Back to McGuffey

As residents of the growing exurb of Twin Lakes. Wis. (pop. 1,468), between Chicago and Milwaukee, the four young fathers were dismayed at the local school system: their children were not learning how to read well. Soon the four centered their attack on modern readers--readers full of "word recognition" devices like "See Spot, run, run, run, run," and packed with "life experience" stories about visits to a supermarket or firehouse.

Last summer, in a tea-party campaign that bored many of the town's complacent oldtimers, the four angry young men managed to get control of the Twin Lakes five-member school board. Pledged to purge the bloodless readers, to replace word recognition with phonetics, Dennis Beula, 33, an accountant, became chairman. Joining him on the board were John J. Collins, 32, a steel salesman; William B. Smeeth. 41, a vice president of a metal-finishing company; and John E. Pfeiffer, 33, president of a business supply company. And when school opened this year, they produced their version of the ideal storybook for the modern U.S. child: McGuffey's Eclectic Readers with all their full 1879 flavor.

Stories with Guts. Most school boards, even if they wanted McGuffey's Readers, would have supposed them out of print; the Twin Lakes men discovered that American Book Co. began to reprint them in the '20s to the order of Henry Ford, who regarded them as admirable curios --with their antiquated typography and illustrations--to send to his friends. Beula & Co. found the old readers to be just the ticket: McGuffey gives a firm phonetic grounding and follows up with stories that bug a child's eyes out. Kids can read of a Cruel Boy who pulled the legs from flies, a Kind Boy who freed his caged bird, a Tease who frightened a playmate into insanity. The books excerpt Shakespeare, Byron, Scott and Whittier; McGuffey's great characters are Napoleon, Louis XVI. Lafayette and Washington. And William Holmes McGuffey (1800-73), an Ohio minister and schoolmaster, never spared the verse:

Ben Battle was a soldier bold

And used to war's alarms.

But a cannonball took off his legs

So he laid down his arms!

Antiquated Grammar. Despite these nostalgic credentials, the board's choice of McGuffey's touched off a row that last week ranged from village hall to statehouse. Incensed that the board would ignore "developments that have been made in reading during the last 50 years," State School Superintendent Angus Rothwell threatened to withhold state aid, which comes to about $10,000. Taxpayers threatened to impeach the school board. Principal Raymond Oestreich attacked the McGuffey's Readers because of "antiquated grammar, misspelled words and poor punctuation." One teacher refused to use it. And state legal advisers, who want to keep church and state separate, objected to McGuffey's "sectarian references."

As a concession to these critics, the board agreed to paste brown tape over or tear out such religious passages as the Sermon on the Mount. But outside of that, it would take no guff about McGuffey. Said Beula: "McGuffey teaches the basic morals of Americanism--honor your parents, honesty, love animals." Said Pfeiffer: "McGuffey builds recognition of the heroic, the elevated, the patriotic strength on which our country is based. If we had McGuffey's in our schools we never would have had the defections we had in Korea."

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