Dr. Seuss is Celebrated at ECS

With cancel culture out of control, it was only a matter of time before beloved favorites and classics came under fire. Right on cue in 2021 it was announced that six Dr. Seuss books were being pulled from publication due to alleged “hurtful and wrong” imagery.

I’ll save writing about the moral cowardice of publishers who claim to celebrate “Banned Books Week” another time. For now, I want to focus on why we celebrate Dr. Seuss at ECS.

First, Dr. Seuss was a wordsmith. We love words, and we want our students to love words. Words are central to the Christian religion, Jesus is the Word (John 1:1). I’m not saying Dr. Seuss was a Christian, truthfully I don’t know if he was or not. But Dr. Seuss lived in God’s world. God used words to create the world (Genesis 1:1). We use words to know and love God, and getting children to love words is an essential goal for a Christian school.

Second, Dr. Seuss inspires wonder. Wonder is one of a student’s greatest assets and one of the teacher’s greatest points of contact. A student with wide eyes full of wonder at God’s world cannot be stopped from learning.

Third, Dr. Seuss often addressed important themes. We might think, with his silly rhymes and fantastic creatures, Dr. Seuss’ books are not serious. And we might be seriously wrong if we thought that. To read Fox in Socks is both a mental and physical exercise. The Sneetches can help children understand how to treat others fairly and kindly. And one of the great advantages of Seuss in conveying some of these lessons is how he captivates the attention and the imagination.

Fourth, rhyming stimulates the brain. Some of the greatest advantages of books are things we may not even realize are happening. We know the brain is stimulated by activity. Students who rhyme learn to identify similar sounds while also learning the nuances of distinct meanings. While we don’t use rhymes because they help kids learn vocabulary and spell, it cannot be denied that is an added benefit.

Fifth, Dr. Seuss helps kids understand our world. Not directly, necessarily. But the Seussian world of whos, sneetches, and bar-ba-loots is simply a mirror of the real world of angler fish, blue-footed boobies, and platypi. Understanding the world is not merely a scientific endeavor, we know God through what He created (Romans 1). The curiosity evoked by a Dr. Seuss book translates to the real world, and that’s a very good thing.

We celebrate Dr. Seuss at Emmanuel Christian School. And we are happy to do so. Students with eyes full of wonder and bellies full of laughter will change the world (and for that thought I must give credit to that wonderfully Seussian author Mr. N. D. Wilson).