Hero Worship: Why Did McGuffeyites Idealize McGuffey?

William Holmes McGuffey was an important and influential educator, but he inspired a cult of McGuffeyites only because his name adorned the Readers. As Hugh Fullerton wrote for the Saturday Evening Post, "his name became a household word, until it seemed only a title. The teacher was buried under the 122,000,000 or more books that bore his name, and McGuffey became a Reader instead of a man." (1)

Although many other people had a hand in the success of the Readers and the series blossomed only after repeated revisions, nearly all commemorations attributed heroic achievements to McGuffey. One may see this oversight as a simple yet recurring mistake or as one era's inclination to view historical change as the product of individual human agency. Indeed, this is reinforced by McGuffeyites' promotion of an individualist philosophy and the persistent desire to put a face and personality to the books. One of McGuffey's descendents who wrote a semi-fictional account of McGuffey's life said, "In my interview with my cousin Katherine she urged me, in whatever I might publish about the Readers, to bring out the human side of the story. For many years she had been meeting McGuffey devotees who paid tribute to her as a granddaughter of the educator but knew little about the real personalities behind their beloved schoolbooks." (2)

As a result of McGuffeyites' desire to connect a personality to the schoolbooks, McGuffey has been idealized in several ways. The other pages in this section explore how McGuffey has been idealized as a pioneer and through his connections to Miami University and Oxford, Ohio. This page describes the wide range of heroic achievements that have been attributed to McGuffey:

• A biography of McGuffey by one of his descendents said, "By some innate quality, a youthfulness of heart that pierced and shone through all his Puritan severity, William divined how the young should be helped to learn." (3)
  
• Historian Mark Sullivan, author of Our Times, ranked William Holmes McGuffey with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln as the three greatest Americans. Industrialist Henry Ford agreed with Sullivan in part, substituting Thomas A. Edison for George Washington." (5)
  
• Sullivan was also known to call McGuffey "a kind of American Confucious" since he took his sayings from the accumulated wisdom of the human race." (6)
  
• Ford's representative, William Cameron, at the 1934 memorial dedication claimed, "McGuffey belongs in the calendar of our national prophets...like all true prophetic work, the Readers achieved a result far beyond their author's dream; like all true prophetic work it remains as true today as the day it was done." (7)
  
• At the same dedication at McGuffey's birthplace Cameron also said,"The presiding genius of this great gathering is a schoolmaster - a schoolmaster whose schoolroom was the length and breadth of the United States, and whose scholars were three generations of Americans... And ninety-eight years ago this year there began to issue forth from him an intellectual and moral influence, the force of which still survives. It was a most humble medium through which he chose to exert this great power - the lowly reading book of the school child... He made [the Readers] a national standard of thought and conduct to which the new America gladly adhered... There is in history no achievement like it; our own annals contain few things more American." (8)
  
• At the same ceremony Henry Ford spoke briefly: "Friends: I am glad to join with you today in giving honor to Dr. McGuffey. He was a great American. The McGuffey Readers taught industry and morality to the youth of America. Thank you." (9)
  
• Another speaker, Dr. Ralph Hutchinson, at the 1934 memorial dedication said, "One hundred and twenty-two million books, at least, went out into the schools and homes of this country and formulated the moral and cultural thinking of as many millions of youth. This alone, aside from his work and achievements in colleges and universities, makes him one before whom many of our greatest giants are dwarfed." (10)
  
• Harvey C. Minnich gave an address at the 1934 memorial dedication in which he said the McGuffey Readers "erected a moral code, as effective in the new-found firesides of the Ohio and Mississippi Valley as the code of Moses among the Hebrews or that of Hammurabi among his 'black head' race, to inspire the youth in the new ideals." (11)
  
• In his biography of McGuffey, Minnich compared McGuffey to another great man from history: "McGuffey was one of the first to understand the intellectual needs of this growing empire, and because of his predominant interest in people; his all but St. Francis-of-Assisi desire to serve his fellow man freely and without recompense; his Pestalozzian affection for children and the unfortunate..." (12)
  
• Also in his biography of McGuffey, Minnich exaggerated: "During this process [of westward expansion] McGuffey was the lone voice crying in the wilderness of illiteracy; crying, 'Prepare the way for a great people.'" (13)
  
• William E. Smith, in his biography of McGuffey, wrote: "McGuffey smote the mighty mountain of rich literature of the race and a great river of poetry and prose flowed into the homes of a humble and grateful people. The people went to the William Holmes McGuffey College. The American mind was in the making." (14)
  
• One 1950 article said, "Moral fibre, self-reliance and devotion to liberty, our best resources, were to a great degree contributed to (sic) McGuffey. Lawgivers and military heroes came and went in that era, but McGuffey enjoyed a place all his own." (15)
  
• Another article, from 1942, said McGuffey was "one of our country's truly great men, a teacher who took the nation into his classroom." (16)
  
• An overstatement, by Frank Siedel in an undated article claimed, "No man in history has had such a vital influence in shaping the destiny of this nation as William Holmes McGuffey, who stuffed education into a saddlebag and carried it out to meet the needs of the people." (17)
  
• Finally, a song from the McGuffey Societies' song book illustrates the various heroic attributes of McGuffey:

"Ode to William Holmes McGuffey" (18)

1. Our new-born nation, cramped by swaddling dress,
   Spread westward and absorbed a wilderness;
   Its destiny an empire's breadth to rule,
   With stays deep-anchored in the church and school.
2. In the crusading came those qualified
   With high-born zeal their nation's fate to guide;
   Though many lives in aiding it were lent,
   Richly in service was McGuffey's spent.
3. Sensing the defects of his country's age,
   He planned to cure them with the printed page;
   And in the public's schooling gave the trend
   To change rude motives to heroic blend:
4. Led aimless thinking into nobler ways,
   And changed the futile into golden days;
   Built the unstable into solid traits,
   And guided learners through scholastic gates;
5. Wooed the young citizen to higher choice;
   Developed leadership with pen and voice;
   With hand-book, rostrum, pulpit, worked his will,
   And won for progress with enduring skill!