Reading Between the Lines

For 150 years, the accepted tools for teaching American elementary school students to read were textbooks known as basal readers. In addition to teaching the mechanics of pronunciation and word meaning, these schoolbooks presented a view of American society that remained fairly constant from the middle of the 19th century to almost the end of the 20th century. The stories and pictures in school readers profoundly influenced each generation of American children between 1850 and 2000. ‚Reading Between the Lines‘, based on the author’s doctoral dissertation, presents the results of a research project that examined 100,000 pages of children’s textbook literature containing 15,000 stories and 80,000 pictures. From horn books and New England primers through McGuffey’s Readers to Dick and Jane and beyond, this book examines what children learned from school readers about history, literature, science, and – most importantly – the people who made up their world. The book considers the messages contained in reader stories and artwork, documents the times during which changes or emphases occurred, and looks for historical reasons to support its conclusions.