LD Blog

David McGrath has a well-written piece on his thoughts when he learned that “Fun with Dick and Jane” is selling briskly.

I have nothing against nostalgia. A baby boomer myself, I enjoy listening to oldies stations, and I’m a sucker for exhibits of 1960’s era muscle cars.

But when I read that Penguin Putnam Children’s Books had reprinted and distributed the “Fun with Dick and Jane” series of primary grade readers, I became nervous; and when I learned that the reissue was a mega success, with over 8 million copies sold in the last four years, I thought, what’s next? Will we soon start re-manufacturing and distributing DDT?

DDT, of course, was the hugely effective pesticide, dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane, used for killing mosquitoes and other insects, but later was determined to have been wiping out entire bird populations, a discovery which led to its ban in the U.S. in 1972. In other words, DDT did far more harm than good.

“Dick and Jane” was a series of readers used in primary grades over four decades, including the early 1960’s. By that time, experts like Rudolph Flesch, author of “Why Johnny Can’t Read?”, had determined that the “Dick and Jane” simpleton stories, and its “whole word” method of teaching reading, did more harm than good to students. Like DDT, it eventually disappeared from American schools.

Well, it only sorta-kinda disappeared from schools. Mr. McGrath notes that it was replaced by the whole language approach—though for reasons different than he suggests, I think—and whole language was duely debunked, too. But, shoot, read his editorial “Have we not surpassed ‘Dick and Jane’?” from the Daily Southtown.