Every once in a while, I’ll pick a date for one of these “Quote of the Day” posts because it resonates with me. It’s a special date for me, or it’s the anniversary of something, or the memorial of something, or a famous date in history, or something else I want to write about. But more often than not, I pick a date at random, and then back into a subject, either as one strikes me, or by noodling around on the web until I find something interesting. I like that. I like finding something to write about that I otherwise wouldn’t, and then having to take a stab at it.
So, here we are on September 23. And Wikipedia has bailed me out again: Today is the 218th birthday of one William Holmes McGuffey, probably the most illustrious and best-known citizen of the small hamlet of Claysville, just a few miles down the road from Chez She, out here in the wilds of Western Pennsylvania.
There’s not much to Claysville these days: Blink too hard while you’re driving through it, and you’ll miss it altogether. There’s even less than there was thirty-three years ago when we moved out here, and the entrance and exits to the town were delineated by the offices of Dr. Little (Dentist) on the one end, and of Dr. Large (Family Practitioner), a few blocks away, on the other. I never met Dr. Little. Dr. Fred Large was a wonderful old gentleman who, it was discovered when the hospital I worked for bought his practice after his retirement, often accepted payment in the form of chickens, honey, and bacon. Transferring his accounts into our unforgiving and automated system was a frustrating, and sometimes riotous, labor of love.
Then, there was Sprowls Country Hardware, a huge emporium where one could purchase anything from a washing machine, to an armchair, to a fireplace, to a well pump, to … oh, and yes, hardware. That’s gone, too, although I’m happy to say that the family still carries on a thriving appliance business uptown in Little Washington.
Allums Family Restaurant, in its original location, dark and dingy, a fine greasy spoon. It’s moved up the road now, and there’s a lot more light. Not sure that’s a good thing, really. And the original Claysville elementary school, replaced now by what I’m sure is a much more secure, and far less atmospheric, modern edifice. Still, I suppose we should be glad it hasn’t disappeared altogether, consolidated with surrounding areas as its children are bused all over God’s knowledge to suit some faceless bureaucrat who lives elsewhere and has no interest or engagement with my little community at all.
So. The school. I live in the McGuffey School District. It’s fairly rural. The high school is just a few miles down the road from me. Sometimes, when the wind is in the right quarter, I can hear the band playing at half-time of the Friday-night football games. Our high-schoolers are pretty bright and pretty tough (they grow up to the sound of the opposing team’s supporters “moo-ing” as the McGuffey Highlanders run onto the field). Many of them were 4-H-ers, and lots of them are Future Farmers of America. They’re a patriotic bunch, and more than a few join the military after they graduate. They seem to get married (often to each other) younger, and in greater numbers than one might suspect from listening to CNN and reading the New York Times. Most of those marriages seem to last, too. Not all of them, of course. But most of them. Families are big out here, not always in size, but always in heart, and people look out for, and take care of, each other. While I sometimes find myself hankering for the land of my birth, or other far-away places I’ve been or would love to visit sometime, I’m happy, and I’m glad we chose to dig a hole in a field and build a home here, all those years ago.
William Holmes McGuffey was born just outside Claysville on September 23, 1800. He only lived in his birthplace for a couple of years before his family moved to Ohio, and at the age of fourteen or so, young William became
a roving instructor, traveling through the frontier of Ohio, Kentucky, and western Pennsylvania. He was “one of an army of half-educated young men who tramped the roads and trails drumming up ‘subscription scholars’.” These half-educated young men would travel to and from different settlements looking for a part-time teaching job. They would teach in log-cabins to children whose parents would pay for their education. The teachers would educate the children until the parents ran out of funding or until the parents did not care to have their children educated anymore (from Wikipedia).
A few years later, he moved back to the Claysville area, and received formal training as a teacher at Washington College, several miles down the road. Then, in his mid-twenties, McGuffey moved to Oxford, OH, where he taught at Miami University, got married and started a family. His subsequent life and career was distinguished, and included several professorships and the presidency of two institutions of higher learning (one of which was Ohio University). His last appointment was as Professor of Philosophy at the University of Virginia, where he died and is buried.
Throughout his long career, McGuffey retained his commitment to early childhood education. And during his time in Oxford, he began to publish what were to become his most enduring contribution to teaching and learning, the McGuffey Readers. (He was asked to do so by the publishing firm of Truman and Smith, at the recommendation of his long-time friend, Harriet Beecher Stowe.) The first set of Readers consisted of four volumes (two more were edited by McGuffey’s brother, and added to the series a few years later), and was planned as a series of increasingly-challenging selections, going from simple word-repetition in the early volumes to more complex and meaningful exemplars of religious, moral, and civilizational instruction in the latter. (In an early example of what we might call “political correctness,” the Readers were revised throughout the nineteenth century to soften the strong Presbyterian and Calvinist slant of the first editions, and to incorporate more “inclusive” but still heavily Christian pieces so as to accommodate large waves of late nineteenth-century immigrants into the country.)
It’s hard to over-estimate the impact of these small, ubiquitous, books on nineteenth and early twentieth-century literacy and education in the United States, as well as their role in formulating a consistent basis for the sort of values-based education that we lament the absence of today. Henry Ford was an enormous fan, republishing a set of Readers from his childhood, and paying for the distribution of them to schools all over the United States. They remain quite popular today as a tool for home-schoolers, and the 125 million or so copies sold over the years place them at a level rivaled only by the Bible and Webster’s Dictionary.
Online versions of the books abound. Here’s an 1879 edition of the Third Eclectic Reader. And an 1921 edition of the Sixth. It’s just hard to imagine some of the grammatical and literary theory taught therein being allowed, let along supported, in the schools today, never mind most of the content. (Note: The six books are not intended to be used in grades 1-6. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be a clear and straight line as to which books belong to which ages or grades. I prefer to imagine the one-room schoolhouse, with groups of children reading different books, each at his or her own level, perhaps reading silently, perhaps reading aloud. Older kids helping the younger ones. Sort of like the one-room schoolhouse I attended myself for part of my childhood. That’s pretty much how it was. Kids age 5-14, all in one room together, the older helping the younger, and each progressing at an individual rate.)
Be that as it may, or however it was done, it’s time to wrap this up, and wish William Holmes McGuffey, educator extraordinaire, a happy two- hundred-eighteenth birthday, and to thank him for his immense contribution to forming the shape and character of several generations of this nation’s citizens and history. And for putting Claysville on the map. One man with an incalculable impact. It is possible. Thank you. And Happy Birthday!
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