McGuffey at Miami

The ten years McGuffey spent at Miami were his formative and most productive years. Here he proved himself on the lecture platform, in the pulpit, in the written word. By 1833, he was a prominent member of the College of Professional Teachers of the Western Country. Its annual meeting at Cincinnati was the literary event of the year. Among the outstanding educators who were his friends were Dr. Daniel Drake, Edward Deering Mansfield, Alexander Kinmont, Milo G. Williams, Calvin B. Stowe, and Joseph Ray (author of Ray's Arithmetic).

McGuffey was generally liked by his students. Thomas Millikin (Miami Class of 1838) expressed the feelings of many when he said that McGuffey was "a model teacher, studiously dignified and polite, elegant and accomplished in social life, critical and exact in knowledge, with unusual capacity to impart knowledge to others."

Some of the professors at Miami, including the patient President, however, found McGuffey difficult when dealing with the affairs of the University. They differed on a number of things, especially on the problems of discipline. With all his heart he wanted to teach the President's class in moral philosophy. As a gesture of conciliation, Bishop had given him the class in 1832, but still Professor McGuffey was dissatisfied.

Text by Dr. William E. Smith, 1973

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