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Between the Covers

2008.04.05

Lord! when you sell a man a book you don't sell just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night - there's all heaven and earth in a book, a real book. ~Christopher Morley

"That which transpires behind that which appears." Sufi

" The most popular schoolbook in the nineteenth century was the McGuffey Reader, introduced in 1836. The McGuffey Readers rode the wave of western expansion. After the Civil War they were standard schoolbooks in thirty-seven states."

If you frequent used book stores you often find treasures,
I found two pages of an early McGuffey reader.

Only later did I discover that the early readers not only preached virtue, compassion, good manners, ethics, morality, but they also were filled with gender, racial, and religious bias.

"They presented the White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant as the model American."

Later editions, 1879, tempered the early bias and reflected a more pluralistic society.

(Please: Enlarge so that you can read the words)

23 Comments

thanks for the history lesson, great job!~ R

urmysunshine · 2008-04-05: 19:21

Nice post.

joycephotography · 2008-04-05: 19:47

wow .. how interesting and what a find . thanks for all the info and words .. I am always inspired and intrigued by your post :)

Lindyart · 2008-04-05: 19:54

Very interesting and very old. Great!

cobaltbutterfly · 2008-04-05: 20:29

very interesting!

mimax2 · 2008-04-05: 21:28

very nice lesson, nice photos.

CJLata · 2008-04-05: 22:57

What a treasure! I love your description of the co-existence of
virtue, compassion, good manners, ethics, morality with gender, racial, and religious bias!

Carley · 2008-04-05: 23:12

These are wonderful...great words too :)

Emma · 2008-04-06: 04:10

Great work!

wingsofbutterfly · 2008-04-06: 12:41

Another great post!

ScubaLiz · 2008-04-06: 13:37

Very interesting post Lynda - it is amazing how values shift and change, and not always for the better! Cannot help but wonder how our current ones will be viewed in 50 or 100 years!

kangshung · 2008-04-06: 18:15

Excellent post. Thanks for sharing, P.

With regard to a comment stated above by sjasf, I would point out that while any written word is open for interpretation, God does not condone or encourage slavery anywhere within his written word. That the bible refers to it and does not openly condemn it in some passages is and was more for the sake of those poor souls that happen to find themselves within the unfortunate confines of such a dreadful circumstance. Slavery in an of itself is very much a human exercise; which, remarkably and terribly enough, is still openly practiced within 27 countries in our own world today. And until we do something about it, I don't believe that practice is going anywhere. However, such bad behavior is addressed and dissuaded in a number of commandments in the bible that read something to the effect of, "Love your neighbor as yourself."

As is commonly assumed, such passages that read as follows, "Slaves, obey your masters", (as is found in Ephesians 6:5) are written not to berate the slave, but to lift up. To give some glimmer of hope in an otherwise hopeless existence. Were one to read the verse immediately preceding said scripture one might see a similar encouragement in Ephesians 6:1-3: "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, that it might BE WELL WITH YOU.

Just as it is in the child's best interest to obey a parent lest they be punished, it is likewise in the slaves best interest to obey his master lest they or their family be beaten, starved, or worse. Does pointing that out make me a slave-monger, or does it make the other statement that says that I am concerned for the well-being of the slave? Similarly, the passage goes on to speak to the fact that if you are stuck as a slave, (whether it be as punishment for a crime, indentured service, or simply another's cruelty) you should make the best of it and win the affection of your master through love, rather than his wrath through disobedience. In all things we are encouraged to reflect the Lord's love and affection for us, whether as slaves, or as free men.

Ephesians 6:7-9
Work with enthusiasm, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people. Remember that the Lord will reward each one of us for the good we do, whether we are slaves or free. Masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Don’t threaten them; remember, you both have the same Master in heaven, and he has no favorites.

Sorry for the long remark here, Poet. I guess I had more to say on this than I realized. Feel free to delete this if you don't want to leave it up.

Sevenapples · 2008-04-06: 19:54

I don't delete comments unless they are hurtful to someone or really off colour.

photopoet · 2008-04-06: 21:20

Great find. It's always interesting to see what was produced in each period/age.

vollenda · 2008-04-06: 21:53

Very interesting ! Great

Gwadannie · 2008-04-07: 00:07

I found school-books for the girls of 1915. These books teach to them to cook soups, to use oil lamps, to save the housekeeping money. In another book (1882) teachers sais to the girls : the women owe respect and submission to her husband. But Jesus treated the women as his friends and he protected the adulterous woman ... Maybe the Son was less inflexible than the Father... So in 2008 the girls have the same school-books as the boys and both learn mathematics. Maybe the problem is not the God's word but deformations which people swollen with certainties make this word undergo. I have a friend physicist in the particle accelerator in Grenoble ; it would seem that to-day even Euclid is old-fashioned - exceeded... Thank you for your interesting post !

camilleauteuil · 2008-04-07: 01:43

These pages are historical treasures.
It reveals so much about mentalities back then...
Very interesting post.

Madoc · 2008-04-07: 05:01

Newspapers of the same time period taught the same depending upon the biases of the editors. I have lots of old newspapers and transcribe some for a genealogy website and enjoy reading them very much. I can't get enough! I prefer learning history that way rather than how I learned it in school...history to me in school was always about wars and not about day to day living. Also have a McGuffey Reader that used to be my husband's grandmother's and a really fun to read medical textbook! A couple of my grandfather's brothers were doctors...I kind of wanted to read up on some of the things they studied back then! Oh, and old cookbooks are also fun to read...they had much more than recipes in them! Ok, enough, looks like I've written a book just with this comment!

oldbabe · 2008-04-07: 05:18