Posted in Interviews

In case you don't recognize his real name, it's the incomparable Dr. Seuss.  I missed his birthday on March 2, which is touted each year by the National Education Association (NEA) through its  Read Across America  program.  Although the NEA honors him because he created "fun" books that motivate children to memorize many basic beginning words, I honor him for telling the world what "whole word" memorization is doing to our children.  Ponder a quote from Dr. Seuss himself from an interview in June 1981 Arizona magazine published in Samuel L. Blumenfeld's article, Dyslexia: The Man-made Disease:

 They think I did it in twenty minutes. That d -- ned Cat in the Hat took nine months until I was satisfied. I did it for a textbook house and they sent me a word list. That was due to the Dewey revolt in the Twenties in which they threw out phonic reading and went to word recognition, as if you're reading Chinese pictographs instead of blending sounds of different letters. I think killing phonics was one of the greatest causes of illiteracy in the country. Anyway, they had it all worked out that a healthy child at the age of four can learn so many words in a week and that's all. So there were two hundred and twenty-three words to use in this book. I read the list three times and I almost went out of my head. I said, I'll read it once more and if I can find two words that rhyme that'll be the title of my book. (That's genius at work.) I found "cat" and "hat" and I said, "The title will be The Cat in the Hat."

May you rest in peace, Dr. Seuss.  Many of us are heeding your wise words.