Dr. Suess vs Mother Goose

 

Teach Your Children

Teach your children well
Their father's hell did slowly go by
Feed them on your dreams
The one they pick's the one you'll know by

All you really need to know you learned in Kindergarten.

As children we learned from Doctor Suess, not Mother Goose and maybe that is the issue.  To be fair the Little Red Hen was written by Mary Mapes Dodge, not Mother Goose.  But the lesson of the Little Red Hen, like much of Mother Goose, is that if you don’t work you will get no benefit.  However the Little Red Hen did not ask why no one else in her group would help her.  She ignored that her growing of the wheat depended on the weather being good, there being enough rain, there being no pests, etc. IOW, luck.  And when she ate the bread, it was not clear than she could actually eat all of the Bread instead of sharing it.

Doctor Suess instead taught us that 

“A person’s a person no matter how small."

“Maybe Christmas, the Grinch thought, doesn’t come from a store.” 

“Why fit in when you are born to stand out”. 

“Unless some like you cares a whole awful lot.  Nothing is going to get better. It’s not”.  

Thank you, children, for listening, and not giving up on the dream.