With a certain level of naivete' in tow, I wondered to what extent the pervasive role of Dick and Jane had faded in the collective scholastic consciousness of our youngest entrants into the world of public education. Accordingly, when I was in my coffee shop the other morning, I turned to a young woman I know who works there and asked her, "Katie, did you have Dick and Jane when you were in first grade?"
She paused from her labors for a moment and then responded, "What is Dick and Jane?"
A bit of research seems to indicate that Dick and Jane, who made their colorful two-dimensional entrance into our society in the 1930s, had mostly passed out of usage by the late 1970s. Given this unfortunate fact, I have included a page from a primary grade Dick and Jane reader here, to give the uninitiated a little glimpse of this fabulous teaching tool in action. This is the final page of one of the best Dick and Jane stories of the first year selections, a four page tale entitled "I See Three". The plot line involves the laundry man delivering the clean laundry, and Mother giving the kids the zip-up laundry bags as toys to play with. I'm not sure if this type of acute oxygen deprivation was considered an effective teaching tool as well, but who's to say?
Apparently Dick and Jane's rather limited use of phonics as a primary teaching tool was shown to not be the most effective method for learning to read, and this led to them being phased out, probably among other things (even though, in the late 1960s, some ethnicity was introduced into the stories when a black family was included). I guess I am sad to see them gone. Luckily for me, my depraved consciousness has retained some level of obsession with them for the past forty-five years, and I can still write about them at will, using a sort of "What if?" mentality; in my writings, these watercolor adolescents (like the actors on Partridge Family, Brady Bunch, Family Affair etc.), are in "real life" everything that their role-playing characters are not.
Next up, I will start in with some accounts of the awful things that Dick and Jane and company were inclined towards in their off hours. Thanks.
"Write Steve, write," said John.
ReplyDelete"See John laugh."