Word: mcguffeys
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...campus of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, is usually known as the place where McGuffey's Readers were launched, and where Red Blaik and Ara Parseghian got their starts in football. After last week it may also be remembered as the site of the U.S. debut of the latest in a long line of Russian pianists that includes Emil Gilels and Sviatoslav Richter. Lazar Berman, 45, is unknown in the U.S. and Western Europe. But collectors of Soviet recordings, as well as many pianists throughout the world, have for years praised his talent...
...biography beatified Washington; Fourth of July speeches were gravely heeded. Even arithmetic books instilled patriotism. Symbols burgeoned-Old Glory, the Liberty Bell, the bald eagle, Uncle Sam. Everyone memorized militant songs, such as Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean ("Three cheers for the Red, White and Blue"). And McGuffey readers-hardly a child alive could not recite Longfellow's verse...
...same strain deeper into the American character. Fast-buck operators flourished, the rapid turnover and the quick profit were the dreams of many a businessman. But the more typical pattern for 19th century business and industry was the narrowed eye with the long view, the reinvested profit, the McGuffey and Horatio Alger mottoes on the mind...
Americans no longer live in a McGuffey world. The patterns of patience and impatience are apt to be paradoxical. A businessman may want to rush to California in five hours and yet wait patiently for a delayed jet takeoff. A scientist may bolt instant coffee at a hurried breakfast and then spend a day of slow, painstaking research in his laboratory. Americans love speed and power on the highway, but they are the most disciplined drivers in the world. While the French, Italian or German driver burns out his batteries with his horn and uses his car as an instrument...
...most five-year-olds already speak and understand, even if they cannot read them. Sullivan contends that most reading primers are compiled from word lists that have no logical basis; each list came from a survey of the most used words in older readers, and all went back to McGuffey, "who must have obtained his list from God." Sullivan and a research team financed by Encyclopaedia Britannica Films, Inc. compiled their lists instead by exploring the world of the five-year-old. "A little kid is very sane," says Sullivan. "He just won't pay any attention to something...