McGuffey Readers

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[edit] Henry Ford and McGuffey's Readers

Henry Ford cited McGuffey's Readers as one of his most important childhood influences. He was an avid fan of McGuffey's Readers first editions, and claimed as an adult to be able to quote from McGuffey's by memory at great length. Ford republished all six Readers from the 1857 edition, and distributed complete sets of them, at his own expense, to schools across the United States. In 1934, Ford had the log cabin where McGuffey was born moved to Greenfield Village, Ford's museum of Americana at Dearborn, Michigan. In 1936, Ford was an associate editor (along with Hamlin Garland, John W. Studebaker and William F. Wiley) of a collection of excerpts from McGuffey Readers. This 482-page compendium was dedicated to Ford, "lifelong devotee of his boyhood Alma Mater, the McGuffey Readers."(see Henry Ford and the Jews, Chapter 1: McGuffeyland)

[edit] Criticism of McGuffey's Readers

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McGuffey's Readers contain many derogatory references to ethnic and religious minorities. For example, Native Americans are referred to as "savages".

There are those who regard the references in the book to the Jews and Judaism as anti-Semitic. For instance, in Neil Baldwin's Henry Ford and the Jews, the author makes the case that Henry Ford's self-avowed anti-Semitism originated with his study of McGuffey's as a schoolboy. Baldwin cites numerous anti-semitic references to Shylock and to Jews attacking Jesus and Paul. He also quotes the Fourth Reader to the effect that "Jewish authors were incapable of the diction and strangers to the morality contained in the gospel." The readers further characterize Jews as "Christ killers" and labels their reverence of the Old Testament as "superstitious," and teach that Jews have been rejected by God for being "unfaithful".