I understand (and agree with) the first three panels, but the punchline in the fourth panel is a mystery to me.
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The teacher read it as a fun children’s tale, while the kids gave it a a darker, deeper review. She felt she needed to re-think it so she didn’t appear so shallow.
Except Cynthia is not a teacher, she’s a precocious older student. The fact that she highlights the fact that it is the new, revised version of the story indicates that she knows it is anything but a fun children’s tale, and that she is most likely up to something. The best I can get is that the children outpaced even her wildest expectations and caught her off guard — she was probably expecting to have to Socraticly led them, and instead they seem to be poignantly ahead of her, covering all points in their initial comments.
I think @larK has it
I think it is a representation of our times. The kids seem very young. The reader, I’m going to guess a teacher, is thinking over “What happened to reading a book for fun to kids?” They’re learning how to be too critical at too early an age. The teacher is a deer caught in headlights and needs a minute be nostalgic.
The last panel is as everyone says. It’s a wrapup, not a punchline.
And the next two strips continued the story:
Ha, in case anybody needs reminding, the “memorized” line in Mitch’s first supplement is a reference to the plot of the featured book Fahrenheit 451 where some rebels preserve books this way from the destruction of the firemen.
This Wrong Hands is almost on topic.
in this strip, Cynthia is the wiseass student in her classroom, somewhat similar to Caufield in Frazz. In the 4th panel, she realizes that she’s getting a taste of her own medicine.
@ zbicyclist – I don’t want to take credit for “improving” your comment, but why bury something in Dropbox (and make everyone decline the app), when that Frazz strip can be embedded here directly?
Emperor’s New Clothes moment. The young children are able to see the “woke” rewrite as unneeded nonsense, something the (young) adult should have already known. She needs a moment because her paradigm just got abruptly shifted, and they didn’t use the clutch.
“What you take credit for” reminds me of a strange kid I knew in high school. He started doing a weird little dance and said “This is the Elephant Dance. I do this every day because it keeps the elephants away from here.” I said, “There aren’t any elephants here.” He said, “That’s because I do the Elephant Dance every day.”
In the news today, a Florida textbook publisher has removed references to race from the story of Rosa Parks. “She was told to move to a different seat because of the color of her skin” becomes “She was told to move to a different seat.”
Comics I Don't Understand 
The teacher read it as a fun children’s tale, while the kids gave it a a darker, deeper review. She felt she needed to re-think it so she didn’t appear so shallow.
Except Cynthia is not a teacher, she’s a precocious older student. The fact that she highlights the fact that it is the new, revised version of the story indicates that she knows it is anything but a fun children’s tale, and that she is most likely up to something. The best I can get is that the children outpaced even her wildest expectations and caught her off guard — she was probably expecting to have to Socraticly led them, and instead they seem to be poignantly ahead of her, covering all points in their initial comments.
I think @larK has it
I think it is a representation of our times. The kids seem very young. The reader, I’m going to guess a teacher, is thinking over “What happened to reading a book for fun to kids?” They’re learning how to be too critical at too early an age. The teacher is a deer caught in headlights and needs a minute be nostalgic.
The last panel is as everyone says. It’s a wrapup, not a punchline.
And the next two strips continued the story:
Ha, in case anybody needs reminding, the “memorized” line in Mitch’s first supplement is a reference to the plot of the featured book Fahrenheit 451 where some rebels preserve books this way from the destruction of the firemen.
This Wrong Hands is almost on topic.
in this strip, Cynthia is the wiseass student in her classroom, somewhat similar to Caufield in Frazz. In the 4th panel, she realizes that she’s getting a taste of her own medicine.
Speaking of Caufield and Frazz, here’s one appropriate to today: https://www.dropbox.com/s/co6a7rs5y8n2wsu/Frazz%20Credit%20Snakes.png?dl=0
@ zbicyclist – I don’t want to take credit for “improving” your comment, but why bury something in Dropbox (and make everyone decline the app), when that Frazz strip can be embedded here directly?
Emperor’s New Clothes moment. The young children are able to see the “woke” rewrite as unneeded nonsense, something the (young) adult should have already known. She needs a moment because her paradigm just got abruptly shifted, and they didn’t use the clutch.
“What you take credit for” reminds me of a strange kid I knew in high school. He started doing a weird little dance and said “This is the Elephant Dance. I do this every day because it keeps the elephants away from here.” I said, “There aren’t any elephants here.” He said, “That’s because I do the Elephant Dance every day.”
In the news today, a Florida textbook publisher has removed references to race from the story of Rosa Parks. “She was told to move to a different seat because of the color of her skin” becomes “She was told to move to a different seat.”