Posted on 10/27/2025 12:36:36 PM PDT by CharlesOConnell
A Video is at the link-click, but if you have young children or grandchildren, it would be worth your while to get the book, work out how to perform it as poetry, and read it to them yourself--they'll always remember it.
This is avowedly biased on the side of Rudolph Flesch's 1955 "Why Johnny Can't Read"; if you're hydrophobic/distempered about this topic, please don't bother with any flaming in the comments. This is just Dr. Seuss fandom, no fanaticism intended. Bruce Deitrick Price's "Science of Illiteracy" is in the 1st comment, for those who maintain an open mind.
That damned 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. – Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss), Arizona Magazine, June 1981
Theodore Geisel had been in advertising, including a bit of cheesecake. Perhaps he hit a low point in his career, when he got a windfall, which thanks to the anti-phonics movement in university educationalist psychology, propelled him into the stardom he later enjoyed.
As shown in the quote, his first work in "whole-language/look-say" was the original "Cat in the Hat".
I take in view of his comments that the effect was injurious, that the sequel, "The Hat in the Cat Comes Back", was his revenge, explicitly featuring not only the alphabet, but using consistent poetic meter, stompable to, he was defying the movement of regarding memorization as ignorant.
I want to say there was another Cat in the Hat book involving math...published well after the original...I was thinking that was Cat in the Hat Comes Back but maybe it was a different title.
I learned to read on my own at age 4, using phonics-based books that happened to be lying around the house.
Then I went to first grade, with “Fun with Dick and Jane.” But I was way beyond that!
Eventually, I skipped seventh grade, had algebra in eighth grade, and was in honors and advanced placement classes until my high school graduation. Then I went to MIT-—”drinking from a fire-hose”:
https://mitadmissions.org/help/faq/drinking-from-a-firehose/
What I don’t know is the best way to teach dyslexic kids. However, there are dyslexics at MIT, too!
https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/dyslexia-at-mit1/
I learned calculus and differential equations at MIT, and got Cs in every math class I took there.
When I was finishing up my PhD thesis in molecular biology , I had a molecular weight determination that I just solved by drawing a straight line through a graph, as was usual..
My thesis advisor with his CalTech background, made me solve it in a more rigorous way. I had to go to the MIT Engineering Library to get the data, and then do a calculus-based derivation to find the molecular weight. My advisor was well-satisfied, and so was I. It was an elegant molecular-weight determination.
The only issue is that I have forgotten every bit of calculus I ever knew. That is because I never had to use calculus since fndishing my PhD. Phooey!
I wasn’t going to say anything, but take a careful look at your headline.
The main library at my college (UCSD) is named for Theodore Geisel.
,,, I loved the Cat in the Hat books. Kids in my day had to show their homework the next day and there was no TV until after dinner, in the "bedtime soon" margin. These days kids are dumped in front of TVs that condition their attitude to disrepect parents, teachers and any other form of authority. They may not be all that good at reading but they can yell and scream a lot better than my generation could if told what to do. It's not just reading, it's toxic attitude - not all kids, but too many.
I remember getting the Dick and Jane book on the first day in 1ST grade. I already knew how to read real books by that time; Mom had me reading before I could walk by just reading with me and having me read to her.
I flipped through it as the teacher told us not to read more than the assignment.
Naturally I read it on the bus, on the way home from school. The next day I told the teacher it “was dull and had no plot.”
The very worst were the “Joe Joe” math books.
I must have been spared those.
It took “Captain Underpants” to get my kids to read.
I had 3 semesters of calculus and 1 of differntial equations...at that point I realized that one more advanced math class would qualify me for a minor in mathematics so I took “abstract algebra”...never understood and never will understand “fuzzy subsets”.
At MIT when I was there, everyone (regardless of major) had to have 4 terms of math—unless one advanced-placed first-term calculus as I did.
I got a C in every math class. But I miraculously got a B In first-term physical chemistry (thermodynamics) which depended on differential equations. That year, Bs in P-Chem—and even Cs—were hard to get. Chem majors were jealous of me—a Bio major—with my B, as if no one got an A (which was possible-—???). It was amazing that anyone with a solid C average in math would get a B in P-Chem, however.
Ha, I got an A in physical chemistry. But it sure wasn’t at MIT.
NO-- Fauci is a foctor and we don't want more like him!
Nor did you have Walter Thorson as your P-Chem professor!
The MIT Chem and Bio departments had to do “clean-up” to prevent flunking out an entire class of students! Chem E had their own Thermodynamics course so were safe.
Those of us who got C’s and B’s were of course safe. The Chemists’ jealousy over my B (I was a Bio major) suggests that there were no A’s.
I had those in first grade but Bosier Parish also included a brown Phonics work book as an adjunct to “see say”. Learning how to “sound out” words and string the letters together opened up the world of books for me. I remember my teacher teaching us the parts of a book and how “acknowledgment” had no e after g.(I had approached the teacher troubled that the printers must have made a mistake!) I was slow to get started, having had a fixable hearing issue which delayed me about a year in school. Once it was fixed and I got into 1st grade, I tore into books and never looked back!
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