![](/sites/default/files/styles/daedalus_past_issue_1x/public/media/images/D%26J%20Spot.jpg.webp?itok=gCpQgpzi)
Image:
From Dick and Jane Basic PrePrimer, published in 1930 by Scott, Foresman & Company. Dick and Jane emerged from a series of school readers created in 1930 by William H. Elson, a veteran textbook writer, and William
S. Gray, a leading academic theorist of reading acquisition. The popularity of the Dick and Jane readers coincided with the high point of "Americanization" as the proper goal of public schooling: see Jeffrey Mirel, "The Decline of Civic Education." Image courtesy of the Penniman Memorial Library of Education of Yale University. Photography by John T. Hill and Sven Marten.