Studies Weekly celebrates 25 years of innovative education

LINDON — In mid-August 1984, teacher Paul Thompson had an incoming throng of fourth-grade students on his mind and no idea how he was going to teach them an introductory course on Utah history.

In what has become a textbook case of necessity being the mother of invention, Thompson decided to invoke the tried and true methods of his course subjects, who a century earlier had managed to irrigate a high mountain desert — ingenuity and self-reliance.

Facing a dearth of course material, he began plowing through all the historical accounts he could find in libraries, laid out and furrowed it into an outline and by the next fall was growing a whole new crop of Utah history and social studies for kids.

"He knew enough to know that not having a fourth-grade textbook was an opportunity, not a setback," Ed Rickers said Thursday during a 25th anniversary celebration of the little weekly studies reader Thompson began that today is found in every state, each tailored to its own area's unique history and local curriculum.

Rickers, who is both personally and professionally in Thompson's family as a son-in-law and as the top executive of Studies Weekly, chatted with hundreds of Utah County residents who came to Thursday's open house.

"It's nice to know that people showed up to let us know that they're glad we're here," Rickers said. "I think we're a lot more well-known in other parts of the country than we are here, but this is the home office and where it all started."

The company has more than 70 state history, science and social studies illustrated periodicals that are found in 15 percent of schools nationwide and are stacking up well against the big scholastic publishing houses that continue to regard the publications as nothing more than a supplement to their textbooks.

Studies Weekly still fights that stereotype, Rickers said. But as school district budgets and government budgets in general continue to be whipped by the economic crosswinds, the company is teaching the big boys a lesson.

Instead of being written by a collective of Ph.D.s with no more connection to local state education standards than Thompson had to disco standards at Studio 54, Studies Weekly is written by teachers with actual classroom experience.

"It's not the letters after the author's name that count," Rickers said. "It's the frontline people in front of the classes who write to their own particular state's education requirements."