We taught our kids out of the old McGuffey’s readers and they were reading on officially a third grade level or higher when they started school. When we were chastised by the first one’s first teacher for making her job difficult we ended the public school thing altogether. Dick and Jane and Alice and Jerry were early fruits of the scientific determination that literacy in the masses is detrimental to social progress.
Yes, there’s a wonderful bit of satire early in “To Kill A Mockingbird” where Scout goes off to her first day of school...only to find the teacher is horrified that this little girl can read. The nitwit teacher specifically says that Scout’s father has done a terrible thing and has made the teacher’s job much more difficult! Now, the teacher moans, she will have to undo all that bad teaching—and start over.
Harper Lee perfectly nailed the lunacy of Dewey’s education ideas.