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 ]

a b c d e Lightfoot, Liz (10 January 2001). "Cross words greet the return of Janet and John". The Daily Telegraph . Retrieved 22 August 2019.It appeared the new books had tried to correct some of those problems. But the typography and some of the stories were difficult to follow. It seemed the only similarity with the old books were the names Janet and John. jeers of 'brainbox!' and 'four-eyes!' accompanied with surreptitious thumps. (Any boy caught hitting a girl would have got the strap.) Male teachers did not seem overjoyed at my constantly raised hand either. At my all-girl secondary school, it was a huge relief not to have to feel ambivalent about knowing the answers. Beginning in 1949, Nisbet released a version specially published for New Zealand, with the same authors and illustrators. There were seven books in all: Out and About (1949), I Know a Story (1949), I Went Walking (1949), Here We Go (1949), Off to Play (1949), Through the Garden Gate (1951), and Once upon a Time (1951). [10] The only distinctive New Zealand feature was a Māori legend included in the final title, Once Upon a Time. [11] Eighty thousand copies of each book were distributed free to New Zealand schools from 1950. A further 20–30,000 of each were printed in 1956, and another 12–20,000 in 1959. [11] Heyday - 1950s and 1960s [ edit ] It's nostalgia publishing. People remember it from the past with happy memories. They are probably going to be in their 40s, 50s, 60s. To see it again to relive those times. They were probably happier times. Like Janet and John, the Progressive readers centred on a family — Pat, May, Mother, Father and Baby — but before long they leapt off into a confusing mishmash of fairy tales and nursery rhymes. Altogether, 47 new words were introduced in the First Primer, including 'jig', 'jog', 'pig' and 'hog', 'roast beef (this was a pre-vegetarian age), 'Elfland', 'cupboard', and — ominously, perhaps — 'market'.

Linked with this shift was a new approach to the curriculum. Under Beeby as assistant director-general from 1938, and as Janet and John is a series of early reading books for children, originally published in the UK by James Nisbet and Co in four volumes in 1949–50, and one of the first to make use of the "look and say" approach. Further volumes appeared later, and the series became a sales success in the 1950s and 60s, both in the UK and in New Zealand. By the 1970s, the books were considered outdated, and several updated versions were issued. Facsimiles of two of the original volumes were reprinted in 2007 to cater for the nostalgia market.A spokeswoman for Star Kids said the storylines had been modernised. The books were designed for parents teaching their children at home. In New Zealand, as Margaret Tennant has shown, the welfare state programme and the focus on families worked for children at the most basic level. By 1954 the average 15-year-old boy was 100 mm taller and 12 kg heavier than in 1934. Though girls made less dramatic gains, they were taller by 40 mm and heavier by 7.5 kg. School medical inspections showed that malnutrition had 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 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! Yet The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is not John Marsh's only contribution to radio comedy. In fact, since the 1990s his marital relationship with his wife Janet has inspired a series of radio sketches all of their own, the infamous Janet and John stories, read by Terry Wogan. Who is John Marsh?

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. Originally published in the UK by James Nisbet and Co in 1949 the Janet and John reading scheme was one of the first to use the “look and say” approach. Using limited vocabulary, the books were based around the daily lives of a brother and sister with words frequently repeated, the idea was that children would memorise them and therefore read. As 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. 20But Ladybird’s self-satire isn’t the first of its kind. In 2014, London artist Miriam Elia poked fun at the Peter and Jane books. “ We Go to the Gallery” sees Peter and Jane brilliantly recreated, with Mummy taking the two children on a trip to a contemporary art space. Highlights include: It's a lot like going up into the attic and finding something from your past like an old television. It can evoke rose-tinted memories. Something like 70% of the population learnt to read with Janet and John. It's almost part of our cultural heritage, something that is instantly recognisable." The original series, written by New Zealander Rona Munro, was discontinued in Britain in 1976 as educationists developed new theories on how children learned to read.

Working with Philippa Murray, Rona Munro created an updated series for Nisbet and Co called Kathy and Mark. In the UK there were three Kathy and Mark Little Book collections, each of four volumes: Green 1-4 (1973), [13] Orange 1-4 (1973), [14] and Turquoise 1-4 (1974). [15] They incorporated small in-line illustrations in place of certain words, such as 'umbrella'. Nisbet published a variety of Kathy and Mark books with other colours and titles.He agrees that it is the power of the idealised remembrance of the 50s that drives adults to buy these books for each other. If we look at the publishing industry it has been behind popular culture by a number of years. People have wanted retro." Rohrer, Finio (19 November 2007). "This is Janet. This is John... all over again". BBC News . Retrieved 22 August 2019.