School Readers

At Lakewood School, Twin Lakes, Wisconsin, during the past three months, the school board has got itself into the bad graces of the official educationists: for the school board believes that school readers ought to offer something for the mind. Finding that the extant rhetoric textbooks for the elementary grades (not that textbook publishers nowadays would employ so reactionary a word as “rhetoric”!) consist principally of the interminable inane doings of Dick, Jane and Spot, they looked about for some substitute that would regard children as fairly rational beings. And, for lack of anything more recent, they decided to use the McGuffey Readers, which still are in print (Ginn and Company), and are quite sensible and usable.

Kirk

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Russell Kirk

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At Lakewood School, Twin Lakes, Wisconsin, during the past three months, the school board has got itself into the bad graces of the official educationists: for the school board believes that school readers ought to offer something for the mind. Finding that the extant rhetoric textbooks for the elementary grades (not that textbook publishers nowadays would employ so reactionary a word as “rhetoric”!) consist principally of the interminable inane doings of Dick, Jane and Spot, they looked about for some substitute that would regard children as fairly rational beings. And, for lack of anything more recent, they decided to use the McGuffey Readers, which still are in print (Ginn and Company), and are quite sensible and usable.

Kirk