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1. 

   MadCow said, 4 months ago

   Actually she’s got it backwards,
   the Dick and Jane series are spoofed on a regular basis.
2. 

   celecca said, 4 months ago

   say what you will, but those books opened up whole new worlds for me!
3. 

   Night-Gaunt49 said, 4 months ago

   The “Dick & Jane” readers are terrible for eduction but funny as humor.
4. 

   cbrsarah said, 4 months ago

   Those “Dick and Jane” readers opened up reading for me that I soon became a voracious reader, much to my teacher’s consternation. I was always ahead of my classmates in the stories of their adventures as I went through 1st grade to sixth as the books “grew” as you went along. The education they gave was being able to read.
5. 

   pschearer said, 4 months ago

   I had Dick and Jane about 60 years ago. Only recently I learned they were part of the “Look-Say” or “Whole-Word Method”, based on the idea that since adult readers read whole words at a time, that’s how we should teach children to read. Imagine having a college track coach try to teach a toddler to walk.
   

   
   You folks above who did learn to read did so despite Dick and Jane, not because of it. You were obviously among the students to were able to infer enough rules of phonics on your own. But pity the children who never learned to read well and never learned to love reading. With all the research that shows that phonics is the best method, it is amazing there are still people who advocate Look-Say, though I’m told that phonics education is now predominant.
6. 

   briatollah said, 4 months ago

   @cbrsarah

   Me too. In first grade the teacher sent me home with a “Dick and Jane” book and told me to read as far as I could. I read the whole thing that evening, and thus began my life as a bookish nerd.
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