McGuffey Moments Museums as Messengers of History

McGuffey House & Museum

401 E. Spring St. Oxford, OH 45056 (513) 529-8380

Thursday-Saturday 1-5 PM

McGuffeyMuseum@ MiamiOH.edu

MiamiOH.edu/ McGuffey-Museum

BY STEVE GORDON, ADMINISTRATOR

In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln, in a message to Congress, wrote “Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history.” Three quarters of a century later, the writer John Steinbeck asked “How will we know it’s us without our past?” History, it seems, has a way of reminding each generation that in not knowing the past, we risk erasing the past, and robbing our memories and cultural identity.

McGuffey House and Museum offers us a place where people can explore many of our pasts. Visitors learn about the legacy of William Holmes McGuffey and his Readers, the richly fascinating history of Miami University, and what life was like in this learning community named Oxford. Through objects, architecture and material culture, history becomes tangible, a form of immersive visual literacy. Museum collections contain myriad stories; most notably the house itself, nearly two centuries old, conveys a deep sense of time and place. William Seale noted how one can sense past times and human experiences through objects. Since bygone people are no longer here to speak for themselves, it is largely through their artifacts that we rediscover the past.

When interpreting McGuffey’s legacy, his contributions to forging a national identity warrant discussion and debate. Is his pedagogy still relevant, and if so, why? At the time his Readers were published, learning was unavailable to many Americans, largely because of one’s occupation, gender or economic status.

The print revolution of the early 19th century, foreshadowing today’s IT advances, literally placed the ability and access to reading in the hands of the masses. Rather than dependance on others to decode language, the Readers empowered individuals to communicate, exchange information, and participate in their communities. So it is today with the internet, mobile phones and digital imagery.

By studying, curating - and yes - at times confronting our collective pasts, museums provide accessible spaces that are equipped to interpret the present and prepare for the future. The Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis has observed, “We know the future only by the past we project into it.” McGuffey House and Museum, a public place open to all people, invites everyone to connect with the places and pasts we share. “History is not dead,” William Faulkner reminded us, “it is not even past.”