Past Inductees

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," "Animorphs‘," "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.