Goofus and Gallant Teach History and Ethnography—Clean Hands, Clean Heart-Mind

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On this date in Round and Square History 

5 May 2013—China's Lunar Calendar 2013 05-05
5 May 2012—Primary Sources: My Book Bag
5 May 2011—Endings: The Rhetoric of Fiction

[a] Highlights Magazine November 1959

You probably didn't see this coming. Here is one of the oddest pedagogical experiments in the twentieth century, and it makes the Republic of China (on Taiwan) primary school readers look almost tame in comparison (well, sometimes). It began as early as 1936, depending on the hoary sources you investigate. By 1948, it was a part of Highlights magazine for children, and I got my copy every week (several decades after 1948, I might add) at Randall School in Madison, Wisconsin, back when the Badgers lost eighty percent of their football games. 

This series will teach us a great deal about culture, society...and history. I lived some of it. I would be lying if I said that I didn't aspire to be Gallant...even as I recognized the stupid lack of irony in all of these unreflective adults-writing-for-children-DIDACTIC posts. Still, throughout my childhood, I aspired to be Gallant.

[b] Old but clean RF

This Highlights Magazine example of the Goofus and Gallant saga focuses on book care. This makes it very close to my heart-mind. You see, Goofus reads books with dirty hands, mashes the pages of books, and leaves them in a mess...in a hurry.

"But at least he's reading," I hear you say. 

"But today it would be an IPad," I hear you say.

I'm talkin' books here (the piece ran in 1959, after all), and they still matter. One of my great "first-world" fears is that someone with grubby hands will paw my treasured copy of Franz Boas's Tsimshian Mythology. I shudder even to think of it.

Goofus is a book-jerk, and I loathe his ilk. Books should command respect.

My guy Gallant gets that.

In 1959.

[c] Respect RF