Conclusion: Politicization of the Readers

Much like conservatives in the 1980s, McGuffey believed that education consisted of the "classics," "excellence," and the "truth." In his biography of McGuffey, Harvey Minnich said, "His belief in a college education followed the English that 'higher' education was for the select few, that a few chosen members of society must perform the egregious task of thinking for the whole... he believed that culture consisted of knowledge of the classics and philosophy, through which would be established the mores of the people." (1) By reading the classics, McGuffey hoped to teach moral virtues and literary excellence. Conservatives in the latter 20th century wished to institute moral training by using the Readers in public schools.

One writer noted this altered use of McGuffey in 1988: "Some might lament the passing of the golden days when democratic education sought unity and homogenization, when patriotism and religion were simply understood, and when private good was synonymous with the public good. Some might even lament the current focus on cultural pluralism, the confusion over the valid relationship of patriotism and religion, and the loneliness of a public-less individualism. 'Back to the basics' political and educational spasms cannot reproduce the social world necessary for the Readers to be used as anything except nostalgic reactionary tools that unsuccessfully attempt to recover patriotic order and moral values." (2)

The conservative movement of the 1980s was evident in the McGuffey movement. One McGuffey Society booklet said, "School authorities, in explaining the return of McGuffey to the classroom, credit a yearning for a simpler life and the desire to promote honesty, industry and more humane behavior. McGuffey Readers are well designed for these ends." (3) Also, the Ohio Historic Site marker where McGuffey was ordained into the Presbyterian ministry read: "McGuffey's Christian character is an example and model for all teachers and students in America."

The McGuffey Societies were part of the conservative movement of which Ronald Reagan rode the crest. Gary Bauer, undersecretary of education under President Reagan argued at the 1986 McGuffey Society annual meeting that schools should adopt the Readers again because children must be taught virtue. He blames liberals for the lack of morality training in the schools: "The practice of teaching virtue reaches back to the Greeks... But during the last few decades this philosophy, which has guided western civilization from its earliest days, has been assaulted and ridiculed by some opinion leaders. As a result, the teaching of values came increasingly under attack in the '60's and '70's and today is still absent from too many of our nation's schools." He continued, "It is my firm belief that this trend toward 'value-neutral' classroom instruction has contributed significantly to massive increases in youth drug and alcohol abuse, delinquency, promiscuity and illegitimacy, violent crime in school, and disregard for the authority of parents, teachers and elders." (4)

This push for conservatism in public education began much earlier. One conservative critic of education, E. Merrill Root, wrote a 1962 article promoting the use of McGuffey Readers in public schools. Just five years earlier Root published Brain Washing in the High Schools, a book that blames American soldiers' susceptibility to brainwashing in Korea on the lack of patriotism in public schools. Root makes a variety of assertions to promote the McGuffey Readers:

"Why wonder that 'juvenile delinquency' runs parallel to 'progressive,' 'permissive,' and 'social' education? The oxygen of McGuffey was abstracted from our atmosphere - and into the vacuum rushed the... carbon monoxide of collectivism... Today moral values, integrity, classical literature, Christianity, incentive to thrift, cultivation of standards, are unfashionable to our education Big Shots. These 'liberals' think that to mention God in public is 'sectarian' - it violates the civil liberties of agnostics... Only atheism, to them is Constitutional. So when, in Twin Lakes, Wisconsin, a school-board, at the wish of parents, adopted McGuffey's Readers, there was a 'liberal' witch-hunt... The Milwaukee Journal (quoting the Racine Journal-Times) said the Readers were being used 'to promulgate a political philosophy of the far right.'" Playing on the anxieties of the Cold War, Root said, "Compare contemporary education that...infects children with the yellow-jaundice of 'I'd rather be Red than dead'... The greatest danger to America is not outward military attack but inward cultural subversion. Our enemies destroy us by subverting Christianity; faith, hope, and love; the heroic in history and literature; and Emerson's 'self-reliance' and 'the infinitude of the private man.' They destroy America not by atomic fission but by academic confusion; not by nuclear fall-out but by scholastic fall-down." (5)

Root continued his crusade into the 1970s. In a 1973 article, "What McGuffey Readers Read," that appeared in the Daughters of the American Revolution Magazine, Root said, "Much of the blame for this social malaise must be placed squarely on the shoulders of the liberal educational establishment." (6)

The most recent biography of McGuffey by Dolores Sullivan quoted several of Root's arguments. Sullivan's last chapter defamed liberal influences in education and advocated the use of the Readers in modern classrooms. In the chapter that at least one reviewer said would have been better left out, Sullivan said, "With all their updated techniques and all the best of intentions, contemporary readers still fall far short of the memorable McGuffey series, with selections - and moral lessons - that yesterday's children remembered all their lives... Most parents would agree that this aspect of education is sadly lacking in today's readers, and our society reflects this tragic deficiency." (7)

Modern-day crises made the Readers doubly appealing: "Surely something cataclysmic must have happened to the American value system when the media barrages us daily with alarming facts of rising crime in the streets, an epidemic of teenage pregnancy and drug abuse, and startling statistics of the functional illiteracy of adult Americans. Much of the blame for this social malaise must be place squarely on the shoulders of the liberal educational establishment." (8)

Finally, she countered the argument that the books were out-dated: "the value-free or value-neutral advocates still cling to their ill-conceived beliefs, maintaining that the values taught in the McGuffey Readers or other textbooks of the past are out-of-date, alien to America, or unsuitable for all our children." (9) Sullivan continued, "The virtues of hard work, self-discipline, perseverance, industry, and respect for family, for learning, and for country - these values have no relevance for American children? They are precisely the traditional values that guided the framers of the Constitution, that spurred the pioneers as they wrested homes form the western wilderness, that provided the solid foundation for a country that was to emerge as the world's leader. They are the same virtues embodied in the McGuffey Readers." (10)

(1) Minnich, William Holmes McGuffey and His Readers, 160.
(2) Cram, 249.
(3) Stone, 1986 booklet, 5-6.
(4) Sullivan, William Holmes McGuffey, 191.
(5) Root, "A McGuffey Reader in Every School."
(6) Root, "What McGuffey Readers Read."
(7) "Book Review"; Sullivan, William Holmes McGuffey, 172.
(8) Sullivan, William Holmes McGuffey, 190.
(9) Ibid., 191.
(10) Ibid., 193-4.