McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader, Revised Edition · Lesson XCVI · Part 10: Elephants, the sea and a happy life

102. The Blind Men and the Elephant (J. G. Saxe)

Goal: Your child reads a funny story-poem aloud, explains its lesson, and learns the first and last stanzas by heart.

⏱ About 30 minutes · 6 steps

Open it at the Internet Archive ↗

You'll need

  • The book, open to this lesson
  • A notebook or lined paper and a pencil

What's in the book

John Godfrey Saxe's eight-stanza poem: six blind men of Indostan each touch one part of an elephant (side, tusk, trunk, knee, ear, tail) and decide it is like a wall, a spear, a snake, a tree, a fan and a rope. They argue loud and long, each partly right and all wrong. (The page also holds the end of Lesson XCV.)

The lesson, step by step

  1. About the author

    The book says John Godfrey Saxe was born in 1816 in Highgate, Vermont, graduated from Middlebury College in 1839, practiced law, and became editor of the "Burlington Sentinel." It says his writings are known for genial humor and good-natured satire.

  2. Read aloud

    Read the poem aloud together, one stanza each. Let your child be each blind man in turn. It begins:

    It was six men of Indostan

    To learning much inclined,

    Who went to see the elephant,

    (Though all of them were blind,)

    That each by observation

    Might satisfy his mind.

  3. Act it out

    Make a chart with two columns: the part of the elephant each man touched, and what he said the elephant was "very like." Your child fills it in from the poem.

  4. Talk about it

    SayWas any of the blind men completely wrong? Was any completely right?

    SayHow could they have found out what an elephant is really like?

    SayWhen have you seen people argue because each one knew only part of the story?

    SayEach stanza ends "Is very like a ...!" Why does repeating that pattern make the poem funny?

  5. Memorize

    Learn the first stanza (above) and the last one:

    And so these men of Indostan

    Disputed loud and long,

    Each in his own opinion

    Exceeding stiff and strong,

    Though each was partly in the right,

    And all were in the wrong!

  6. Optional writing

    Your child writes one new stanza in the same pattern, about a blind man who touches some other part of the elephant (or another animal).

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