Henderson, Harold. (2006). Let's Kill Dick & Jane: How the Open Court Publishing Company Fought the Culture of American Education. Reviewed by Sarah Katherine Abrams, University of Virginia

Henderson, Harold. (2006). Let's Kill Dick & Jane: How the Open Court Publishing Company Fought the Culture of American Education. St. Augustine's Press. Pp. 168     ISBN 1587319195 Reviewed by Sarah Katherine Abrams University of Virginia September 13, 2007 Harold Henderson, author of the new book Let’s Kill Dick & Jane: How the Open Court Publishing Company Fought the Culture of American Education, does not believe in the American education system, as shown in the following quote, “American schools have not deteriorated – they’ve never been good enough” (p. 10). The Open Court Publishing Company was known for producing reading instruction textbooks which used direct instruction of phonics. Let’s Kill Dick & Jane was written as a cultural study rather than a corporate history for an audience of reformers and who Henderson lovingly refers to “would-be” reformers. Harold Henderson is a noted longtime staff writer at the Chicago Reader and claims. Somewhat dubiously, to be the world’s first blogger. Henderson has ties to educational and environmental organizations, as well as being an outspoken anti-war activist. He created Let’s Kill Dick & Jane as a platform to showcase what he perceived as glaring issues of educational reform inertia through the example of Open Court. He chose Open Court because of its legacy and persistence in attempting to alter a resistant school system. The author’s goal is to change the culture of American public education, and he states that to do so you must first make the culture and the flaws visible to the public. While Henderson may be nationally known, he is not trained in any sort of educational methods or philosophy. As such, a non-education person praising a program for schools created by another person not trained in education leaves the reader feeling that Henderson has little insight into the educational culture he wants so desperately to change. The book opens with Henderson stating that the educational culture was offered tools to save itself through Open Court’s products, but anti-intellectual elements prevented education from taking these tools. His biases teeter on the line of being anti-American, with a strong preference for a European style of education. He criticizes American education and educational culture, as seen in the following, “How can we educate our masses as rigorously as Europeans do their elite? This book is about their [Open Court’s] efforts to answer this question in practice – and their difficulty in finding educators at any level who were willing even to ask it,” (p. 11). Henderson seems to have fallen into a form of idol worship of Blouke Carus, who founded the Open Court Publishing Company in 1962 and who is the central character of the book. Carus had many common enemies with Harold Henderson, such anti-intellectual, life-adjustment philosophy, and the whole-word (Dick-and-Jane-style) method of learning to read. Carus was not trained in education, and Henderson quotes him as saying, “My own education has been woefully inadequate…. my training in writing was a farce,” (p.13). Despite this lack of educational training, the chemical engineer felt confident in openly criticizing John Dewey and others who have been trained in education. As Henderson summarizes it, “Blouke saw schooling as a problem to be solved and business as a plausible way to solve it.” (p. 21) Carus’s method of choice to transform education was through textbook reform, which is applauded by Henderson. Henderson explains Carus’s goal in choosing this approach: “to eliminate progressive education and to provide a much broader and more academically oriented education for each child” (p. 25). Henderson reiterates frequently that the Open Court textbooks were not traditional and contained the best of both progressive and traditional methods. Henderson sees the textbooks as something new: “Blouke has created a system in which both stereotypically traditionalist and progressive methods worked in tandem for children.” (p. 41) To the contrary, Carus’s actions and words show that he disliked progressive education and wanted more classics, traditional literature, and universal education. Henderson also claimed that Open Court led the way in research. The company tried many different ways of selling their books and of fighting huge economic losses. They promised that scores were guaranteed to increase if children were taught exactly as Open Court said. In addition, Open Court tried to prove results with self-reported data. One experiment was designed to show that using the Open Court method would increase a student’s IQ, a measure that Henderson does not question. However, that and other experiments were discounted because of the researchers' self-interest, and no external party was used to confirm results. Open Court also created a test school to showcase how well the method would work, and they set up a field test to determine what problems existed with the methods. The results from these experiments were intended to help them learn how to fix the problems with Open Court. When the experiments that the company set up failed, teachers were blamed. Henderson makes the doubtful claim that Open Court was a visionary in testing and documenting their program. Both Carus and Henderson believed the problems of Open Court were due to the teachers, and Henderson chooses to gloss over any problems with the Open Court system. Henderson tries to draw the reader to the conclusion that the reason for Open Court’s failure was inadequate teachers. Carus was looking for a “teacher-proof” method of educating children and stated, “Education is too important to be left to the educators” (p. 110). Henderson makes the claim repeatedly that Open Court did not work because teachers would not put the required effort into it. When given the chance to fix the teachers’ guides or make recommendations for the teachers, Open Court instead chose to try to gain the support of administrators and the state board. They hoped that the teachers’ superiors could force them to use the Open Court textbook in the way the company wanted. Henderson admired Open Court’s direct instruction methods and was saddened that it did not take over education in the United States. He describes the impact of Open Court as, “the education culture absorbed the impact and emerged unscathed.” (p. 127) Henderson and Carus may be disappointed, but their goal of revolution had serious flaws. Textbooks in education are supplied to meet the demands of the school, and change is unlikely to occur there without teacher support. The culture of education may appear to be in a state of inertia, but if Henderson had been trained in education and realized how many people it touched, he would have realized change is slow but is occurring continually. Another key point that both Henderson and Carus miss is that directly attacking teachers would not yield the results they want. Being part of the system and working with it, not against it, is much more effective. In this case, it is dangerous, and not productive, for a person lacking adequate training to praise an educational program created by another person who also lacks training in education. By taking this approach, Open Court’s direct instruction methods run the risk of being discredited by both insiders and outsiders in education. Both Henderson and Carus strongly criticize the education culture, yet do not try to change the system in any meaningful way. They both want to transform that culture through sheer force, and not by using its most powerful weapons, teachers. The program and the book were not written for educators, missing another element to shift the system. They are in fact not written for an educationally aware audience, but rather for a curious voter in an attempt to make them believe in the purported bleakness of the outlook for American education. About the reviewer Sarah Abrams is a PhD student at the University of Virginia, studying social foundations. Her focus is on the realm of education policy within the context of after-effects and unexpected consequences, but she also has a passion for education history and philosophy.