by Elizabeth Martinez

About the author: Elizabeth Martinez, author of 500 Years of Chicano History, teaches women’s studies at California State University in Hayward.

For some 15 years, starting in 1940, 85 percent of all U.S. elementary schools used the “Dick and Jane” series to teach children how to read. The series starred Dick, Jane, their white middle-class parents, their dog Spot, and their life together in a home with a white picket fence.

“Look, Jane, look! See Spot run!” chirped the two kids. It was a houseful of glorious family values, where Mom cooked while Daddy went to work in a suit and mowed the lawn on weekends. The Dick and Jane books also taught that you should do your job and help others. All this affirmed an equation of middle-class...