In the late fall of 1826, William Holmes McGuffey took up his post as professor of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and Ex-officio Librarian. What was that first semester like for this young man who had become a member of a small university faculty on the frontier of Ohio? A look at the Miami University Catalog from 1826 gives us some clues.
McGuffey would have worked closely with a very small group of fellow faculty members. Just four men were on the university faculty, plus four tutors and a faculty secretary. McGuffey was recruited to Miami by President Robert Hamilton Bishop, and he may well have known him best, at least at first.
While most of the student body came from Ohio and was of ages we would equate to high school and college, there was a wide range of states represented by the students. Students ranged from seven years old to 33, meaning McGuffey and his colleagues would require teaching skills that ranged from what we today would consider K-5 all the way to non-traditional adult. McGuffey, then 26 years old, may well have had students older than he was.
McGuffey would earn a reputation as an exacting disciplinarian, but the university expected as much. At the monthly faculty meetings, instructors discussed the students and had no qualms about dismissing those who they believed did not have the ability to properly take advantage of a liberal education.
The junior class, in particular, spent a great deal of time with McGuffey. In the second (Spring) session, they would work on translations from Latin to Greek and back as well as on Hebrew Grammar.
The Scottish Presbyterian value placed on education for all regardless of age is referenced by implication in the closing of the catalog. Here, education is defined as a “public and common good,” meaning that allowing students to pursue an education creates value not only for that person but for the society as a whole.
McGuffey was a young man in his first university teaching position on the edge of the American frontier. He would attain something of a reputation for being strict and old-fashioned, but part of this may have been an effort to establish himself as an authority in a climate with few faculty peers and many students of varying ages. Those first weeks on the job must have been a challenge!