Almost everyone knows the zany rhyming of Dr. Seuss. Bruce Baker applied Dr. Seuss’s special blend of wit and rhyme to explore the topic of school choice. It’s very clever! And a good explanation of why the public good promotes well-being for everyone, not just the private goods that benefit consumers. Bruce Baker is chairman of the Department of Teaching and Learning at the University of Miami and one of the nation’s leading authorities on school finance.
He wrote the following parody of a Dr. Seuss poem:
In the town of Ka-Boodle by Lake Sneetchy Creek,
The folks all paid taxes each month and each week.
For schools and for sidewalks and fire trucks so red,
And libraries full of good books to be read.
But then came the Chortlers from Voucher Von Vee,
Who shouted, “That money belongs to each wee
Little child with a backpack! It follows them round!
Just stuff it in pockets and spread it around!”
“The money’s the CHILD’S!” cried the Bellowing Band.
“It does not belong to the schools or the land!
Just hand every parent a sack full of cash,
And schools can all scramble and boomity-crash!”
Now the Grickle-eyed Mayor scratched hard at his chin.
“That’s not how public goods work, my dear kin.
When taxpayers gather their dollars in pools,
They build mighty systems — like hospitals, schools.
The money’s not owned by one youngster named Ned
Who doodles green Yoppets and sleeps in his bed.
It pays for the buses! The pipes! The big roofs!
The science lab beakers! The gymnasium hoops!
The playgrounds! The band room! The boilers downstairs!
The nurses and counselors helping with cares!
And some of these things were bought long years ago
With debts that will linger through sunshine and snow.
So taxpayers all — even old Uncle Zed,
Whose children are forty and mostly bald-headed —
Still pay for the schools because everyone gains
From communities filled with smart citizens’ brains!”
“But what about choice?” cried the Chortlers once more.
“Shouldn’t each family shop school like a store?”
“Ah yes,” said the Mayor, “but schools are not socks.
They’re not jars of pickles or purple mail-box locks.
A public good works when folks plan it together,
Through rainstorms and hard times and wild Wumbus weather.
If every last dollar just fled with each child,
Whole systems would wobble and grow rather wild.
You still must heat buildings and run every route
Even when one little Who-zit skips out.”
The Chortlers grew quieter. Some scratched their knees.
One murmured, “Public goods aren’t private fees…”
And down by Lake Sneetchy, beneath truffula skies,
The townsfolk grew slightly more thoughtful and wise.
For schools are not gadgets to auction or trade.
They’re promises communities carefully made.
And taxes, though grumbly, when pooled with some care,
Can build things no single small person could bear.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Great! Next is “Green Eggs and Scam” or “Horton Hears a Grift”…
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Inspired by Kenneth Goodman’s 1967 paper Reading: A Psycholinguistic Guessing Game — perhaps one of the most influential overgeneralizations in modern literacy theory.
https://scispace.com/pdf/reading-a-psycholinguistic-guessing-game-50vaodt7qe.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Oh, The Miscues You’ll Make!
In Guessville-by-Graphics, by Cue-Cue Canal,
Lived Professor McGuessums, exceedingly tall.
He peered through his spectacles, polished with care,
And announced to the readers, “Precision’s not there!
“You don’t need the letters! You don’t need the sounds!
Just leap over words with semantic-like bounds!
Just glance at the squiggles! Just sample! Just peek!
A reader, dear children, should mostly just guess!”
Well the Phonics Folk blinked.
And the Syntax Folk frowned.
And the Logic Inspectors came up from downtown.
Said one little Logician with notebooks in stacks:
“Your argument, sir, has some serious cracks.”
“You’ve built a Straw Reader!” cried Clerk Number Three.
“No one says readers read every mark perfectly.
No scholar says humans inspect every speck.
You flattened the argument into a wreck!”
“You built a False Choice!” cried a bespectacled bird.
“As though skilled decoding and context absurd
Could never coexist in one reader’s head—
As though either guessing or phonics were dead!”
Then young Hasty-Generalization McGrew
Came tumbling downhill with a sample of two.
“You watched a few children say toy instead train,
Then declared that precision was mostly a pain?
You watched some miscues and from one little game
Invented a theory explaining all brains?”
“EGREGIOUS!” cried Gracie von Evidence-Smith.
“You cannot prove systems from anecdotes this thin!”
Then Equivocation Jones entered the hall
With a broom and a bucket and labels for all.
“You changed errors to miscues—how clever! how neat!
You softened the stumble and sweetened defeat!
A wrong word’s still wrong when the sentence goes bent.
New labels don’t change what the evidence meant.”
Then Non-Sequitur Ned with a trumpet went:
“HONK!”
“Because some substitutions preserve meaning—SO WHAT?
It doesn’t then follow precision should rot!
If readers compensate when decoding goes bad,
That does not prove decoding itself is a fad!”
Then Causal-Claim Clara came pushing a cart
Filled up with conclusions unsupported by art.
“You hinted phonics and drills might impede how kids grow—
But where are the studies? The data? The show?
You leapt from observations to grand declarations
Without controlled tests or replications!”
Now McGuessums grew flustered.
His spectacles steamed.
His psycholinguistic balloons softly screamed.
“But Chomsky!” he shouted. “And syntax! And cues!”
“Yes,” answered the townsfolk, “those things can be true.
Prediction exists. Context matters a lot.
But context helps reading—it doesn’t replace it outright.”
For readers who flourish, and readers who soar,
Need language and decoding and meaning and more.
Not one magic shortcut, not one holy guess,
Not one grand theory in oversized dress.
So the children of Guessville now chuckle with care
When a scholar declares that the letters aren’t there.
They sample. They predict. They decode what they see.
And they check what they read for accuracy.
And the moral? Dear reader, remember this rule:
A theory sounds grander
when jargon is full.
But if logic grows wobbly
and evidence thin,
The rhyme may sound clever—
yet the reasoning won’t win.
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This is a clever tribute to a great man who has entertained and taught children the sound system of English without SOR for many decades. One of the reasons disadvantaged students struggle with reading is due to the fact they have not learned to rhyme, since they may not have been exposed to nursery rhymes. Seuss was also a major critic of Hitler and was opposed to fascism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_messages_of_Dr._Seuss
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For the record, Seuss was instrumental in helping kill the predecessor to many later whole-language / balanced literacy assumptions.
He explicitly criticized the old “look-say” approach:
And more bluntly:
He later said:
What made The Cat in the Hat powerful was not the abandonment of sound-based reading instruction. It was the fusion of rhyme, rhythm, repetition, controlled vocabulary, and phonological play into something children actually wanted to read.
If anything, Seuss looks less like a precursor to balanced literacy than a kind of godfather of today’s SoR movement.
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Some-poet-ry! I’ve always loved to join in.
–
The Business and the Emperor
or Not The Walrus and the Carpenter,
by LCT (“Lewis Carroll” Teacher)
–
The test was shining on the kids,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The charters smooth and bright —
And this was odd, because it was
That public schools test right.
–
Miss. Teach was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the test
Had got no business to be there
On privatizing quest —
“It’s very dim of him,” she said,
“To come and spoil our best!”
–
The books were rich as rich could be,
The tests were dry as dry.
You could not see the point, because
These charters don’t test high:
No KIPP scores flying overhead —
There’d be no reason why.
–
The Business and the Emperor
Were walking close at hand:
They wept like anything to see
Such teachers take a stand:
“If Red 4 Ed were cleared away,”
They said, “it would be grand!”
–
“If seven scores with seven drops
Swept half public schools clear,
Do you suppose,” the Business said,
“That taxes people’d fear?”
“I doubt it,” said the Emperor,
“We’re going to need more smear.”
–
“O Parents, come and walk with us!”
The Business did beseech.
“A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
And tee shirts for you each:
You should shop for less is more;
Let’s give a choice — to each!”
–
The wisest Parent looked at him,
But never a word he said:
The wisest parent winked his eye,
And shook his heavy head —
Meaning to say he did not choose
The death of public ed.
…
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Moderation again. C’mon, bots, get with the program. I’m talkin’ here!
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Hooray for Dr. Seuss and his Imitator!
I was shocked when I received the following notice from NYSUT this morning. I have been a very active union member for more than 50 years. Yet i never had neard about IDAs.
Sincerely, Roberta M. Eisenberg Committee Leader UFT Math Teachers Committee
>
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Roberta,
Where is the notice?
What is an IDA?
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For some reason the notice about the the IDAs didn’t get through. I’ll look for it again on my computer. It was a notice from the NYSUT pres. Melinda Person. (NYS UNITED TEACHERS)
More after i find it.
Bobbi Eisenberg
>
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