In a school district near Columbus, Ohio, Sneetches are vanguards of critical race theory. NPR’s Planet Money was taping a third-grade class where teacher Mandy Robek was illustrating how children can learn economics principles from kids’ books. An administrator pulled the plug when a student noted that the star-bellied Sneetches are discriminating against plain-bellied Sneetches in a way that recalls racial discrimination in the U.S. That was politics, she said, not economics.
NPR’s Erika Beras asked a group of economists to recommend children’s books that teach concepts such as division of labor (Pancakes, Pancakes!) and the labor-market matching process (Put Me in the Zoo). Three economists recommended The Sneetches because it deals with “preferences and class, open markets, entrepreneurship, discrimination and economic loss, some game theory,” said Beras.