No Fun with Dick and Jane.
Prof. Anthony Esolen has contrasting sets of textbooks covering the crucial divide in purging curricula, the period 1920-1930. The Christian acceptance of the classics of Western Civilization had been the norm, going back into the 1 room school institution where, in contrast with the “professionalization” of the not highly regarded schoolmaster profession, amateur, elder students tutored younger ones and it was far from unknown for students below 6th grade to be pursuing, what would be known in today’s dark ages as “academically advanced studies”, all in the little 1 room schoolhouse, nutritious, basic curriculum roughage that most college students today wouldn’t be able to manage. (School boards once local to communities, have been consolidated down from 75,000 to 15,000, the easier to ensure control by federal educrats.)
By 1930, the classic-oriented curriculum with a phonics foundation, had been purged in exchange for Fun With Dick and Jane, whole-word/look-see, early primary literacy, handicapping indoctrination. By the time of Rudolph Flesch’s “Why Johnny Can’t Read” 1955, no teachers had themselves been trained in classic literature, a prime goal of the atheist/agnostic/messianic secular-humanist founders of universal compulsory schooling from 1880-1920, the easier to ensure elite, top-down control of unruly lower masses in the interests of their tax-exempt non-profit foundation masters, the wealthy pathetic except for their inheritances who endowed the Carnegie, Ford and Rockefeller foundations.
THE THIRD ROCKEFELLER GENERATION WERE INTELLECTUAL CRIPPLES: The Worm Eateth Its Own Tail (Ouroboros), The Rich Eat Their Own: Fabian Society founding member John Dewey (icon: yellow flag, black wolf dressed in white sheepskin climbing a flagpole, maroon flag with black letters “F.S.” for Fabian Society) was funded for his experimental Lincoln School by John D. Rockefeller II. The Lincoln School was attended by Rockefeller’s 4 younger sons Nelson, Laurance, David and Winthrop, some of the most powerful men in history who regulated the fates of millions of people.
With only the exception of the eldest son J.D. Rockefeller III, all four of the other Rockefeller third generation sons emerged from John Dewey’s “whole-word/look-say” Lincoln School as intellectual cripples unable to read a newspaper: they all had dyslexia. Dyslexia expert Dr. Samuel Orton informed university psychology department educationists in 1931 that whole-word/look-see causes deleterious brain changes in Kindergarten-Grade 3.
The whole-word reading thing is why people commonly use the word “defiantly” when they meant the word “definitely.”
I remember those stupid readers from my early years in grade school. I learned to read before I was in Kindergarten, and was probably reading at a 5th grade level by first grade.
The “Dick and Jane” books were boring to me, and they insulted my intelligence.
I learned to read on my own at age 4, using phonics-based books that happened to be lying around the house.
Then I went to first grade, with “Fun with Dick and Jane.” But I was way beyond that!
Eventually, I skipped seventh grade, had algebra in eighth grade, and was in honors and advanced placement classes until my high school graduation. Then I went to MIT-—”drinking from a fire-hose”:
https://mitadmissions.org/help/faq/drinking-from-a-firehose/
What I don’t know is the best way to teach dyslexic kids. However, there are dyslexics at MIT, too!
https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/dyslexia-at-mit1/
I remember getting the Dick and Jane book on the first day in 1ST grade. I already knew how to read real books by that time; Mom had me reading before I could walk by just reading with me and having me read to her.
I flipped through it as the teacher told us not to read more than the assignment.
Naturally I read it on the bus, on the way home from school. The next day I told the teacher it “was dull and had no plot.”