School stops Dr Seuss reading when students realize it's a lesson in racism

A reading of a Dr Seuss book was abruptly stopped at Shale Meadows Elementary School in Ohio after the children realised it was a lesson in race.

Mandy Robek was filmed reading The Sneetches to her third-grade class on the NPR podcast Planet Money when the reading was abruptly stopped.

It was put to an end in the podcast, which aired on Friday (6 January), by Amanda Beeman, the assistant director of communications for Olentangy Local School District.

For the podcast, NPR reporter Erika Beras spent the day in the third-grade class and a number of books were selected for the occasion, including The Sneetches - with politics being an off-limits subject.

The 1961 children's book is about creatures called Sneetches, with one group of them having stars on their bellies and another group who don't.

In the story, those without stars are looked down upon negatively and they are eventually sold stars to rectify this 'problem' by capitalist Sylvester McMonkey McBean.

But the story doesn't end there, and the Sneetches with the stars on their bellies eventually pay to have the plain-bellied Sneetches' stars removed.

Reacting to the book on the podcast, one of the third-graders says: "It's almost like what happened back then, how people were treated … Like, disrespected ... Like, white people disrespected Black people..."

"I don't know if I feel comfortable with the book being one of the ones featured," Beeman said during the reading.

"I just feel like this isn't teaching anything about economics, and this is a little bit more about differences with race and everything like that."

Shortly after the third grader associates the book with racism, the reading is suddenly stopped.

"I just don't think that this is going to be the discussion that we wanted around economics," Beeman said. "So I'm sorry. We're going to cut this one off."

While the teacher argued that the book is about preferences, open markets and economic loss, the assistant communications director ultimately deemed it inappropriate for the podcast episode that was supposed to be about economics.

"I just don't think it might be appropriate for the third-grade class and for them to have a discussion around it," she said.

Beeman continued: "When the book began addressing racism, segregation and discriminating behaviours, this was not the conversation we had prepared Mrs Robek, the students or parents would take place.

"There may be some very important economics lessons in The Sneetches, but I did not feel that those lessons were the themes students were going to grasp at that point in the day or in the book."

In 2021, Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced it would cease publishing six of the author's book due to issues surrounding racism and insensitive imagery - but The Sneetches was not one of them.