Today’s Post title is a reference to the Tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin….and the question we will pose is, ‘which of the major characters are which’?

Pop Quiz!!  Wakefield Doctrine Lesson of the Day-style ( … Oh, Santa Madre del cepillo de dientes! No estoy listo, Jimmy dijo que sólo estaría fuera hasta 10!… )

Close your books, class! This won’t take long, we really need to assess our “progress” in the spreading of the  Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers), thing.

We all know the story of the Pied Piper of Hamlin, (Town in Europe has problem with rats, a guy turns up and offers to get rid of all the rats for a price, the townsfolk agree and the Piper guy does his thing only to have the townfolks try to stiff the guy, he gets revenge by getting rid of all the kids in town…) now our age-enhanced Readers will recall the version of the story that turned up on “the ‘Television”, back when we were still young and all too impressionable.
Produced for TV by Hallmark Hall of Fame, this version  starred Van Johnson (in dual roles which was cutting edge for the times), Claude Raines (yes, that Claude Raines) and Lori Nelson. These kinds of special-TV-presentations were almost always scheduled for Sunday evenings (the original Family Hour) and was representative of a certain type of “entertainment” that was characteristic of the early years of TV,  the late 50s and early 60s. ‘Good influence entertainment’  produced by the likes of Hallmark and Walt Disney, in actuality, these movies and shows were  all too often so manipulative and contrived that the result was a generation of emotionally scarred children simply because they were forced to watch this stuff  by their culturally insecure parents. Collateral damage in the war for the hearts and minds of the new television generation.  “You need to get some culture, never mind those trashy comic books and pulp novels, here  at last is a some good quality TV”.  Lets all sit down as a family  and watch: Ole Yella, Bambi, Darby O’Gill and the Little People or maybe the Wizard of Oz. Today’s Post topic, the Hallmark Hall of Fame Presents the Pied Piper (etc) surely produced the sound of relieved parents saying,  “‘oh look dear, they have that fairy tale, the Pied Piper of Hamelin on Hallmark Theatre, go get the kids”!!  (Old writer to young version of self, “Run!! clark/scott/roger, run, hide somewhere!! You will understand when you get older, now just run”!!)

Ok class, time is up.
I realise that some of you will be ill-equipped to pass this test. After all, today’s Post is geared to those Readers who grew up in the 1950s and early 1960s and, just between you and me, we really, really hope that the demographic of the Wakefield Doctrine readership is not limited to the 40-65 year olds sitting in some office or at home somewhere, waiting for the caffeine to kick in.

….anyway back to our little Pop Quiz.
We all know the story of the Pied Piper, so lets agree there are three main ‘characters’ in the story: the Piper, the Parents and the Children. According to the Wakefield Doctrine, which (group) are best represented as clarks, scotts and rogers….and why is that?

(While we wait for the slower students)…if you are of the target age, try to remember what it was like being young in the late 1950s and 1960s. You would have been between the ages of 5 and 15. Now this is old enough to be curious, perhaps eager to learn about the world  beyond your front yard/your school yard but (still) young enough not to be distracted by the hormonally induced certainty of later adolescence. The perfect time for fairy tales and pop culture morality plays.

Having trouble remembering?  Mr B!! clips please!

Damn…I forgot myself what this thing was like…sorry this seems to be more of a topic than I was prepared to get into… plus providing a saying that has becomes ironic to a degree way out of proportion to the original context**

Really, class! Pencils down. Times up!

The answer now!   Who was the clark, who was the scott and who was the roger?

…next Post… ole yella, Bambi’s mother…hey Disney!! you suck…why don’t you and your paedophilic buddy Norm* get the hell away from the kids

*Norman Rockwell
** ‘…time to pay the Piper his due