See Dick and Jane. See Dick and Jane become cultural icons. See Dick and Jane in museums and documentaries.No, this is not a phonics lesson from the first grade, but rather the cultural renaissance of Dick and Jane, the beloved characters from the 1950s children’s readers.Dick and Jane, and their dog Spot, are subjects of a documentary and museum exposition showing their photographs from the books to thousands of museum-goers.For 40 years, the Dick and Jane stories taught thousands of first-graders how to read and spell, and are being rediscovered by today’s historians as cultural icons of the baby boomers.Subject of a PBS film, a book and two museums’ shows, Dick and Jane books are being used to portray the values and characteristics of a post-World War II society, mainly how society viewed gender roles and their responsibilities.The Dick and Jane stories were first published in 1930 by Scott Foresman for first graders and were continually updated until 1965, in the form of three books, ‘We Look and See,’ ‘See Dick Run,’ and ‘Fun with Dick and Jane.’The photographs from these books were put into an art exhibition which opened at the Lakeview Museum of Arts and Sciences in Peoria, Ill. The exhibition which was to last two months was extended to one year because of the huge response from the public who had used these books, said Kathleen Woith, public affairs director of the Lakeview Museum.’We’ve never had an exhibition that elicited such an emotional response,’ Woith said in a New York Times article. ‘Anytime we had people crying in the galleries, we knew they were looking at the Dick and Jane pictures.’The book, ‘Growing Up With Dick and Jane’, by Carole Kismaric and Marvin Heiferman, takes the roles portrayed by these two characters and classifies them in the context of how they influenced their young readers and formed clear-cut ideas of gender responsibilities in their impressionable minds.'(Dick and Jane) were the way America wanted to see itself at the time,’ Kismaric said. ‘It was a coming out of a very chaotic and upsetting period in American history and was delivering all this promise to people.’The gender roles that the Dick and Jane stories taught their readers were typical of the gender ideas being taught to children at that time. ‘There is a lot of response about how cultural icons like Dick and Jane reflect prevailing values in society, and it is not surprising that Dick and Jane reflected basic cultural values,’ said Verta Taylor, a sociology professor at OSU.’The 1950s was a period where motherhood and traditional roles were emphasized with a great deal of emphasis placed on the idea of motherhood after World War II,’ Taylor added. ‘After the war there was a resurgence of focus on women in the home, the myth of domesticity, which really negatively impacted women’s gender roles.’The roles Dick and Jane portrayed in their primers contributed to these ideas impacting female gender roles.’The use of Dick and Jane in these beginning readers is what sociologists call a hidden curriculum, a more subtle influence or the message to the readers behind the text,’ Taylor said.Dick and Jane, who lived in the typical suburban, white-picket fence house, fulfilled stereotypical roles of what an American man and woman should become. Dick was the active one and the stronger of the two. Jane, on the other hand, was passive, beautiful, and content with helping care for their baby sister.’They taught, ‘do your job,’ ‘help out people,’ ‘work is good,” said Marvin Heiferman, co-author of ‘Growing Up with Dick and Jane’. ‘These were things the people who did the books believed everyone across the country agreed upon.’