Scanning Around With Gene: Civics Lessons, Corporate Style

I assume civics is still a part of the U.S. grade school and high school curriculum, though I hear it’s not much emphasized. When I was in school in the 1960s and 1970s, we learned quite a bit about the founding of our country, its early leaders, and the responsibilities of being a citizen.
Today’s images are all covers from a series of popular booklets published by the John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company starting in 1920. Agents gave these booklets to customers and the company sent them to schools, libraries, and other outlets. Click on any image for a larger version.



There were all sorts of outlets for civics education. I remember our local dairy had milk-bottle tops commemorating historic American events, and at Shell gas stations you could collect commemorative coins highlighting all the presidents. Patriotism was woven into corporate messaging and corporate values.


This was before the widespread merchandising tie-ins we have today. Whereas cups from fast-food restaurants once had educational messages, now we drink from movie promotions.


Insurance companies were particularly well known for their patriotic messages and educational material. I remember packets arriving at our house with reproductions of famous American documents like the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Every household received at least one set of such material, often printed on parchment-style paper.


Even local businesses got in on the act and passed out pamphlets and booklets describing how laws are made or highlighting battles of the Civil War. There was a community effort to make sure kids grew up to be informed citizens.


I don’t know where young people learn about such things now, when patriotism isn’t prominent in most corporate cultures. Can you imagine any company today giving out a booklet of patriotic songs? That may be for the better, but it seems to have fallen by the wayside altogether.


I miss the days when pride in our country was a community effort, regardless of your particular political views. Today things seem so divisive.


Even the John Hancock Mutual Insurance Company stopped producing these booklets in the 1980s, though I was pleased to see the company has a few of them available for download on its website. So maybe patriotism isn’t completely dead. It’s just been relegated to PDF.
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Gene Gable has spent a lifetime in publishing, editing and the graphic arts and is currently a technology consultant and writer. He has spoken at events around the world and has written extensively on graphic design, intellectual-property rights, and publishing production in books and for magazines such as Print, U&lc, ID, Macworld, Graphic Exchange, AGI, and The Seybold Report. Gene's interest in graphic design history and letterpress printing resulted in his popular columns "Heavy Metal Madness" and "Scanning Around with Gene" here on CreativePro.com.
  • Anonymous says:

    If we had better leadership, it would be easier to educate people at all. Responsibility has become a dirty word. I was schooled in the 50’s and 60’s and we received relatively Nothing about American history in school because we were surrounded by “Washington Slept Here” historical sites and they were part of the thread of our daily lives. They are now obscured by over-development and shallow modern concerns and a me-first attitude.

  • Anonymous says:

    You get what you deserve. Although I pay taxes I can’t vote in the USA (I’m not a citizen) so I’m seeing this as an outsider. I work at a very prestigious university in the USA and all the kids here were fired up to vote for Obama (rightly so in my opinion) but as soon as the election was over I haven’t heard a peep from any of them about Government or Politics, certainly nothing about the Crisis now pending; it’s not cool anymore so it doesn’t get a look in on their texts, tweets, blogs or FB pages. And this is our future generation! No wonder the tea-baggers (oops) can get candidates elected. Just my 2 (English) pennies.

  • Anonymous says:

    Greetings Gene,
    So much fun to see your topic this week. I knew instantly what the covers were all about. I have a slew of these booklets from my grandmothers house. I keep them partly because of the design work,
    but also because she was a traveling Tuberculois nurse in the 40s and 50s, so all her materials are going to the local college archives. Her booklets are from Hancock and the Metropolitan Life companies. Fun to see these patriot covers. Thanks!

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