One-room Schoolhouses
Blog #5
McGuffey
Readers and a
Quiz for You
By Julie A. Hanks, Ph.D.
aka Jesse J Elliot
Teachers and students in America went
from scratching their letters and words in the dirt of a log/sod cabin to
reading the classics in prescribed texts.
Educating our new nation went from makeshift cabins to actual classrooms, decorated with maps, ABCs, and children’s work. According to
Ron Powers, a Pulitzer Prize author, “The McGuffey Readers effected the first mass-educated and
mass-literate generation in the modern world.”
With the Western communities becoming more established, deskswith built-in ink holders replaced crude benches or stools brought
from home. (These improvements were only in the public schools
for whites or the mission schools.) As the infrastructure of the
schools changed, so did the pedagogy, most notably in the addition of the McGuffey Readers.
Children’s literature did not exist as a genre in the 19th Century. Except for Goody Two Shoes,
written in the late 18th Century and republished in 1881 by John
Newberry in London, nursery rhymes, fairy tales, and adages made up the
literature or oral literature for children. (Note the very adult selections from the sixth level edition of the McGuffey
Readers below in your quiz.) The hundreds of children books we have today with child-friendly
illustrations were not available or affordable. A few illustrated children’s
books were made in Europe for the very rich but were too expensive and certainly too unavailable in the American West.
Now, for the first time, Readers contained stories, poems,
essays, and speeches that attempted to provide a graded scale of difficulty (as
well as moral teaching). As the readers' efficiency progressed, so did the McGuffey
Readers. Stories in the first book were pretty didactic and uninteresting, but
by the second eclectic reader, the stories were written better, and their
morals or lessons more digestible. In
fact, one of the stories, “The Leaf,” was an
inspiring allegory illustrating the delicate balance between life and death. This story was so beautifully written that over a hundred years later, Leo Buscaglia wrote his own version—and
published it as The Life of Freddie the Leaf. Though the illustrations were lovely, I
actually found the original version better written.
Interestingly enough, the some schools still use the readers, especially home schools. Though the first reader is the weakest, the stories in the readers continue to improve. Written and edited by William Holmes McGuffey, the text is still effective if used along with contemporary readers and modern learning materials.
QUIZ: Not
all readers managed to make it through to the Sixth Reader, but here is a sample
of writings from the McGuffey’s Sixth
Eclectic Reader. See how well you can do
matching the correct authors to their works. The
correct answers follow these two mixed-up lists:
1. Song of the Greek
Bard A.
Shakespeare
2. Lochinvar B.
Shakespeare
3. Character of
Columbus C.
William Hazlitt
4. Prince Henry &
Falstaff D.
Washington Irving
5. Political Tolerance E. Horace
Greeley
6. My Mother’s Picture F.
William Cowper
7. Labor G.
Washington Irving
8. Thanatopsis H.
Thomas Jefferson
9. Indian Jugglers I.
Sir Walter Scott
10. Death of Sampson J.
Bible
11. Antony over
Caesar’s Dead Body K. Lord
Byron
12. “He Giveth His Beloved Sheep” L. William Cullen Bryant
13. Death of Absalom M. Milton
14. The Last Days of
Herculaneum N. Homer
O.
Edwin Atherstone
P.
John Locke
Q.
President Abraham Lincoln
R.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
THE ANSWERS
1. Song of the Greek Bard A.
Lord Byron
2. Lochinvar B. Sir Walter Scott
3. Character of Columbus C.
Washington Irving
4. Prince Henry & Falstaff D.
Shakespeare
5. Political Tolerance E.
Thomas Jefferson
6. My Mother’s Picture F.
William Cowper
7. Labor G.
Horace Greeley
8. Thanatopsis H.
William Cullen Bryant
9. Indian Jugglers I.
Wm Hazlitt
10. Death of Sampson J.
John Milton
11. Antony over Caesar’s Dead
Body K. Shakespeare
12. “He Giveth His Beloved
Sheep” L.
Elizabeth B. Browning
13. The Last Days of
Herculaneum M. Edwin
Atherton
14. Death of Absalom N.
Bible
Good read - I am a retired teacher, 42 years, and am always on the look out for good ol' school days blogs. I also am the proud owner of a couple of McGuffey's
ReplyDeleteDear Neil, I too am a retired teacher and I share your enthusiasm for historical education items. I first heard about the McGuffey Readers when Leo Buscaglia published his book. I was very impressed until my "Kiddy Lit" teacher read us McGuffey's "The Leaf," and we realized that Leo had not only plagiarized, but his version was not as rich. Thirty five years later, I found a complete set of the Readers in a wonderful bookstore in Plymouth, MA. :-)
ReplyDeleteThe first reader is pretty bad, but from the 2nd Reader on, the stories and essays are quite good. Thanks for writing. Julie aka Jesse J Elliot.