| Memo - Readings
for Sept. 21 - Interpreting culture: the McGuffey Readers To understand the past, we must do more than look at historical artifacts and ask where they came from. Real understanding depends on understanding the decisions that people made, and why they made them, not only how they lived their lives but also why. To do this requires trying to penetrate how they saw the world: the expectations and assumptions ordinary people held on a daily basis; the human qualities they valued (in themselves and in others); the kinds of goals they had for themselves as individuals. In a sense, this is particularly difficult when studying the past of one's own culture, because the similarities and continuities may mask the subtle differences. Given the great variation in people's thoughts and experiences at any one time, how is it possible to make generalizations about what "most people" thought at a given historical moment? How can we, as historians, evaluate what the "dominant" or prevailing views were of the time? This week's reading--selections from the McGuffey Readers--offers one possible strategy. The McGuffey Readers were simple primers from which millions of American children learned to read. As you will see, they included poems, stories, pictures, and short essays, all aimed to foster language skills, sound morals, and sense of civic identity. After the Bible, the McGuffey Readers were the most widely read books in the United States in the nineteenth century. What can they tell us about mainstream American ideology? The introduction by historian Elliott Gorn will provide you with background and context for these readings. Bear in mind that he divided the readings into the categories they are in. Originally, they would have been mixed together. Try to imagine that you are a young child in the nineteenth century reading these lessons--over and over and over:
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