Word: mcguffey
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Robert Houghwout Jackson, onetime Attorney General, collector of McGuffey's Readers, ardent horseman, an eloquent, incisive writer who, when he dissents, dissents in vitriol; considered by corporation lawyers to be the most consistent of the justices...
...yardsticks were developed by educators who wanted to improve on McGuffey. Gunning simply measures the number of words per sentence (a good average for newspaper stories: 16-20), the number of abstract words per 100 words, etc. He has no concern with felicity of phrase, or the worth of what a man is trying to say. Last week, after surveying editorials in half a dozen big U.S. papers, Gunning told what he found: "Most editorial writers seem to confuse dignity with pomposity. Their marathon sentences, foggy words and abstractions put their pieces completely out of reach...
...McGuffey's Readers marked a milestone in U.S. education. What textbooks will become the McGuffeys of tomorrow? A notable contender for the role of McGuffey's successor is a Stanford professor of education, Paul Robert Hanna, supervisor and part author of a thumpingly successful series of elementary school textbooks on social questions. Last week teachers were leafing through two new additions to the series...
...curtsey, the . world's biggest school system last week coyly re-enacted its birth. New York City's Board of Education was 100 years old. To celebrate, it dressed its little girls in pinafores and pantalettes, its little boys in jackets and Buster Brown collars. They read McGuffey readers, wrote on slates, drank water from dippers. Bearded teachers brandished canes at boys in dunce caps. A gentleman impersonating an old-time school trustee drove up to P.S. 15, The Bronx, in a gig. The city's schoolchildren were so bored they didn't even giggle...
...modern text has so exclusive a claim to the title of Teachers' Friend as had the famed McGuffey Readers. But some 400,000 schoolmarms (two-thirds of all U.S. public grade school teachers) draw regular inspiration from a modern counterpart of McGuffey whose lessons are said to reach 14,000,000 pupils: a magazine called The Instructor. Last week the 50-year-old Instructor got a new boss: Miss Helen Mildred Owen, daughter of the magazine's founder. Energetic, fortyish, long the magazine's managing editor, she took over last week as president of the firm...