I still have a copy of "Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go
Now!" in which I, following Geisel's lead, crossed out "Marvin K.
Mooney" and wrote in "Richard M. Nixon," shortly before Nixon resigned.
I should ask my kids if they remember that.
I recall that Rod Serling produced some TV shows with similar
messages. One involved a race of beings who were white on one side and
black on the other -- those white on the one side discriminated against
those white on the other side. In another a woman was wrapped in gauze
following surgery to correct a birth defect that made her ugly. They
unwrapped the gauze and a beautiful young woman was revealed -- but the
medical staff choked in disgust at her ugliness -- the camera panned to
them, and they looked like hogs.
Cheers,
Karl W.
-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Clark [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, December 30, 2008 8:53 PM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Subject: [tips] Dr. Seuss
Hi
Having just read "The Sneetches" for the umpteenth time to my son, I've
decided to follow up with TIPs a question (psychological!) that I've
often wondered about. One of the interesting phenomenon observed in
repeated surveys of people's attitudes, for example to the idea of a
Black President, is that attitudes change much more markedly across
generations (cohorts) than within a generation (birth cohort). In some
such surveys, attitudes are remarkably stable within-cohorts and
markedly changed (improved) across cohorts. This raises the interesting
question of what produces the generational change.
There are innumerable possibilities, but I wonder about Dr. Seuss's
role. For those not familiar with the Sneetches, the story involves
star-bellied Sneetches who hold themselves superior to Sneetches without
stars, until Sylvester McMonkey McBean comes along with his star-on (and
star-off) machine to take everyone's money putting on and taking off
stars until no one knows who was who (and no one eventually cares!).
I wonder whether children incorporate the clear object lesson of this
Seuss poem, and what its impact on adult attitudes might be in a very
general way. It is not specific to race, ethnicity, gender, whatever,
but clearly communicates the arbitrariness of much discrimination.
Not easy to see how to evaluate empirically, although some things come
to mind, such as surveys of people's exposure to Seuss, perhaps across
cultures, and their attitudes toward various groups (or perhaps their
attitude toward discrimination in general), or perhaps even experimental
exposure of children to the Sneetches.
A number of Seuss's other poems are similarly enlightening, depending
perhaps on your political orientation (e.g., Yertle the Turtle).
Happy New Year, and as always,
Take care
Jim
James M. Clark
Professor of Psychology
204-786-9757
204-774-4134 Fax
[email protected]
Department of Psychology
University of Winnipeg
Winnipeg, Manitoba
R3B 2E9
CANADA
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