Sunday, March 16, 2008

The Truth About Horton

Hey~! I'm mad at the makers of Horton Hears a Who. The "bad guy", a sour mother kangaroo, dis'ed home schoolers in her second statement of the movie. Something about pouch schooling her son to keep him away from the riff raff. I had a hard time with the entire rest of the film because of it. Her comment made me skeptical on behalf of all homeschoolers, liberal to conservative, and kept me looking for other agendas.

However, my children enjoyed the movie and didn't even seem to notice.

And I LOVE the Dr. Seuss book. The theme of "every person is a person, no matter how small" is one close to my heart. Why did they have to ruin the story for me?

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for sharing the heads up on the dissing of homeschoolers in the movie, but what was said that gave you that impression?

It would not be a surprise if something like this happened, but if we are going to make statements that come against our worldview then we need to support it with sources.

truevyne said...

Dear Rob,
I searched google for the exact quote with no luck. If you find one, let me know.
I'm not a blogger with an agenda to push my worldview. I simply write what I'm thinkin' sometimes.
Thanks for your comment.

Thicket Dweller said...

:-/ Man, True, that's frustrating. I hate it when they do things like that!

Have you seen Mr. Magorium's yet?

truevyne said...

You are up and running again, Thicket! Hooray.

I haven't seen Mr. Magorium's. Is it worth it?

Anonymous said...

I saw the movie on Saturday with my family, and thought the same thing. In the movie, Horton is the community school teacher (a drastic departure from the book), and the kangaroo believes him to be a bad influence on the children because of his imaginative nature (made stronger later by her accusations of teaching children to "defy authority," "corrupting our children," and "attacking our way of life.") She says, "That's why my Rudy is pouch-schooled." (This is the exact quote.) I'm not a homeschooler myself, my kids attend public school, but I also thought it was a gratuitous jab.

truevyne said...

Thanks, Lisa.

Milk in the Closet said...

My husband recently told me he heard something about the good folks in California not being able to homeschool unless they first jumped through several hoops set up by the state. Have you heard anything about this?

truevyne said...

Yes, Milk. A new law passed stating EVERY parent who homeschools in CA must have a teaching certificate! I have a teaching degree, but have not kept up my own teaching certificate. However, TN hasn't passed that law. If we choose to homeschool in TN for high school, we'd have to hold a college degree or be under an umbrella school with credentials.

Anonymous said...

Hmm. I saw the Horton movie last weekend and must admit I laughed at the "pouch-schooled" line. I'm not sure Horton was the most highly-qualified teacher either, though? We never see them doing math, for instance, and you can't sing and dance ALL day long, probably. Well, unless you're a jungle animal, maybe.

But even assuming that the Jungle Education Authority has studies proving that singing and dancing are the best curricula for the majority of young animals, and even if Horton is fully certified by the JEA, maybe that is **not** the ideal or safe place for young kangaroos at a certain stage of their own development, and thus ALL kangaroos should be pouch-schooled, and the Carol Burnett sour-puss kangaroo's REAL problem was that she just didn't understand WHY kangaroos do better if pouch-schooled.

Sort of like the back-arguments one hears a lot from other idealogues, who may be doing the right thing, but only give all the WRONG reasons for it.

Or, indeed, maybe animals like Ms. Kangaroo just want the right to be the only unexamined, unregulated, uncriticized faction in the jungle. And folks like that deserve to be parodied, in my opinion!

truevyne said...

Almost,
I wish you had written the dialogue for Horton! I laughed out loud.