Talk:Readability

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Don't forget about Ned!

Don't forget one of the common phrases from the great American philosopher Casey Stengel, "I'm not Ned from the Third Reader!" Or maybe it's "OF the Third Reader".... (His other great phrase, "I didn't just fall off the turnip truck!") Who, or what, was the Third Reader? Hayford Peirce 20:43, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

The reference is to Lazy Ned who wouldn't pull his sled uphill. The Third Reader is McGuffey's Third Reader (a different Ned appears in some of the other Readers). I would suppose it is the 1879 edition and that Mr. Stengel went to school on the McGuffey Readers. I recall reading Henry Steele Commager's intro to the 1962 Signet Classic reprint of the Fifth Reader in which he lamented the fact that the passing of the Readers had deprived Americans of a set of common images. Time was (apparently) when a reference such as Stengel's would have been instantly understood by almost all Americans. No more. James F. Perry 21:26, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the info! Casey was born in 1890, so would have been in grade school around 1900. As you say, there were once a whole bunch of common references (and assumptions) throughout American culture. My own first reader in the first grade was about "Alice and Jerry", as I recall, which was the Avis to Hertz's "Dick and Jane" or some such -- I think most kids for a couple of decades learned to read from one or the other.... Hayford Peirce 21:39, 21 October 2010 (UTC)