Primers and Readers: Agents of Change or Maintainers of Status Quo?

The New England Primer and McGuffey’s Eclectic Readers were widely used as texts by many American children over the span of three centuries. An examination of some of these materials gives a clue to what kind of values shaped our system of public education — and the children who were in turn shaped by it.

New England Primer

This textbook was used by students in New England and other English settlements. First printed by Benjamin Harris in 1690, it was used by students into the nineteenth century. It combined the study of the alphabet with Bible reading. In addition to the alphabet rhymes, it included a catechism. Emphasis was on fear of sin, God’s punishment and the inevitability of death. Read an excerpt from the New England Primer.

McGuffey Readers

In 1833, Truman and Smith, a small publishing company in Cincinnati, Ohio, contracted with the Reverand Williams Holmes McGuffey to create a series of readers. The first reader, published in 1841, introduced children to a moral code that emphasized promptness, goodness, honesty and truthfulness. Subsequent readers presented the white Anglo-Saxon as the ideal American.

From the fourth reader on, youth were introduced to what was considered the great literature of the day. The sixth and final reader contained 186 selections, in which 111 great authors were quoted. Also included in the sixth reader were 17 selections from the Bible. The McGuffey Readers probably exerted more influence on literary tastes in the U.S. than any other source other than the Bible.

-Adapted from I Dream of a School: Mission Study on Public Education Youth Book with Leader’s Guide by Martha Bettis Gee. New York, New York: General Board of Global Ministries, The United Methodist Church, 2004

Literacy for Slaves: A Long, Hard Road

Those who lived in slavery in the United States were governed by a public policy that forbade them to learn to read and write. Yet many of those who were enslaved placed such a high value on literacy that they were willing to go to great lengths in order to learn to read and write, even jeopardizing their own safety.
 
Janet Duitsman Cornelius tells the story of Lucius Holsey, a slave committed to learning to read. Holsey was able to obtain five books: two Webster’s “blue back" spellers, a dictionary, Paradise Lost, and the Bible. Holsey wrote:

Day by day, I took a leaf from one of the spelling books, and so folded it that one or two of the lessons were on the outside as if printed on a card. This I put in the pocket of my vest or coat, and when I was sitting in the carriage, walking the streets, or working in the yard or using the hoe or spade, or in the dining room I would take out my spelling leaf, catch a word and commit it to memory ... Besides, I could catch words from the white people and retain them in memory until I could get to my dictionary. Then I would spell and define the words until they became perfectly impressed upon my memory. 1

Richard Parker, a slave in Virginia, wanted to read so badly that he picked up old nails and sold them until he had enough money to buy a primer. Then he needed a teacher, so he collected more nails until he had enough to exchange them for a number of marbles. When he went to the well to water the horses, he would give a white boy a marble to tell him a letter. In this way he learned the alphabet and continued until he could read words of two syllables. He hid his book from view in his hat, carrying it there until he wore the hair from the top of his head. 2

Pit schools were another risky way for slaves to learn to read. Slaves would slip out at night and go into the deep woods, where they would dig out pits. There slaves who could already read would serve as teachers. 3

Frederick Douglass told the story of his burning desire to learn to read. At first he learned from his master’s wife. When her husband found out what she was doing, however, he forbade his wife to teach Douglass anything more. Douglass’s master contended that learning would make him unmanageable and therefore worthless as a slave. Douglass wrote:

That which to him was a great evil, to be carefully shunned, was to me a great good, to be diligently sought, and the argument which he so warmly urged, against my learning to read, only served to inspire me with a desire and determination to learn. 4

Douglass soon found a way around his master’s obstruction. When he ran errands, he would take bread with him. He would find poor white children who would teach him in exchange for the bread. After he learned to write the letters L,S, F, and A from markings out on pieces of timber in the shipyard, he would challenge white boys he met by saying he could write as well as they could. Douglass would then write the four letters he knew and challenge the other boy to go further. When they did, Douglass was able to add more letters to own knowledge.

Douglass said that his copybook was the board fence, brick wall and pavement; and his pen was a lump of chalk.  Eventually Douglass was able to obtain a Webster’s spelling book and a copybook that belonged to his master’s son. These tools enabled him to become literate. Frederick Douglass transformed his literacy into eloquence as an abolitionist. 5

1. Janet Duitsman Cornelius, When I Can Read My Title Clear: Literacy, Slavery, and Religion in the Antebellum South (University of South Carolina Press, 1991)
2. John W. Blasingham (ed.) Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews, and Autobiographies (Louisiana State University Press, 1977).
3. Ira Berlin, Marc Favreau and Steven F. Miller (eds.) Remembering Slavery: African  Americans Talk About Their Personal Experience of Slavery and Emancipation (New Press, 1998).
4. Frederick Douglass, Narratives of Frederick Douglass. Information adapted from “Loosing the Bonds Through Literacy” by Jane C. McFann in Reading Today, October/November 2001.
5. Ibid.

Slave Laws Related to Literacy

(Alabama Slavery Code of 1833)

S31.  Any person who shall attempt to teach any free person of color, or slave, to spell, read or write, shall, upon conviction thereof by indictment, be fined in a sum not less than two hundred fifty dollars, nor more than five hundred dollars.

S10. If any white person, free negro, or mulatto, shall at any time be found in the company of slaves, at any unlawful meeting, such person being thereof convicted before any justice of the peace, shall forfeit and pay twenty dollars for any such offence, to the informer, recoverable with costs before such justice.

S35. If any free negro or person of color shall be found in company with any slaves in any kitchen, out-house, or negro-quarter, without a written permission from the owner, master, or overseer of said slaves, said free negro or person of color shall for the first offence, receive fifteen lashes, and for every subsequent offence, thirty-one lashes, on his or her bare back, which may be inflicted by said master, owner, or overseer, or by any officer or member of any patrol company who may find said free negro or person of color, in any kitchen, out-house, or negro-quarter, associating with slaves without such written permission.

The Melting Pot

The term “melting pot” is used to describe the process of Americanization, a means by which a burgeoning immigrant population was assimilated into American culture in the late nineteenth century. The image itself came from a play written by Israel Zangwill and titled “The Melting Pot.” While the plot of the play has long been forgotten, the metaphor that was at its core endures as an expression of one aspect of the American Dream.

A closer examination of the metaphor reveals some uncomfortable implications. The pageants inspired by Zangwill’s play were not an affirmation of the diversity of the influx of some eighteen million new citizens who reached our shores from 1890 to 1920. Picture the image of strangely-attired foreigners stepping into a large pot and emerging as clean, well-dressed, accent-free, “American looking”  (for “American,” read “white Anglo-Saxon Protestant”) Americans. After all, a melting pot is the means by which ore is refined into pure metal, eliminating any impurities. America needed the immigrants to provide the workforce needed to become an industrial giant, but those immigrants had to conform to the ideal of those who owned the factories and mills. According to Benjamin Schwartz, “Americanization, then, although it did not cleanse America of its ethnic minorities, cleansed its ethnic minorities of their ethnicity.” 1

This could happen when minorities were racially similar to Anglo-Saxons. The turn-of-the-century wave of immigration was made up of Irish, Germans, Italians, East Europeans, Catholics and Jews. But the next huge wave of immigration was quite different. Since 1965 Asians and Latin Americans have comprised the bulk of immigrants, while African Americans have continued to struggle against the pervasive cultural racism that has prevented their becoming fully a part of the predominant white culture.

1. Benjamin Schwartz, “The Diversity Myth,” Atlantic Monthly, May 1995. (Volume 275, no. 5), pp. 56-57.

Adapted from I Dream of A School: Mission Study on Public Education by Martha Bettis Gee. General Board ofGlobal Ministry, The United Methodist Church, 2004.

Diversity Salad or Stew Pot?         

If the melting pot image no longer expresses what we hope our culture would represent, what metaphor does? Many people have begun to speak of America as a diversity salad.  David C. Stolinsky examines this image and suggests that while it is an attractive image, it is somewhat simplistic.

The idea is that bits of lettuce, celery, carrot, and other ingredients retain all their individual flavor and color, yet are combined in an appetizing dish…. It implies that all one has to do is throw ingredients of any description into a bowl. There is no requirement that the ingredients be compatible, that they be in any proportion, or that they be healthful. Indeed, the salad need not even be . . . thoroughly mixed. One merely dumps the ingredients in the bowl and forgets them. 1

Stolinsky suggests that the best analogy for America may be the stew pot. In the stew pot, the cook adds meat, potato and other ingredients with a sense of proportion. As the stew is heated, the flavors meld. In a stew, each ingredient retains many of its original characteristics, but it also takes on the flavors of other ingredients. The result is a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Stolinsky suggest that as new ingredients are added to the pot, their flavors are blended with the rest of the stew. The stew needs continual attention. 2

1. David L. Stolinsky, “America: Melting Pot, Diversity Salad, or What?” (NewsMax.com, July 4, 2001).
2. Ibid.

Adapted from I Dream of A School: Mission Study on Public Education, by Martha Bettis Gee. General Board of Global Ministry, The United Methodist Church, 2004

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