Abstract

William Holmes McGuffey’s influence on American education is both unsurpassed and undisputed. He, along with his brother Alexander, categorically created the most popular American schoolbooks in the 19th century. McGuffey’s Eclectic Readers’ prominence in the American classroom lasted until the 1920’s, almost a century’s time. After a period of dormancy, the Readers reemerged as a symbol of the back-to-basics educational movement of the later part of the 20th century. Their rigor and proven educational history were continually referenced in newspaper commentaries and op-eds in the 1980’s. This begs the question: are McGuffey’s Eclectic Readers still relevant in the 21st century, or do they survive simply as nostalgic artifacts from an earlier time? This paper examines the available secondary literature and traces the Readers’s evolution through history in an attempt to answer the question.