What do those who are not yet old enough to vote make of the brouhaha surrounding the presidential elections? One youngster thinks the job of political convention delegates is to "resent" their states.
Another child says people who are expected to help the president once he's elected sometimes are locked up in his Cabinet.These young political pundits are quoted in "The World According to Kids!" - a compilation of 32 years worth of children's wit and wisdom by retired Missouri teacher Harold Dunn.
Another explained - with a straight face - that a "split ticket" is when you don't like any of the candidates on the ticket so you tear it up.
"I call them `youngsterisms' instead of boners because most of the time they aren't really mistakes but facts that are phrased in the beguiling way of children," said Dunn, 62, who lives in suburban Ballwin.
"They have a way of putting a backspin on their answer, saying something that seems to make little sense but actually is quite sensible," Dunn says.
Maybe today's presidential candidates should take note. Here's some advice from the mouths of babes:
- Thin-skinned is good in apples but bad in candidates.
- Political ties are just to get elected and not to wear.
- Political strategy is when you don't let people know you have run out of ideas and keep talking anyway.
- A candidate should renounce his words carefully.
What's the difference between campaigns and elections?
According to one knowing pupil, the campaign is when the candidate tells what he stands for and the election is when the voters tell if they can stand for him being elected.
"One thing that was surprising to me was how critical they were," Dunn said. "It was as if they had heard their parents say things and then put them in their own words, like `candidates are extra talkity people.' "
Answers like that kept Dunn in love with his job.
"What can I say? That was the icing on the cake of being a teacher," he said.
Dunn spent most of his teaching career giving music instruction, but other subjects - like politics - invariably came up.
Dunn also has published "How to Run A Country," made up of children's letters to their congressmen. In the works now is a collection of spoonerisms, named for a Rev. Spooner who had a habit of accidentally transposing syllables, saying "the shoving leopard," rather than the "loving shepherd."
Teachers everywhere will recognize the special touch kids give to what they've learned in the classroom, says Jim Skardon, who edited Dunn's book for Spectacle Lane Press, a small publishing company in Wilton, Conn. But few of them have had the foresight to write them down.
"Almost any teacher you talk to talks about the funny things they heard and say, `Gee, I wish I had collected it,' " Skardon said. "But Harold Dunn did it."