03/01/05
I recently received an inquiry from a reader of this website relating
to certain critical remarks I have made about The McGuffey Readers. This reader had noted my concerns about
the pluralistic tendencies of The
McGuffey Readers and asked me to explain these concerns in more
detail. Here was his question:
> Hi, while
reading through your curriculum info I noticed that you mentioned that the
McGuffey's Readers were pluralistic. I hadn't heard that before, and was
wondering if you could point more towards some more information on this?
This is a very fair request, and one that I shall try to respond to in
this article.
The original version of The McGuffey Readers was written by two brothers: William Holmes McGuffey and Alexander Hamilton McGuffey. Here is a brief biography of William Holmes McGuffey found at http://www.aobs-store.com/reviews/mcgr7hb.htm :
“By most accounts, William Holmes McGuffey
(1800-1873), the creator of the original McGuffey Readers and the
man who became known as "the schoolmaster to the nation," was a dour,
strict, and humorless career educator. He was born in western Pennsylvania into
a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian family. His family moved to Ohio when he was very
young. By 1826, after graduating from college and having held several teaching positions,
he had risen to the rank of professor of ancient languages at the new Miami
University in Oxford, Ohio. This later enabled his shrewd publishers to boast
that McGuffey was a "former professor at Oxford."
In the mid-1830s, the Cincinnati publishing firm
of Truman and Smith approached Catherine Beecher -- sister of the famous
Reverend Lyman Beecher -- with a request to do a series of "western"
reading texts. Beecher declined, but recommended William Holmes McGuffey for
the task. He agreed to compile four "graded" readers for a flat fee
of $1,000. McGuffey completed the task in just two years. All four Readers,
plus the Primer, were published in 1836 and 1837.
McGuffey went on to be ordained as a
Presbyterian minister and to serve as president of two colleges in Ohio. In
1845 he became a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Virginia.
He remained in Virginia until his death in 1873. By this time, nearly 50
million copies of his Readers had been sold. Despite this
astonishing publishing success, all that McGuffey received was the original
$1,000. However, each Christmas, to show their "gratitude," his
publishers presented McGuffey with a barrel of "choice smoked hams."
The Fifth and Sixth Readers
were the products of William's younger brother, Alexander Hamilton McGuffey
(1816-1896). Alexander was a scholar in his own right. In addition to his work
on the Readers, he did a majority of the work on the popular McGuffey
Eclectic Speller.
The basic McGuffey Readers were
revised many times through the years. Neither of the McGuffeys was directly
involved with these revisions. New revised editions were published in 1841,
1844, 1857, 1866, and 1879. Major changes included a gradual mellowing of the
overt religious content of many of the lessons. Still, in sharp contrast to the
totally secular readers in common use today, even the 1879 edition presented
God as the Father and the Creator.
Decline in Popularity
McGuffey Readers were used
widely in America until just after World War I...”
And here is a brief biography of Alexander Hamilton McGuffey found at http://www.lib.muohio.edu/mcguffey/genealogy.php :
“ALEXANDER HAMILTON McGUFFEY, son of ALEXANDER and ANNA (HOLMES) McGUFFEY,
was born August 13, 1816, in Coitsville Township. When his brother William went
to work at Miami University in 1826, Alexander went with him and was enrolled
at the University's grammar school. He attended Miami University until 1831 26
and then taught briefly in Burlington, Kentucky. He taught English and
languages at Woodward College while attending the Cincinnati Law School. He
opened a law office in Cincinnati after passing the bar in 1839. That same year
he married ELIZABETH DRAKE, daughter of DANIEL and HARRIET (SISSON) DRAKE.
Alexander assisted his brother with the famous readers and was alone
responsible for the 1838 speller and the fifth reader. The family lived at 300
Southern Avenue, Mount Auburn, Ohio, and owned a farm in Lebanon, Ohio.
Elizabeth died in September of 1864, and in 1866 Alexander married CAROLINE
VIRGINIA RICH, daughter of SAMUEL HEATH and FLORENCE M. (DOTY) RICH of Boston,
Massachusetts. She was born in 1839. Alexander died June 3, 1896, and Caroline
died in 1905.”
From a modern secularist vantage point, the school books written by
these McGuffey brothers seem remarkably Christian. There are many readings from scripture, promotion of Biblical
virtues, and acknowledgement of evil.
Sodomy and feminism are not cast in a favorable light. And creation, not evolution, is taken for
granted.
But viewed from an historical standpoint, I fear that The McGuffey
Readers were but one more step in a downward decline. The McGuffey Readers are a far cry
from the sound reformed theology represented in the original New England
Primer and of the Protestant Reformation.
The spiritual and intellectual decline since the Protestant Reformation
has not been steep but gradual. Rome
was not built in a day, so to speak.
Sadly, the McGuffey brothers – like the overwhelming majority of
Americans – swallowed the lie that was inherent in the American Revolution and
the formation of the United States. The
“patriots” of the American Revolution and the “Founding Fathers” of the United
States represented a pluralistic alliance of Deists, Romanists,
Congregationalists, Presbyterians, etc.
This pluralistic alliance and its members are lauded in The McGuffey
Readers, whereas the Bible characterizes such alliances in unfavorable
terms . So, for example, the
profane heretic Benjamin Franklin – who had rebelled against the reformed
Puritanism of his birth for Enlightenment Deism – is eulogized in McGuffey
Readers in glowing terms, such as in a page from the Fifth Reader
found at http://www.puritans.net/news/mcguffey1.pdf
(pdf format). He is there said to have
brought “freedom” to America. But such
a rebel against God cannot bring true Biblical freedom to a nation, but only a
distorted Enlightenment version of it. The
Reader goes on to laud his “elevated rank in human nature”, whereas scripture
calls such men as Benjamin Franklin fools.
We find this sort of inappropriate eulogium of Franklin and others of like
sort in the other original Readers (see, for example, the contents of a Reader
for younger children at http://www.puritans.net/news/mcguffey2.pdf
) . The philosophy of wicked heretics
such as Ralph Waldo Emerson too are treated as acceptable, though they are
hardly acceptable from a scriptural perspective. America had abandoned the established orthodox Protestantism of
its colonial era. But there is a lack
of recognition of how far things had already fallen since Reformation days, and
no contrition to speak of for that fall.
So we must say that the original McGuffey Readers were
representative of their time. They were
part of a chapter in history when there was revulsion against the logical
results of a secularist constitution (hence the critical perspective of The
McGuffey Readers towards Napoleon), yet a fond embrace of a secularist American
constitution and the men who brought it about.
Because of the failure of leaders like the McGuffey brothers to
recognize the wickedness of religious pluralism and a national secularist
constitution, they were of little use to stop the inevitable spiritual decline. That decline continued even in the years
immediately following the publication of the original readers. The readers themselves were increasingly
secularized, and that part which was sounder in content was removed. It was only a matter of time before American
public school textbooks would laud sodomy and other violations of the “second
table” of the Ten Commandments, having so compromised with the “first table” of
the Ten Commandments.
(Note: For those who would like more information about The McGuffey Readers, these additional websites are instructive: http://www.howtotutor.com/samples1.htm , http://digital.library.pitt.edu/nietz/ , and http://www.lib.muohio.edu/mcguffey/browse.php .