Dick and Jane 

We are still in the processing of unpacking boxes after our move to New Mexico.

 

Prior to the long drive from Tucson, we spent roughly six months wrapping and boxing all of our possessions. Even though we made numerous trips to Goodwill, we still have a lot of boxes to go through. In addition, we will have a LOT of books, even though we donated 10 boxes of books to Friends of the Library .

As we unpacked another box today, we discovered that we had a copy of a “Dick and Jane” book from 2004, even though we have a few copies that are much older.

Most of the kids in America learned how to read because of the Dick and Jane series, which first started publishing in the 1930’s.

Dick and Jane are the two protagonists created by Zerna Sharp for a series of basal readers written by William S. Gray to teach children to read. The characters first appeared in the Elson-Gray Readers in 1930 and continued in a subsequent series of books through the final version in 1965. On January 1st, 2026, the first book entered the public domain in the USA. These readers were used in classrooms in the United States and in other English-speaking countries for nearly four decades, reaching the height of their popularity in the 1950s, when 80 percent of first-grade students in the United States used them. Although the Dick and Jane series of primers continued to be sold until 1973 and remained in use in some classrooms throughout the 1970s, they were replaced with other reading texts by the 1980s and gradually disappeared from school curricula.

The Dick and Jane series were known for their simple narrative text and watercolor illustrations. For a generation of middle-class Americans, the characters of "Dick", "Jane", and their younger sister "Sally" became household words. The Dick and Jane primers have become icons of mid-century American culture and collector's items.

Despite criticisms of the stereotypical content that depicted white, middle-class Americans and the "whole-word" or "sight word" (look-say) method of teaching reading on which these readers are based, they retain cultural significance for their impact on literacy education in the mid-twentieth century.

 

I have been a teacher, off and on, for roughly 20 years of my life, and will likely continue to work in a school district for a few more years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_and_Jane#Collectibles_and_reprint_editions

 Despite the advances our educational system has made in the last 50 years, we are still far behind many other countries – despite the fact that we used to have the best educational system in the world.

 https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2015/01/why-finns-are-smarter-than-us.html

Only about 31% to 35% of American students read at or above a proficient level, depending on their grade. According to data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), often called the Nation's Report Card, roughly two-thirds of U.S. students do not meet grade-level reading proficiency expectations. [

 

Reading Proficiency Breakdown

The most recent comprehensive data from the NAEP highlights the percentage of students reaching or exceeding the "Proficient" level (which equates to solid grade-level performance and mastery over challenging subject matter):

 

• 4th Graders: Only 31% score at or above proficient.
• 8th Graders: Only 30% score at or above proficient.
• 12th Graders: Only 35% score at or above proficient.

 

We are also lagging in math proficiency, and I detailed the reasons for that decline in January, after my experience when buying a couple of boxes of Girl Scout cookies.

 https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2026/01/its-simple-math-version-2.html

 To be perfectly blunt, our education system is a mess, and I outlined some of the reasons for that in April of this year:

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2026/01/its-simple-math-version-2.html

I have written numerous articles about our education system.

Despite the fact that it will needs improvement, I am still convinced that we can, and will, do better.

I grew up in a period of time when a typical grade school classroom had 50 students and one teacher, who was usually a nun.

Her only tools were a pointer and Father John Vincent Ryan - and we learned how to read by reading books about Dick and Jane.

Somehow, most of us turned out OK, years before we had Google and Tik Tok.

If you yearn for those golden days of yesteryear, you can still find copies of “Dick and Jane for sale if you look hard enough.

As Archie and Edith used to sing, those were the days, my friend.