Welcome, Dick and Jane: Historic Volumes to Join MOTAL

In the mid-1940s a fictional little boy named Dick, his sisters Jane and Sally, and their dog Spot began helping first-graders across the country learn to read. Between then and the mid-1960s, millions of American children (as many as 80 percent at one point in the 1950s) learned to read from Fun with Dick and Jane and its companion reader, Our New Friends. Now these two historic reading primers, plus a fifth-grade reader from the same Scott, Foresman and Company reading series, will be coming to MOTAL thanks to MOTAL supporter Bill McVey who is donating the readers from which he learned to read when a first-grader in Lebanon, Indiana, in 1950-51.

These are my actual reading books from 1st and 5th grades, which I have thanks to my mom, who saved them. I didn’t know they still existed until I was promoted to VP in my division at Scott, Foresman and Company after six or seven years working there back in the 1980s.


The next time Mom and Dad visited us following my promotion, my mother arrived with a nicely wrapped gift, which turned out to be my first-grade Dick and Jane reader, Fun with Dick and Jane.

Mom (Helen) McVey

A note with the book said, “A book every Vice President of Scott, Foresman, and Company should have in his library.” Fun with Dick and Jane, of course, was an extremely successful Scott Foresman first-grade reading book that owned as much as 80% of the U.S. reading market at its peak in the 1950s. Mom had been waiting for the right moment to give it to me. She chose well.


I would be honored if MOTAL becomes home for my first-grade reader Fun with Dick and Jane and for its companion reader, Our New Friends. I would also like to put in MOTAL’s care my fifth-grade reader, Days and Deeds, which is part of the same Scott, Foresman and Company basic readers series for which Fun with Dick and Jane was the lead book.

Bill McVey Bio

J. William (Bill) McVey was a first-grader at Harney Elementary School in Lebanon, Indiana, in school year 1950-51, where he was taught to read from Fun with Dick and Jane and Our New Friends. He graduated from Lebanon High School, has a BS from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, and an MSJ from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. He was an adult education teacher and administrator for ten years, during which period he taught and oversaw English-as-a-Second-Language, literacy, and high school equivalency (GED) instruction. He wrote and helped write adult education learning materials, which together with his teaching and professional association work attracted the attention of Scott, Foresman and Company when the educational publisher decided to establish a new division to develop learning materials for undereducated adult learners. McVey was at Scott, Foresman in the Lifelong Learning Division for ten years, first as Executive Editor and subsequently as Vice President for Sales and Marketing. Later he developed adult learning materials for New Readers Press and consulted with adult education and training programs regarding their curicula. He closed out his career as Senior Director with OAI, Inc., a nonprofit adult education and training organization in Chicago.


A Brief Look at How Fun with Dick and Jane Came To Be
Fun with Dick and Jane became the starter first-grade reading book in Scott, Foresman and Company’s elementary school reading series Basic Readers: Curriculum Foundation Program in the mid-1940s. Scott, Foresman asked William S. Gray, co-author of the company’s Elson-Gray Basic Readers, to revise the series and to create new first-grade readers for it. Gray, a well-known reading specialist and author of several reading books, asked May Hill Arbuthnot, a colleague, respected children’s author, and reading specialist, to co-author the reading series with him. Gray and Arbuthnot based their work on Gray’s research, which demonstrated that heavily-illustrated books designed to grab children’s attention and provide reading context clues would be far more effective than the nearly all-text reading books of the day. Fun with Dick and Jane and its companion first-grade reader, Our New Friends, were the result. Both books featured Dick, Jane, Sally, their dog Spot, their cat Puff, their parents, and other family members and friends as they went about their daily lives. Together, these two first-grade readers (designated 1.1 and 1.2) were the most-used first-grade readers in the country for more than two decades. At the peak of their popularity in the 1950s, 80 percent of first-graders in the US were learning to read from the Dick and Jane series.
 
By the late 1960s, interest in Fun with Dick and Jane and Our New Friends had declined dramatically as reading experts and publishers of basal reading series challenged the series’ pedagogy and its lack of cultural diversity. New teaching techniques, as well as more relevant and relatable content, permanently changed the basal reading landscape. Still, it is astounding to think that in the 1950s, upwards of 80 percent of ALL children in the nation learned to read from the Dick and Jane readers. In spite of their shortcomings, the Dick and Jane readers were truly groundbreaking at the time.


Submitted by Guest Author
Bill McVey