missroserose | Mother Goose, revisited...

While shelf reading today, I came across an interesting little book called "Father Gander Nursery Rhymes," which advertised itself as being "Mother Goose Rewritten: Nonsexist, nonviolent, nonracist nursery rhymes for children of all ages," or something to that extent. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for promoting tolerance and equality and whatnot, but this is a symptom of something that's really bugged me for some time - what is with this obsession with rewriting traditional literature so that it's politically correct? Those poems have been with European and American culture for hundreds of years, in both oral and written form, and now someone has decided to rewrite them so that they fit the standards of society *now*. What they're missing is the fact that those poems are a window of sorts into a time and a culture that's now gone. When you declare them "unfit" for children who've been listening to them for centuries, you're depriving them of a part of their heiratage. No one's yet rewritten the Bible for being politically incorrect, and it serves much the same purpose - but people know not to take the messages of racism and sexual abuse and such seriously, because it's from a past culture. So in a way, we're also insulting our children's intelligence by saying that we don't trust them to understand that what was common then is no longer acceptable now.

That aside, however, there was one poem that cracked me up, and that I'll probably be posting in

childfree:

There was an old couple who lived in a shoe
Who had so many children they didn't know what to do.
So they gave them some broth and some good whole wheat bread,
And kissed them all sweetly and sent them to bed.
But here's the one thing that I don't understand,
If they didn't want so many, why didn't they plan?

@->--Rose