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Thursday, March 2, 2017

These kids made flyers to protest "Dr. Seuss Week" at school

These kids made flyers to protest "Dr. Seuss Week" at school:

THESE KIDS MADE FLYERS TO PROTEST "DR. SEUSS WEEK" AT SCHOOL

Rockett, 11, and Zoe, 10, just wanted their classmates to know that Dr. Seuss was kind of racist.


Meet Rockett and Zoe, the wokest kids in class. Their elementary school is currently celebrating "Dr. Seuss Week" as a part of National Read Across America Day, which coincides with the popular children's book author's birthday on March 2. But, as many may be unaware, Dr. Seuss was kind of racist. So these super-conscious siblings decided to help their classmates get more aware.

While Dr. Seuss, aka Theodor Geisel, is best known for enduring, beloved books like The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham, he began his career as an illustrator and cartoonist who drew racist political cartoons expressing, among other things, vehement anti-Japanese sentiment. Geisel apparently had absolutely no problem with the incarceration of innocent Japanese Americans during World War II, depicting them in caricature as invading hordes and latent traitors loyal to the enemy.


So Rockett, 11, and Zoe, 10, took it upon themselves -- with little assistance or oversight from their parents, Steve and Leslie -- to create a flyer that educated people about Geisel's past racism. While they did have their parents' support and approval, I'm told that they came up with the flyer on their own (after an hour of them fighting and arguing about the content and format). Like I said, these are some woke-ass kids.

Here's the full flyer, which Rockett and Zoe distributed to fellow students:





Knowledge dropped. Their teachers, however, did not appreciate this attempt to provide an alternate, historical perspective on the work of Dr. Seuss. Zoe's teacher asked her to stop passing out the flyers, while Rockett's teacher confiscated the flyers, reported it to the principal, and send the following email to his parents:
Hello Mr. and Mrs. Wong,

This morning, Rockett came to school with a stack of flyers to hand out regarding Dr. Suess. While he is absolutely entitled to his own thoughts and opinions, school is not the appropriate place for him to hand these flyers out. I am going to send them home with him today after school. I do applaud his civic mindedness.

Thank you,
[REDACTED]
Here's how Zoe and Rockett's father, Steve, responded:
I do want to begin my response to your email, and our children's actions of creating the flyer, by stating that we appreciate the non-racist work of Dr. Seuss. We have a collection of his books in home and we read many on them often to our kids when they were younger. A couple of years ago, we wanted to balance our love for Seuss Geisel's creativity by exposing our children to the darker side of his early racist works. So while we still respect his art, our family understands that Seuss Geisel, like many others we hold in high esteem, can indeed have a These kids made flyers to protest "Dr. Seuss Week" at school: