Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
¶ … Tales and Nursery Rhymes
Children's rhymes and fairy tales serve as a fun and interesting way to teach children moral lessons At least, that's the modern interpretation of what nursery rhymes and fairy tales are meant for. The history of nursery rhymes and fairy tales is a lot darker than their modern use suggests. They are filled with violence and abuse. These relics of the middle ages and renaissance are filled with references to death, plague, and in some cases, even torture. This paper will take a look at several nursery rhymes and classic fairy tales and evaluate their hidden meaning.
A beloved children's nursery rhyme is the old woman who lived in a shoe. The first image that comes into one's head when this rhyme is mentioned is that of a kind old lady chasing after her myriad of children. But closer analysis of the rhymes reveals something more dreadful. The nursery rhyme goes,
There was...
(Alchin, 2009)
This rhyme is clearly promoting domestic abuse, specifically child abuse. The old woman in the shoe has so many children that she cannot adequately feed them all, and in an effort to keep their wailing about their hungry to a minimum, she beats them to sleep. When reading with a historical context in mind, the rhyme makes sense. Hunger was a common sensation up until recent history, so were big families, since many children died in their early years families had many children to compensate. Since money was sparse for many families, therefore so was food. In order to keep order in the house, whippings were probably used liberally. Another rhyme that promotes domestic violence, but in this…
References:
Alchin Linda. (2009). Nursery Rhymes lyrics, origins and history. Retrieved 04 February 2014 from http://www.rhymes.org.uk/index.htm
Davies, P., Lee, L., Fox, A., & Fox, E. (2004). Could nursery rhymes cause violent behaviour? A comparison with television viewing. Archives of Disease in Childhood. 89(12), 1103-1105.
Nursery rhymes linger in our minds our entire lives; they are repeated to us at an early age and remain in our subconscious longer than commercial jingles. What makes Mother Goose so memorable? Surely it is not the content of the nonsensical poems: young children not care about the content of a nursery rhyme, and toddlers are incapable of grasping it. Nursery rhymes are not like fairy tales: they do
For instance, in Jacob Have I Loved, a twin comes of age in the 1940s, and finds that she indeed can make ordinary life more than extraordinary. Realistic fiction also tends to be more contemporary in tone, connecting with issues that are relevant to contemporary family situations. Issues such as divorce, dysfunctional families, adoptions, etc. are dealt with in a serious and relevant manner; in On My Honor, a
The hungry birds in the sky pecked away at the bread. The presence of the birds was an independent event unrelated to the travails of the children: it could not be foreseen and would have not made getting loss more or less probable if Hansel had used stones. But with bread, alas, that was not the case. "Don't the leaves of the trees look strange?" said Gretel. The conifers of
As Canada has become less wild, many of these obstacles have been recognized by writers to exist internally, as Atwood says: "no longer obstacles to physical survival but obstacles to what we may call spiritual survival, to life as anything more than a minimally human being." Grim survival is that sort of survival which overcomes a specific threat which destroys everything else about one, such as a hurricane or plane
curriculum content that implements strategies and methods that enhance language acquisition. This is done in light of the relevant theories that surround the proper development of linguistics in kindergarten children from vast socio-cultural backgrounds. The teaching of linguistics to Kindergarten children is indicated by Ellis and McCartney (2011) to be quite a challenge. This is more dominant for the wide range of linguistic diversity as well as literacy development that
Summarize Henry Petroski’s “Falling Down is Part of Growing Up” explains one of the most obvious but easily overlooked lessons in life: that mistakes, failures, and faults become the keys to learning, growth, and development. The title of the essay references the nursery rhyme “London Bridge is Falling Down.” Petroski claims that this nursery rhyme also serves as a means of subtly reminding children that even the most remarkable feats of