In the story off "Mc Guffey Readers" discuss the impact his series of readers had on American education and on society.

Question

In the story of "Mc Guffey Readers" discuss the impact his series of readers had on American education and on society.

Answer 1

The impact of the Mc Guffey Reader series on American education and American society is pervasive and monumental. The Mc Guffey Reader, written by William Holmes McGuffey, a resident of Cincinnati Ohio, an ordained Presbyterian clergyperson, and a faculty member of Miami of Ohio University. He wrote the Mc Guffey Reader series for Winthrop Smith, the preeminent publisher of Cincinnati Ohio, on the recommendation of Harriet Beech Stowe.

The McGuffey Readers were books, i.e., in a series of elementary school reading books that were widely used in American schools beginning in 1836.  Those readers help standardize English language usage in the United States. Many anthropologists, sociologists, and philosophers and practitioners of ethics feel the McGuffey Readers not only reflected the moral values of the country in the 19th century but also shaped the way many people felt about morality.

With more than 122 million copies reputedly sold by 1925, the readers taught more Americans to read than any other textbook of the era. Historians of the transmission of education content and values feel the McGuffey Readers formed a watershed of transitional change from the past vis a’ vis the content that schools taught AND the way the content was presented!  

The initial publication (1836) of the McGuffey Readers roughly coincided at the time the West was being settled (1840s ff) and came at time of great need for the formation of a distinct “American” identity. Also, this time period saw the arrival of many new immigrants to the USA.

These phenomena created a demand for textbooks that would not only meet the practical need for curriculum in developing schools, but also extend prevailing American values both to children new to the frontier, and to those new to the country!

McGuffey Readers focused on practical consequences that children might experience on earth and they also taught a Calvinistic ethic that reflected the moral tone of the time and wove into the fabric of American Society, Mr. McGuffey’s Presbyterian theology.

One of the criticisms of McGuffey’s efforts was the fact that the series of readers tended to be culturally and morally monolithic to the 19th century audience and there was not any attempt to incorporate new opinions.

There has been some additional criticism because of the omissions of many issues. For example, the McGuffey Readers did not address the injustice of slavery!  The series did not discuss Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, and an event such as the California Gold Rush later in the 1860s and beyond.

There were also concerns that some antisemitic references crept in the writing, and for the identification of Native Americans as “savages."  Also, women were portrayed only in domestic roles with no other roles considered as possibilities.

There was much good accomplished by the efforts of Mr. McGuffey, but the efforts need to be seen as bound by the values of the time period in which he lived through his Calvinistic paradigm of the world. Impact? Monumental. Perfect without blemish? In my opinion, no.