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Past Honorees
Dick Robinson
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Past Honorees
Dick Robinson
Chairman, President & CEO
Scholastic Inc.
2001
Richard Robinson was the oldest child of M.R. and Scholastic
Writing Award winner Florence L. Robinson. He began his lifelong
career in education as a high school English teacher in Evanston,
Ill., after graduating from Harvard College and Teachers College
at Columbia University. Dick began working at Scholastic in classroom
magazines and helped found several publications still operating
today.
Under his leadership, Scholastic expanded into the curriculum and
early-childhood education markets, as well as launching its multimedia
business in television, feature film, video, software, and online
services. In the book publishing arena, Scholastic has developed
channels of school book clubs, school book fairs, and direct to
the home, while also creating hit series such as "Clifford
The Big Red Dog," "I SPY," "Animorphså,"
"Dear America," and "Captain Underpants." These
major properties, coupled with the phenomenal success of the company's
Harry Potter books - which continue to top best-seller
lists with more than 51 million books in print - have helped to
fire up a nation of young readers.
Dick's focus and drive mirror those of his father - also an EdPress
(now known as AEP) Hall of Fame member. Dick leads the company's
efforts to provide books and educational materials that help millions
of children to learn the love of reading, to appreciate the importance
of communicating clearly, and to develop the ability to build a
better society for all through reading, information, and education.
It is with this same focus and humanity, his nomination reads,
that Dick has built Scholastic into the largest publisher and distributor
of children's books in the world, reaching $2 billion revenues in
2001.
Statement by Dick Robinson:
The tragic events of Sept. 11 have refocused society on its
most basic values. In school, one of these basic values is the importance
of understanding the contemporary world - and that is the mission
both of Scholastic and The Association of Educational Publishers.
The core constituency of the AEP are the classroom and professional
publications which are the founding members of the Association -
magazines such as Weekly Reader, Scholastic News, TIME for Kids,
Science Weekly, Instructor, Teaching K-8, Early Childhood Today,
Today's Catholic Teacher, American School Board Journal, and many
others including a host of state and local journals that have served
teachers and children for over 100 years.
In the past three months, educators have once again turned to
teaching contemporary materials and current affairs to explain the
difficult times in which we now live, and how these times bring
out the core values of our society. In that context, current affairs
materials and reference information have an important role to play.
The foundation of Scholastic's business is the single classroom
magazine my father, M.R. "Robbie" Robinson, created in
1920. Our magazines have covered the events of the day for America's
classrooms for more than 80 years - from the "Roaring '20s"
and the Depression, to World War II, the McCarthy years, the Vietnam
War, Watergate, the Reagan era, and the '90s.
Scholastic's mission to explain the contemporary world - its
greatness and its tragedy - to the children, teachers, and parents
we serve, continues to sustain us as it has since our founding.
Once again in this new century, we are confronted with horrendous
loss - yet our role remains to explain the world, to build respect
for facts and logical thinking, and even in times when we feel the
need for revenge, to ensure that we respect the legitimate rights
of others.
At the AEP Hall of Fame induction ceremony, Dick read
a letter from his father. "All you know that my constant
wish and the incentive which created the driving power for me to
carry on my leadership at our company, was to make our company an
outstanding educational force," the note said. "I wished
our company to be unmatched in scholarship, in objectivity, in clarity
of expression, and brilliance of visual presentation of difficult
subject matter. I wish it to inspire even the uninterested and reluctant
reader ... and that our editorial standards and our educational
integrity should not be sacrificed ... "
Ceremony Highlights
Current Hall of Fame member Allan Raymond of Teaching K-8 introduced
his friend, Dick Robinson, Scholastic Corp.'s chairman, president
& CEO, and spoke of one writer's view of Scholastic's new headquarters.
"I toured the building. I admired its functional beauty, and
was in awe when I saw the impressive auditorium," Raymond said.
"But this New York Times critic wrote: 'Admirers believe
the Scholastic building will become landmark in its own right.'
Scholastic is obviously on a roll."
Robinson accepted his Hall of Fame plaque and acknowledged his
debt to his associates at Scholastic, and then turned to his early
encounters with AEP, formerly know as the Educational Press
Association. "My introduction to AEP was 35 years ago, when
the original business of AEP members was educational journalism,"
he explained. "There's no tougher business than educational
journalism, and no business that takes quite so long to get started,
or is quite so perilous financially. It took a long time and tremendous
work to establish the name of Scholastic and that of Weekly Reader
in the minds of students, teachers, and eventually, parents."
To the crowd gathered to honor him, Robinson offered his take on
educational journalism. "It requires stamina, initiative, the
ability to get inside teachers' and children's hearts and heads,
and endless commitment," he said. "If your goal is to
build a better future, a better society, this is a great vehicle
to do it. But if you want to have fame and fortune, you should find
another path, for revenues are hard to come by and almost never
cover all the needs you're trying to fill."
Robinson read a letter from his father, M.R. "Robbie"
Robinson, who founded Scholastic Publishing in 1920 in his Pittsburgh
hometown, with a magazine covering high school sports. "Whatever
the future holds, I hope you'll never forget the standards tried
to uphold," the note concluded.
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