Sunday, March 21, 1999
Maybe a poem is just a poem
'Price of a Child' as teaching tool
BY KAREN SAMPLES
The Cincinnati Enquirer
DAYTON — I'm all for creative teaching, but I must admit the googies gave me a start.
Googies are monsters who come to buy children and take them away. In the third grade at Lincoln Elementary School, students use them to practice their math skills.
The googies pay different amounts for children depending on their characteristics. “Fat ones” fetch 50 cents each, for instance. “Dirty ones” are worth 15.
The third-graders fill out a worksheet labeled “The Price of a Child” on one side and “Expense Account” on the other. Using the googies' price list, they do several calculations. One question on the worksheet even asks, “How much would you cost?”
THE GOOGIES ARE COMING
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From Where the Sidewalk Ends, by Shel Silverstein
The googies are coming, the old people say,
To buy little children and take them away.
Fifty cents for fat ones,
Twenty cents for lean ones,
Fifteen cents for dirty ones,
Thirty cents for clean ones,
A nickel each for mean ones.
The googies are coming, and maybe tonight,
To buy little children and lock them up tight.
Eighty cents for husky ones,
Quarter for the weak ones,
Penny each for noisy ones,
A dollar for the meek ones.
Forty cents for happy ones,
Eleven cents for sad ones.
And, kiddies, when they come to buy,
It won't do any good to cry.
But — just between yourself and I —
They never buy the bad ones!
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Goodness, I thought. Kids have enough troubles these days. The last thing they need is a googie-related complex.
Besides, children are price less.
I was told about this worksheet by Tabitha Millar, the mother of a former third-grader at Lincoln. Ms. Millar was upset. So was I — until I saw the lesson for myself.
This is how book-banning crusades get started. Adults see something alarming, they aren't privy to the context, and censorship results.
Not that I fault Ms. Millar. She deserves credit for giving the worksheet some scrutiny. In all the years it has been used at Lincoln Elementary, no other parent has complained, a teacher told me.
The child-buying is described in a poem called “The
Googies Are Coming,” by Shel Silverstein, the great children's author of the 1970s. At Lincoln, the teacher reads the poem to her students — she says they love it — and then gives them the worksheet.
Ms. Millar's concern: “It teaches them about buying and selling children, like they aren't important. That messes with a child's psyche.”
Maybe she's right. I don't have children yet. I only know that when I was a kid, I adored Shel Silverstein, and I turned out ...
Well, never mind. Let's just say that Where The Sidewalk Ends, the book that includes “The Googies Are Coming,” is a classic of children's literature. It is on the National Education Association's recommended reading list for children ages 9 and up.
Where the Sidewalk Ends is a collection of silly, slightly subversive poems for kids, each accompanied by a daffy drawing.
Topics include “The Dirtiest Man in the World” and “Ridiculous Rose” who “eats with her toes.” In one poem, Mr. Silverstein explores the apparent contradictions between what God creates and mom forbids. (My favorite line: “God gave us fingers — Ma says, "Use your hanky.'”)
The humor is juvenile yet knowing, in the sense that Mr. Silverstein knows how smart kids can be. Instead of patronizing them with sappy euphemisms, he celebrates the spirit of their imaginations.
The exercise given to the kids at Lincoln connects math with literature, their teacher says. Students who are better at reading than math get a confidence boost, because they discover that working with numbers sometimes means working with words, too.
The teacher didn't want her name used. She doesn't want to draw negative attention, she says.
I ask whether the kids are ever scared by the poem.
“Are you kidding?” she replies. “These are third-graders.”
She doesn't begin the lesson with any sort of disclaimer, such as telling her students that kids can't really be sold or that people shouldn't be labeled. There's no need, she says, because they're old enough to see the poem for what it is.
The “Price of a Child” worksheet was created in 1991 by a California-based company called Teacher Created Materials Inc. The company's Web site says its materials are sold in 1,700 stores and 45 countries.
This particular worksheet is no longer in the company catalogue, because the series on connecting math and literature has been discontinued, spokeswoman Sara Connolly says.
People have raised questions before about the “Price of a Child” exercise, she says, but she didn't know the nature or extent of the criticism.
Ms. Millar thinks the project sends a bad message to kids. For the last word, I consulted her 9-year-old daughter, Cheyenne Wright.
She remembers the poem: “It was about little monsters going up to people's doors and buying kids.”
I ask whether she was bothered by it. She looks at me like I'm a silly person.
“It was just a poem,” she says.
Karen Samples is the Enquirer's Kentucky columnist. Her column appears on Sundays and Thursdays. She can be reached at ksamples@enquirer.com.
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