Janet and John: Book One (Janet & John Series)

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But the books, which have drawn criticism from British reading experts for ignoring phonics - the relationship between sounds and letters - are unlikely to return to New Zealand schools. I collect Biggles books, which can sometimes make me wince to say the least. And I'm a merchant seaman - a group hardly known for liberated views. Still I put what I read into the period of time it comes from. Whilst there is racism in the books, it's not deliberate - it's just how it was. You can try and censor this or prevent selling or publication, but then you are getting into revisionist history and burning book piles. And that's just plain scary. One should always look at the past and the evidence it presents with the simple viewpoint of what it is - a snapshot in time. You may not like it but it's a fair bet that your favourite grey-haired granny is a hardline racist - and it's purely because of the age she was born into. But while these facsimile reprints offer commercial opportunities for publishers, they can also threaten a political minefield. If you were at infant school in the UK during the 1950s and 1960s there is a good chance you learned to read with the Janet and John series of books.

John Marsh was one of the regular underling newsreaders for the Wake Up to Wogan radio show. Between 1993 and 2009 this was a weekday early morning show hosted by Irish presenter Sir Terry Wogan, broadcast from 7.30am and 9.30am and reportedly Europe's most popular radio show. Creating Janet and John There can be few people less deserving of a reputation of a foppish lothario than John Marsh. Both he and Janet are the sort of people that you wish lived next door. Janet is no more the violent harridan than John is a lisping popinjay, but... reality is temporarily suspended for the… duration of the show when, (mostly) within the bounds of decency, anything goes. a b c d Carpenter, Humphrey; Prichard, Mari (1984). The Oxford Companion To Children's Literature. Oxford University Press. pp. 278. ISBN 0-19-860228-6.

Depressing comedy

As Dr Beeby later explained, he, like virtually all other educators at that time, thought of differences in native ability as the prime cause of differences in achievement, and believed that high intelligence, like truth, would out. 21 The Syllabus Committee on Reading agreed. They stated bluntly that under really efficient reading instruction, the gap between naturally 'bright' children and naturally 'dim' ones would widen rather than narrow, as the most able pulled ahead. Yet they believed that any suggestion that a 'survival of the fittest' philosophy was operating could and should be banished from the classroom: 'In no sense should the teacher's guidance of individuals or groups cause some children to feel inferior or superior to others.' 22 And whether or not that world ever existed, there are many adults who want to hold its cultural embodiment in their hands. According to his BBC biography, John 'Boggy' Marsh started work for the BBC in 1965 intending to be a cameraman but had a natural voice for radio. Beginning on the World Service he then announced programmes for Radio 4 for most of the 1970s, including The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In 1982 he moved to Radio 2, Europe's most popular radio station, as a newsreader. The political context was encouraging for reformers: 'we had the knowledge that the new Labour Government was pledged to social reform, and that its minister of education [ Peter Fraser], the second-ranking member of Cabinet, was one of us in the audience and applauding as enthusiastically as we were.' 5

Not to be outdone, they had Hazeley and Morris create a series of spoof Ladybird books just for Penguin. Depressing comedy A key point of the Janet and John stories is the way that Terry Wogan was able to tell them in an entirely inoffensive manner. It may seem a contradiction, but the way he would burst out with uncontrollable laughter while telling the stories reassured listeners that it was all innocent innuendo perfectly suitable for being broadcast when children were listening. The stories seem far ruder in text than Terry would ever make them sound. How was reparation to be made? In sum, education was to reject what Beeby calls its first great myth, survival of the fittest, and embrace the second two: education of the whole child, and equality of opportunity. The creed was encapsulated in the famous statement written by Beeby for Peter Fraser in 1939, although, as he points out, it does not actually mention equality at all: Munro, Rona; Murray, Philippa (1973). Kathy and Mark Little Book - Orange I. James Nisbet and Co Ltd. ISBN 0-7202-1076-3. We should forget all this PC nonsense, and send the kids away (on their own) for holidays in the summer in gaily painted caravans, and let them roar down to flooded quarries for a bracing dip before breakfastAs for education, primary classrooms were transformed by the approaches derided by critics as 'the play way'. Secondary schooling changed too, though less dramatically. In 1942 over 25 per cent of pupils had not gone on to full-time post-primary education, and another 50 per cent had left in their first or second year. That year the Thomas Committee was set up to look at the curriculum and the examination system. In 1944 the school leaving age was raised to fifteen, and in 1946 School Certificate was introduced as a qualification for those who were not going on to university. And all these reforms were being put in place at a time when school rolls were soaring. Between 1943 and 1950 primary rolls rose by 10,000 children a year; over the next five years the increase doubled to 20,000 a year. The total primary roll had been 280,000 in 1943; by 1955 it was 453,000. 20 Linked with this shift was a new approach to the curriculum. Under Beeby as assistant director-general from 1938, and as

I remember Janet and John with loathing. I can understand the success of Boys Own type escapist adventures, a genre abolished for nearly a generation by politically correct "quality" children's literature, but I can't see any real appeal in the deadly dull Janet and John, Fortunately my children used the much more lively Oxford Reading Tree scheme. the reality of our childhood experience was that these good things (education, health care) were our birthright. We took them for granted, just as we took for granted our right to be in the world. Along with ... the malt supplement and the free school milk, we may also have absorbed a certain sense of our own worth and the sense of a future that would get better and better, as if history were on our side. 18 During the 1990’s the books were regularly satirised by the king of innuendo Terry Wogan on his BBC Radio 2 show where he read out stories in the stilted diction of Janet and John but with a very adult themed humorous slant! The books became a familiar aid for teaching schoolchildren throughout the 1950s and 1960s, [12] being used in 81% of British primary schools in 1968. [4] They were one of the first popular "look-and-say" or "whole word" reading schemes, the approach being to repeat words sufficiently frequently that children memorised them – in contrast with the phonics method in which children were encouraged to decode groups of letters. [12] 1970s [ edit ] He cites the strong sense of professional isolation felt by New Zealand educators then; this had been exacerbated by the Depression, when even books about education became scarce. But he also stresses the 'abiding sense of guilt towards the young, who had suffered in both war and times of want. . . here were experts offering us ways of making reparation to the next generation'. 4

Not the first

And it is clear - for the facsimile reprints if not the adventure annuals - that many of the books will be bought by adults, for adults. The Janet and John reprints are labelled "humour" as if to get the message across.