William S. Gray—The Man Who Taught Millions To Read

This is one of hundreds of stories in Dick and Jane books, which from their first appearance were the instrument that taught 85 million children to read. During the 1950s, 80% of school children used the

Dick and Jane

Books.

 The stories and books were the inspiration of William Scott Gray, Jr., of Coatsburg, Illinois. Born June 5, 1885, to a school teacher father. His family arrived into Adams County in 1836. His grandfather, Isaac Gray, bought 160 acres just north of Coatsburg in Honey Creek Township the next year. Gray Jr. attended Adams County schools and is credited with changing the way children in America learned to read for over five decades. By the time of his death September 8, 1960, Gray was recognized as the country’s foremost authority in literacy and reading education.

School readers before Gray’s Dick and Jane books were mostly text with excerpts from literature or the Bible known as McGuffey readers. They taught how to read through phonics. Illustrations were few. Gray Jr. also taught school in Adams County and his classroom experiences had taught him that children could learn to read more easily by reversing that equation. He saw the value of illustration rather than description in telling stories in a way to interest children in reading. Simple stories. Few words. Large, color illustrations, now known as the whole word or look-say method of teaching reading.

Gray affiliated with Scott Foresman; an elementary educational publisher located in Glenview Illinois in 1929. His colleague Zerna Sharp suggested the creation of such a reader. Gray was ready to promote the idea. Sharp, who had once been a teacher, created the two main characters, Dick and Jane with little sister Sally. Mother and Father were simply known as Mother and Father, as a child would address them. Gray wrote the stories. Gray’s series of readers, first known as the Elson Basic Readers and then the Elson-Gray Basic Readers, were the books with which young children learned to read beginning in 1930. The Dick and Jane books as they came to be known, were hugely popular in the 1950s and still used up to the 1960s and early 1970s. 

The series was reading fare in elementary schools across America from the time of the Great Depression to X-Men comics. The popularity of the series declined in the mid to late 1960s as other experts began to challenge the Dick and Jane books for its lack of cultural diversity only showcasing white middle-class children who lived on a suburban street in middle America.

 Gray was well acquainted with the power of an illustrated story to capture children’s interest. His cousin Harold Gray was a cartoonist originally from Kankakee, Illinois. His brightly illustrated serial Little Orphan Annie had become the most popular weekly comic strip in America. 

In William Gray’s books, Dick emerged as the older brother to an inquisitive Jane. Scrambling through the pages with them were their pet Cocker Spaniel Spot and yellow cat Puff. Their world was a place “where night never comes, knees never scrape, parents never yell, and the fun never stops.”  

Graduating from Camp Point High School in 1904, Gray taught in Fowler elementary school and was its principal until 1908. Gray wrote his students, who were gathering for a 50-year reunion, that his time in Fowler was “the most valuable in my career of more than a half-century of teaching.” Through the years, Gray would return to Coatsburg for annual family reunions where he would entertain family and friends with talks about education.

Gray earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Chicago in 1913 and established his credentials in literacy education reform as a graduate student at Columbia University in New York. His master’s thesis developed a reading skills assessment system that was published in 1915 and used for the next 40 years. It also was the foundation for teaching reading with Dick and Jane. 

Gray returned to the University of Chicago, where he wrote three doctoral dissertations on reading and earned his PhD in 1916. He spent his academic career at the university, serving as professor and dean of the College of Education for 14 years.  

Gray led an international literacy initiative for the United Nations and in 1955 was elected president of the International Reading Association, which he co-founded. Gray’s credits include several books and hundreds of articles and essays on literacy. 

The Historical Society of Quincy and Adams County has several Elson-Gray readers, which were early illustrated versions of Dick and Jane, donated by retired Adams County teachers Paul and Jane Moody. The Moodys’ interest in Gray’s work began when they learned he was from Adams County. Paul Moody taught in Camp Point schools for 34 years, and Jane continued to use Dick and Jane to teach reading most of her teaching career. Both are now retired but still active in promoting the county’s school history.

Reg Ankrom is a former director of the Historical Society of Quincy and Adams County. He is a local historian, author of a prize-winning two-volume biography of U.S. Senator Stephen A. Douglas, and a frequent speaker on Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and antebellum America. 

Sources:

Ahern, Kevin. From Rails to Roads . . . The Story of Fowler, Illinois. Davinci Press Ink, 2007.

Gray, Lillian Reaugh and William S. Gray, Jr. “Record of the Family of Isaac and Sarah Hawkins 

 Gray.” 2nd Edition, 1955.

Kismaric, Carole and Marvin Heiferman. Growing Up with Dick and Jane: Learning and Living the 

 American Dream. San Francisco: Collins Publishers, 1996.

“The Most Famous Man Ever To Live in Fowler.” (Publication information unavailable).

“William S. Gray.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Gray 

 “William Scott Gray (1885-1960) – Influence of Reform Movements, Literacy Efforts.” http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2021/Gray-William-Scott-1885-1960.html

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