found public schools alienating, especially in the heyday of nativism. So they built other schools for their children. African Americans took a different tack. Recognizing that public schooling had become a prerequisite to accessing citizenship, black Americans demanded inclusion. More generally...

Century-old Textbooks in the Rutgers Library

One may almost say that during the middle and late nineteenth century William Holmes taught the whole of the United States to read. As a part of the nation-wide celebration in honor of this great educator, Dr. Clarence E. Partch has contributed to The Journal the following article in which he tells something of the role which played in American education and of the particular characteristics of his books. The Rutgers Library is fortunate in having among the hundreds of old textbooks in its collections original copies of several of the McGuffey Readers. It was additionally fortunate in this centenary year of McGuffey's birth to receive from Mr. Henry Ford a gift of the whole set, reprinted in excellent facsimile of the seven volumes of the Eclectic Readers.

“Oft in the Stilly Night”: Past and Present, Myth and Identity in Delta Wedding

It is accurate to say that the past plays a significant role in Southern narrative, but anyone who says so is making neither a fresh observation nor a particularly helpful one, for the past plays a significant role in most narrative. Few storytellers come to their task with the assumption that the past does not count. Examples from the Iliad to Tristram Shandy reveal narrators struggling to portray the influence of the past on the present, the dead on the living. What seems more useful is to ask how a particular author portrays the relationship between (or the collision of) past and present. Continuing my study of songs in Delta Wedding, I will focus on Thomas Moore’s “Oft in the Stilly Night” and examine some questions that it raises. Particularly, in what ways, in Delta Wedding, does Welty portray the threshold between present time and past time? In what ways do characters perceive the past and the dead? The Irish poet Thomas Moore (1779–1852) wrote “Oft in the Stilly Night,” also known as “The Light of Other Days,” and published it in the first issue of his National Airs (1819). Like other songs by Moore, such as “Drink to Me Only,” and “Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms,” “Oft in the Stilly Night” became immensely popular during the nineteenth century and continued to be widely known and sung during the first decades of the twentieth. Found in many books for school and family use, even in McGuffey readers, “Oft in the Stilly Night” also was performed as an “art” song in concerts and on recordings. The song is sung twice in Delta Wedding, first by Aunt Shannon, and second, by the family members at the picnic after the wedding. Shannon Fairchild Miles, one of the old aunts who reared Battle and his brothers and sisters, sings or hums frequently in the narrative. The moment in question is Friday, the day of the wedding rehearsal, in the evening. As Welty describes the scene we do not see Aunt Shannon but merely hear her: “One of those inexplicable pauses fell over the room, a moment during which Aunt Shannon’s voice could be heard in another part of the house, singing ‘Oft in the Stilly Night’” (DW 272). This song is part of the novel’s almost continuous musical discourse (after a few moments pass, we hear Mary Lamar Mackey playing the popular dance

McGuffey, Ford, Baldwin, and the Jews

McGuffey, Ford, Baldwin, and the Jews by Ronald R. Stockton Henry Ford exhibited anti-Semitic attitudes throughout his life. Scholars have no definitive explanation of where these beliefs originated, although many point to political influences during Ford's youth as possible causes: an overarching xenophobia in the country as a whole as well as the tendency for fringe elements to associate Jews with the machinations of powerful banking interests which purportedly engaged in currency manipulation and fomented economic turmoil.1Neil Baldwin's recent book Henry Ford and theJews presents a new theory, that Ford learned anti-Semitism from the various editions ofMcGuffey's Eclectic Readers. Baldwin's book jacket makes the point that Ford's "early intellectual growth was dominated by The McGuffey Reader, a popular schoolbook featuring Shakespeare's Shylock, and traditional scriptural interpretations condemning Jews for not accepting Jesus Christ as the son of God."2 The first chapter in Baldwin's book ("McGuffeyland") notes that Ford grew up with the Readers. Baldwin says that McGuffey emphasized that "Protestant Christianity was the only true religion in America." The Readers taught "a Calvinist structure of reward and punishment" inwhich "hard work, thrift,and rugged conformity were the ideals. Success was desired. Failure was shunned." According to Baldwin, the Readers embraced "an ordered, rigid, and straightforward view of aworld where white was white and black was black."3 None of Baldwin's observations would surprise anyone familiar with the Readers. McGuffey's views were "a mirror of early nineteenth century America." The first two Readers were published in 1835 and 1836. Others came later.They targeted the small towns and rural areas Michigan Historical Review 35:2 (Fall 2009): 85-96 ?2009 by Central Michigan University. ISSN 0890-1686 All Rights Reserved. 1Allan Nevins and Frank Ernest Hill, Ford, Expansion and Challenge, 1915-1933 (New York: Scribner, 1957); Douglas Brinkley, Wheels for theWorld: Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century ofProgress, 1903-2003 (New York: Viking, 2003). 2Neil Baldwin, Henry Ford and theJews: The Mass Production ofHate (New York: Public Affairs, 2001). 3 Ibid., 4-5. 86 MichiganHistoricalReview of what was then the West, where education was fragmentary.4Because teachers at that timewere generally not well educated, graded textbooks that introduced students (and teachers) to the great writers were amajor contribution to the curriculum. The Readers also affirmed the value of ethnic groups through a "cosmopolitan" approach that emphasized "the rich cultural traditions of other nations."5 The books included stories about Germany, England, Scodand, France, Italy, Holland, Russia, Spain, Poland, Arabia, Al Hambra, India, and Catholic Ireland. Many entries praised the ancient Hebrews, their scriptures, and theirmoral teachings. Itwas themulticulturalism of its age. Previous works on Ford's anti-Semitism mentioned theMcGuffey Readers peripherally, if at all, but a number of reviewers of Baldwin's book embraced the theory.Alison Cowan wrote that Ford's "aversion" to Jews dated to his schooldays, "when he was reared on themoralistic teachings of William Holmes McGuffey, whose books harped on sources like Shakespeare's 'Merchant of Venice.'" Robert Rockaway said, "Baldwin infers that Ford's phobia about Jews originated in his youth when, as a schoolboy, he fellunder the influence of theMcGuffey Readers." Carlin Romano reported that Ford "grew up reading McGuffey's Readers, fullof anti-Semitic stereotypes and the example of Shylock, Shakespeare's poster boy forJewish greed."6 At this point, it is hard to see how any work published after 2001 that addresses Ford's anti-Semitism or McGuffey could fail to note Baldwin's book. Unfortunately, however, Baldwin's arguments in his opening chapter are flawed and heavily dependent upon a selective, sometimes erroneous or forced reading of secondary sources. To support his thesis, Baldwin cites five readings fromMcGuffey. "Shylock, 4 John H. Westerhoff III, McGuffey and His Readers: Piety,Morality, and Education in Nineteenth-Century America (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon, 1978), 18. 5 Henry Steele Commager, "Foreword," inWilliam H. McGuffey, McGuffey s Fifth Eclectic Reader (1879; repr., New York: New American Library, 1962), xv-xvi. 6 Alison Leigh Cowan, "Off the Shelf: The Industrial Genius Who Hated Difference," New York Times, December 9, 2001, sec. 3, 6; Robert Rockaway (review), Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production...

Schoolroom Poets: Childhood, Performance, and the Place of American Poetry, 1865-1917 (review)

Reviewed by Gary D. Schmidt Calvin College Sorby, Angela. Schoolroom Poets: Childhood, Performance, and the Place of American Poetry, 1865–1917. Durham, NH: University of New Hampshire P, 2005. In the introduction to his most recent collection, Good Poems for Hard Times (2005), Garrison Keillor laments the loss of what he defines as a national culture that can link the national experience of one individual to another through a common core of reference and understanding. "The common life is precarious," he writes. "I fear a future in which America becomes a loose aggregate of marauding tribes—no binding traditions, no songs that we all know, not even 'The Star-Spangled Banner' or 'Silent Night,' no common heroes, no American literature. . . .The last singer recognizable to everyone was Frank Sinatra; the last poet known far and wide was Robert Frost. There are no replacements in sight" (xx). What Keillor laments is what teachers observe daily: that there is no longer a common set of reference points that mark American culture, points that most Americans can turn to and be assured that the person sitting beside them at the library table, or standing on the subway, or waiting in line at the high school cafeteria, or legislating in Washington, or ministering in a New York City soup kitchen, will recognize. Keillor's own volume of poems—together with the first in the series, Good Poems (2002)—is an attempt to address this, as are the many "One Book, One County," or "One Book, One City," or "One Book, One School" programs that are flourishing at the beginning of this troubled century. All of which makes Angela Sorby's fascinating study, Schoolroom Poets, particularly timely—though the book is not addressed specifically to the cultural fragmentation in North America. It is an examination, however, of a time when those cultural reference points were in place, and they were poetry. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, poets like John Greenleaf Whittier, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Robert Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Whitcomb Riley were culturally linked as the "Fireside Poets," evoking a time when families would read to each other close by the fire—the need for heat and light creating a community in which poetry itself became an equal necessity. For Sorby, however, a more apt metaphor is the "Schoolroom Poet," for in the schoolroom these poets found canonization—both for their work and for their lives, which grew into mythic tales—and popularization through anthologies, in which they became standard fare. Through the effects of their repetition in McGuffey's Readers, through publication in culturally affirmed children's journals such as Mary Mapes Dodge's St. Nicholas, and through school performances and social recitals, the work of the "Schoolroom Poets" became binding cultural ties that linked American culture in a great web of acknowledgement and familiarity. Sorby writes of a time when it seemed, [End Page 410] at least, as if there was a common American culture expressed through its poetry, and she attempts to historicize that cultural phenomenon—now so utterly vanished—and explore its effects upon the poetry itself as it was crafted, as it was understood by its adult and child audiences, and as it was contextualized through performance and publication. The point of popular poetry, Sorby claims, "is not to engage with literary history but rather to make social history by forming communities" (xxvi). What Sorby does so well in this book is to explore the interactions of the texts and the social communities that received them, focusing here on two generations of poets whose evolutions in terms of reception would lead to the development of modern poetry for children. Writing of Eugene Field's enormous popularity, Sorby notes that the "question becomes one that demands as much cultural spadework as literary analysis" (127). It is an observation that readily applies to her entire study, and speaks to her strength in it: her cultural spadework and...

Education Reforms: Lessons from History

POLICY makers in education have long embraced reform. Unfortunately, education reforms have consistently been plagued by the reformers' lack of knowledge and appreciation of the history of education. Accordingly, the latest reform, touted as a panacea, meets with failure, and the search for the magic elixir begins anew. In The Imperfect Panacea: American Faith in Education, 1865-1930, Henry Perkinson relates an anecdote about his secretary, who was typing the book's text. She asked him, If the schools can't solve these problems, then who can? Perkinson concluded that her question rested on two basic assumptions shared by most Americans: First, that all social problems are solvable; second, that the schools are the panacea for all social problems. (1) The history of American education is replete with examples of supposed panaceas. Taking the shape of reforms, these well-meaning efforts--often worthy in themselves--have dotted the educational landscape since the time of Horace Mann in the 1830s and 1840s. For example, the common school itself would remove all crime and poverty from American society. Mann described it as the greatest invention ever made by man. (2) The devotional reading of the Bible in schools would result in a virtuous America. Texts such as the McGuffey readers would unfailingly instill the right character in the students. The public school of the early 20th century would make good, loyal Americans out of the children of the immigrants who were then arriving in large numbers. In the mid-20th century, the Life Adjustment curriculum would prepare all American youths for satisfying lives as individuals, family members, and citizens. The infusion of funds into the science and math curricula by the National Defense Education Act would help the U.S. catch with the Soviets in the post-Sputnik era, instill needed academic rigor in the secondary school curriculum, and fittingly challenge our gifted students. (As defined by the federal government, Brahms, Beethoven, Rembrandt, and Da Vinci would not have qualified as gifted.) Potential panaceas grew in number as the 20th century progressed. We were greeted with open education, which would educate the young naturally. Schools would play a central role in the War on Poverty. Accountability, especially in the guise of performance contracting, would make the schools accountable to their constituents. Behavioral objectives would serve as an infallible means of achieving the goals of effective teaching and learning. Such pedagogical movements as modular scheduling would provide the proper organizational pattern for the curriculum. Site-based management would remove the educational problems created by large size. WHY THE SEARCH FOR PANACEAS? The ahistorical nature of our nation, and hence of our schools, undergirds the search for a panacea. As Seymour Sarason has pointed out in The Case for Change, reforms are doomed to failure because we underestimate the complexity of what we are up against and are unable or unwilling to use the cumulative experience humans have acquired over the years. (3) There is also the attraction of that which is novel, which often turns out to be no more than a fad. Compounding this fascination with the novel is our tendency to jump on the bandwagon, giving scant thought before the leap. Add to these reasons the American trait of feeling compelled to get everything done in a hurry; the crusading fervor of the reformers, who seem driven to depict present practices as worthless and their own actions as redeeming; and the tendency of innovators to reduce complicated interactions to one-shot, sure-fire remedies. Schools, as Perkinson pointed out, are limited institutions. Sometimes those involved politically with education fail to recognize the modesty of the school's clout. (4) Thomas Sergiovanni has argued that some policy makers believe that finding the right change strategy promises victory in the national and even the international brain race. …

The McGuffey Readers: Selections from the 1879 Edition

The McGuffey Readers: Selections from the 1879 Edition

Pakk Ya Cah in Havid Yard: Seeing Historic Boston on Foot

The home of America's first university, its first public school, and its first public library, the Boston area now hosts more than two hundred thousand students. From 1630, when John Winthrop said Boston should be “a city on a hill,” through the McGuffey readers of the nineteenth century, the city has been a beacon of learning. Its politics have been long and colorful: Massachusetts boasts the oldest continuously used, written Constitution in the world, John Adams's 1780 state constitution; the gerrymander was named after Governor Elbridge Gerry's plan for redrawing North Shore districts; the early years of this century saw fierce Yankee-Irish battles for the State House. Massachusetts produced and remains transfixed by the Kennedys, was the only state to vote for George McGovern, and has another interesting gubernatorial race this year. (Keep an eye peeled for people standing with election signs at busy intersections, a local political tradition.) In short, Boston holds much allure for the political scientist.For the tourist, too, Boston is an appealing destination. It is a compact city and, in the words of the old travel cliché, a city best appreciated on foot (or by public transportation). Most sites of interest in the historic downtown and nearby nineteenth-century neighborhoods are within walking distance of each other. There are restaurants, shops, book-stores, and a certain European vitality of city life—perhaps the result of narrow streets and ample green space. For walkers, the Freedom Trail organizes most of the major Revolution-era sites, and plenty of other spots are marked in the historic core. The same history, though, means Boston's streets were laid out on seventeenth-century cowpaths.

On McGuffey's Readers

In the summer, 1989 the writer had the first chance to touch the copies of the McGuffey's Eclectic Readers in the Special Collections of Ohio University, in Athens, Ohio. William Holmes McGuffey, author of the Readers, was president of the University (1839-43) and pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in the town.The first editions of the Readers 1-VI were issued through 1836-57 in Cincinnati, Ohio and after that they were revised and spread mainly in Middie America over two generations. The total of the copies amounted to 122, 000, 000. The popularity was due to McGuffey's first intention of teaching young learners moral values in the Bible as much as literary stories.The writer's question is why McGuffey's Primer and Readers were little known in early Meiji period, though they were said to have made the American mind. It was partly because Fukuzawa Yukichi, whose school was very influencial, took Wilson's Primer and Readers and other readers home with him from America, but not McGuffey's ones, and also partly because he regarded Reading as a means of understanding other English books such as science and history, not as for knowing moral background of European civilization.

An Artifact from the 19th Century Schoolhouse: The McGuffey Reader

David E.Vocke is professor at Center for Professional Teacher Education at University of Texas at Arlington. The McGuffey Readers are repre sentative of schoolbooks used in a typical one-room school in middle border states during late nineteenth century. While other textbooks could certainly be found in rural schools during this time period, it has been suggested that McGuffey 's Readers were most popu lar and most widely used; a total of 120 million copies were sold between 1836 and 1920 (Westerhoff, 14). Swanson contends that half of school children in United States used Readers be tween 1836 and 1900. Such figures sup port notion that students in middle border states were likely to encounter Readers during their formal schooling. Fuller, in The Old Country School, states that Readers served as core of one-room school curriculum and were suited to times and needs of rural Mid westerners. The series of Read ers, which provided students with the best writing in English language (17) gave provincial schoolchildren a com mon core of knowledge. William Holmes McGuffey compiled first four Readers between 1836 and 1837. By 1845 there were six Readers in McGuffey series, but fifth and sixth Readers were developed by McGuffey's younger brother (Westerhoff, 70). Over years there were numerous reprintings and revisions but McGuffey had no hand in editions after 1857. The original editions of Readers contained material McGuffey gathered from other schoolbooks and from selections of Standard literary works, including Bible (Westerhoff, 45). His purpose in compil ing texts was to teach English and correct moral behavior through stories that schoolchildren read aloud. McGuffey suggested that students retell each story in their own words and answer questions at end of lesson. Spelling and vocabulary words, as well as rules for reading, can also be found in Readers. Schoolchildren were expected to prog ress through series of Readers during course of their formal schooling. As Gulliford points out, however, before 1870 children who attended regularly in primary grades achieved reading level ofMcGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader (51). Westerhoff suggests that most rural schools were able to get by with only first two in series (57). In McGuffey and His Readers, Wester hoff maintains that changes in various editions of Readers were repre sentative of changes that were taking place in public school curriculum. He earnestly contends that revised empha sis in each new edition signaled decline of influence of traditional Protestant values and rise of secularism and middle-class civil religion (19). Although a bit strident in his compari son of two editions, Westerhoff clearly distinguishes between themes of McGuffey's original collections and revised 1879 edition: By 1879, theistic, Calvinist world view so dominant in first editions

McGuffey's Readers

McGuffey's Readers D. Thomas Hanks Jr. (bio) The Annotated McGuffey: Selections from the McGuffey Eclectic Readers, 1836-1920, by Stanley W. Lindberg. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1976. As title and subtitle show, Lindberg presents both an annotated and an anthologized McGuffey in this volume. A reviewer, then, must ask three questions: Do the McGuffey Readers merit such attention? If so, are the annotations valuable? And are the selections representative? The Readers do merit our attention. As Lindberg notes in a brief but helpful introduction, they were America's major schoolbooks for over seventy-five years, appearing in 122,000,000 copies and three major revisions between 1836 and 1920. (They have not yet gone out of print in 1980.) Whether or not the Readers actually held and shaped "the minds of several generations of Americans," as Lindberg suggests (p. xv), clearly they have been a major element in our educational history. For the most part Lindberg annotates his text well, although there are some flaws. A few times he falls into cuteness, as in his metaphorical description of Irving's "Boblink" as a piece "blended together with moralizing, seasoned with gentle humor, and served with a fluid and inviting style (garnished just a bit too heavily)" (p. 253). Several notes appear later in the text than they should; for example, Lindberg reproduces hyphenating such as "lit-tle la-dy" on page 5 of his text but fails to explain the hyphenation until page 52. Two or three similarly delayed notes appear later in the book. The most serious flaw in the notes is inadequate documentation. Lindberg notes of "The Dying Boy" (pp. 78-79) that the author of this "Anonymous" selection was actually Mrs. Lydia Howard Huntley Sigourney, whose capsule biography he presents. He cites no source for his information, as he cites none for all such material throughout the book. Anyone wanting to find out more about Mrs. [End Page 200] Sigourney et al., then, will find no help here or in the book's rather sparse bibliography (eighteen items). In a text of this sort—which could be a major aid to scholars—it is strange to find neglected such an elementary concern as adequate footnoting. In spite of these imperfections, the annotations are on the whole valuable. Some are certainly disillusioning: many readers will be saddened to learn that the "I cannot tell a lie" story of George Washington and the cherry tree was a fabrication of "Parson" Mason Locke Weems (pp. 44-46), and that Patrick Henry's immortal "Give me liberty or give me death" speech may well be another such fabrication (pp. 225, 327-30). Many, however, will be interested in Lindberg's comments on the history of illustrations in the Readers (pp. 8, 19, 111-13, 281), or in the biographies of the various authors in the Readers; all will be pleased to see properly acknowledged here the previously unattributed works of such authors as Maria Edgeworth in notes like this one: This is one of the lessons which McGuffey (and nearly all his competitors) "borrowed" from the famous children's tales of Maria Edgeworth. It has appeared in every edition of the McGuffeys since 1841—never once carrying any acknowledgement of authorship. British authors were gleefully pirated at will by American publishers who paid no royalties, and often—especially if they were women—these authors were not even credited by name. [Note on "Waste Not, Want Not," p. 150.] There are additional strengths in Lindberg's annotations, notably in his comments on the McGuffey attitudes toward morality, religion, death, stereotyped sex roles, and so on. The sociological role of the Readers interests Lindberg as much as does their literary and educational value; the reader will find his or her own interests stirred in all three areas. Turning from annotations to selections and judging largely by comparisons with the latest "revised edition" of the six Readers (New York: American Book Co., 1921—essentially the 1879 edition), one must feel that Lindberg's selections are representative of the whole of the McGuffeys. He has taken lessons both from the 1879 edition and from the no-longer-available early Readers of 1836...

McGuffey and His Readers: Piety, Morality, and Education in Nineteenth-Century America. By John H. Westerhoff III. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1978. 206 pp. $9.95

McGuffey and His Readers: Piety, Morality, and Education in Nineteenth-Century America. By John H. Westerhoff III. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1978. 206 pp. $9.95

McGuffey and His Readers: By John H. Westerhoff, III Nashville, Abingdon, 1978. 206 pp. $9.95

McGuffey and His Readers: <i>By John H. Westerhoff, III</i> Nashville, Abingdon, 1978. 206 pp. $9.95

McGuffey and His Readers: Piety, Morality, and Eduation in Nineteenth- Century America. By John H. WesterhoffIII. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1978. 206 pp.

McGuffey and His Readers: Piety, Morality, and Eduation in Nineteenth- Century America. By John H. WesterhoffIII. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1978. 206 pp.

Institutionalizing a Myth: The McGuffey Readers and the Self‐Made Man

Institutionalizing a Myth: <i>The McGuffey Readers</i> and the Self‐Made Man

McGuffey's Readers and Alger's Fiction: The Gospel of Virtue According to Popular Children's Literature

McGuffey's Readers and Alger's Fiction: The Gospel of Virtue According to Popular Children's Literature

The McGuffey Readers

The McGuffey Readers

Guardians of Tradition: American Schoolbooks of the Nineteenth Century (review)

270CIVIL WAR HISTORY shalling of a variety of types of evidence and a variety of methods of study. The failure of the 1965 Fleming Lectures to enunciate a clear stand on this important question constitutes a flaw in a provocative study. Thomas J. Pkessly University of Washington Guardians of Tradition: American SchoolbooL· of the Nineteenth Century . By Ruth Miller Elson. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1964. Pp. xiii, 424. $7.00.) In a critically detailed and well-written study of more than one thousand popular nineteenth-century American common-school textbooks, Ruth Miller Elson has provided a revealing assessment of the "attitudes which make up the lowest common denominator of American history." Hers is a manifesüy important attempt to understand the world of "fantasy made up by adults as a guide for their children." As such, Guardians of Tradition is a valuable book. Nineteenth-century education in the United States acquired a modest but mixed reputation for its dependence upon textbooks. In 1847, for example, the Reverend Egerton Ryerson, Chief Superintendent of Schools for Upper Canada and the most prominent educational reformer in that country, sharply criticized American textbooks as "so constructed as to require very little labour on the part of either Teacher or Pupil. . . . [This] anti-intellectual method of teaching, and the books which appertain to it, are very properly condemned." From Massachusetts came similar misgivings. Horace Mann, Henry Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson worried about teachers' excessive dependence upon textbooks. But the textbook, a tangible proof of utilitarian and edifying instructional purposes, survived these ripples of complaint to become the surrogate American teacher. In addition to being "anti-intellectual," American schoolbooks displayed a stolidly pedantic and altogether tendentious unanimity on major ideological questions of American character throughout the nineteenth century. Their shared biases survived changes wrought in other spheres by the Civil War, immigration, the rise of the city, and the proliferation of knowledge. Surprisingly few and generally unimportant changes in content and aim appeared . The schoolbooks rather consistently taught that the ideal American was the conservative New Englander. "New England's virtues," chorused the textbooks, "are those of the United States; its character is the American character. ..." If one attempts to trace that character in a few bold strokes the lines show a male, white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant farmer who exults in his favored place nationally, racially, and religiously, and works diligently to become a worthy beneficiary of the faith in work, duty, and self-improvement . He knows that wealth is the reward of virtue, that Popery is sinister, that the races have been assigned stations in the Great Scheme of Things (with the white man at the highest station and the black man at the lowest), that moral purpose controls all operations of nature, that Jews are miserly, BOOK REVIEWS271 females inferior, and America destined to fulfill special Providential purposes . Even in its more elaborate detail, this image is not novel; it has been traced before by students of American textbooks in several briefer historical treatments (including notably Richard D. Mosier's Making the American Mind: Social and Moral Ideas in the McGuffey Readers, which Elson unaccountably overlooked, along with several other valuable secondary sources). But Guardians of Tradition demonstrates, as has no earlier work, the sweep of ideological agreement among America's moralizing nineteenthcentury textbook authors. Elson's study thus brings greater depth and sophistication to innumerable broad questions of American intellectual and educational history. Her analysis understandably makes no claim to measure the influence schoolbooks exerted upon American youth. Nor is Elson's legitimate purpose thereby any the less well served. "To what extent an individual may be influenced by concepts implicit in his schoolbooks," she notes, "is a question that needs the attention of the psychologist as well as of the social scientist." One could nonetheless argue that her portrayal of the composite purpose of nineteenth-century schoolbooks does amount to an important suggestion about their influence. For the readers, spellers, arithmetics, histories, and geographies preached the same values regularly found in popular self-help literature, dime novels, magazines, sermons, and patriotic pronouncements in America. If we shall never know how studiously the nineteenth-century child used his textbook, there remains...

Why the Longevity of the McGuffey Readers?

No series of American textbooks enjoyed so long and popular circulation as the McGuffey Readers. Most of the many biographies and articles written about the McGuffeys and their Readers give most credit for this to the original authors. It is not the purpose of the writer to belittle the great contribution made by the McGuffeys, but an analysis of the facts needs to be made to obtain a true picture of the matter.

Making the American Mind: Social and Moral Ideas in the McGuffey Readers

Making the American Mind: Social and Moral Ideas in the McGuffey Readers