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Post by M is for Morphine on Jul 20, 2011 13:43:39 GMT -5
Haha, yes. Kids love being violent and gross. Like the diarrhea song, which appears to have about 50 verses. Or this lovely old chestnut:
On top of old smokey all covered with blood I shot my poor teacher with a 44 slug I went to her funeral I went to her grave everybody threw flowers I threw a grenade
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Post by Nimras on Jul 20, 2011 13:46:03 GMT -5
My thoughts?
Erasing history is bad. It's denying it ever existed. Banning nursery rhymes is like burning books.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 20, 2011 14:23:25 GMT -5
Hmmm...maybe you have a point with kids making things up. Although I once heard an extended version of the goosey rhyme, and there wasn't just an old man, there was also a little girl who got pushed...
One of the "dark" rhymes my friends used to joke about was one where you bought bubblegum instead of what your mom told you to buy. The last line is:
"My mom gave me a five She said 'Go stay alive' I did not stay alive Instead, I choked!"
For some reason my girlfriends and I thought that was pretty funny, even though I would never dream of really choking on gum and breaking my mom's heart.
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Post by Crystal on Jul 20, 2011 18:49:13 GMT -5
Frankly I think there's a darker meaning to goosey gander - what's the old man with non-christian values doing in a lady's chamber? 'Throw rapists down the stairs' is a perfectly valid moral to be teaching kids Or if you want to be blatant about it, it's teaching kids to avoid geese... which is an absolutely valid thing to do, too xDDDDDD If I had to be perfectly honest about it, I'd say that kids are actually a pretty selfish and cruel lot. They're just so cute, and they don't know any better, so we forgive them. ;D It's true, though, that a lot of fairy tales and nursery rhymes are absolutely appalling if you look at them up close - like Donkeyskin, and Hansel and Gretel, and all those others. But I hold that if you try to shelter kids too much, they just end up growing up ignorant of the world and really naive. Naivete is cute in a two year old, but in a twenty year old it can lead to really hurtful things.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 20, 2011 18:58:05 GMT -5
If I had to be perfectly honest about it, I'd say that kids are actually a pretty selfish and cruel lot. They're just so cute, and they don't know any better, so we forgive them. ;D Excuse me? As soon as I knew better, I wasn't selfish or cruel. In fact, I repeatedly vowed to myself that I never ever would be ever again. And I was a unique case in that I never said anything that was really insulting, except I once told a twin that he wasn't my favorite of the brothers, and Mom told me that wasn't very nice. Never said it again. Okay, but not everyone is you. Crystal was talking about children in general.
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Post by Avery on Jul 20, 2011 18:58:32 GMT -5
If I had to be perfectly honest about it, I'd say that kids are actually a pretty selfish and cruel lot. They're just so cute, and they don't know any better, so we forgive them. ;D Excuse me? As soon as I knew better, I wasn't selfish or cruel. In fact, I repeatedly vowed to myself that I never ever would be ever again. And I was a unique case in that I never said anything that was really insulting, except I once told a twin that he wasn't my favorite of the brothers, and Mom told me that wasn't very nice. Never said it again. Sae, Crystal was not saying that you were selfish and cruel. She was saying children in general have the tendency to be very self-involved and unintentionally mean without realizing it. All part of being immature, which all kids are when they're little. No need to get up in arms over it. It has nothing to do with you, nor whether you perceived yourself to be cruel as a child.
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Post by Dju on Jul 20, 2011 19:01:10 GMT -5
If I had to be perfectly honest about it, I'd say that kids are actually a pretty selfish and cruel lot. They're just so cute, and they don't know any better, so we forgive them. ;D Excuse me? As soon as I knew better, I wasn't selfish or cruel. In fact, I repeatedly vowed to myself that I never ever would be ever again. And I was a unique case in that I never said anything that was really insulting, except I once told a twin that he wasn't my favorite of the brothers, and Mom told me that wasn't very nice. Never said it again. Sae, you can't tell if you were cruel or not, it's just impossible for you to remember everything. I remember me and my best friend bullied a little girl for a day (Hate myself for it) when we were little, we didn't knew why we did it. We just...I dunno, didn't find reasons why not to. Kids do things for no reason in particular, I like to believe kids are evil and become better people as they grow. XD
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Post by Yoyti on Jul 20, 2011 19:09:42 GMT -5
Actually, Ring-Around-The-Roses is completely non-lethal. www.snopes.com/language/literary/rosie.aspSome nursery rhymes do actually have darker backgrounds (http://www.snopes.com/lost/sixpence.asp) but I like to think that the violence in nursery rhymes is an attempt at a sort of slapstick comedy.
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Post by Luna on Jul 20, 2011 19:22:22 GMT -5
Haha, yes. Kids love being violent and gross. Like the diarrhea song, which appears to have about 50 verses. Or this lovely old chestnut: On top of old smokey all covered with blood I shot my poor teacher with a 44 slug I went to her funeral I went to her grave everybody threw flowers I threw a grenade At my school we sung it: On top of Mt. Rushmore, All covered in cheese, We shot poor Barney, He fell to his nee's. I went to is funeral, I went to his grave, Some people threw flowers, I threw a grenade. And then we extended it: A couple days later, He wasn't quiet dead, So I got a bazooka And shot off his head. Oh good memories. XP
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Post by Stal on Jul 20, 2011 19:42:43 GMT -5
This reminds me of the discussion regarding Disney movies and such and what messages they send to children (especially girls). I've never known anyone that truly grew up adversely affected by either a nursery rhyme or one of those movies. Also, anyone want to bring up the actual violet translation of Allouette anyway? it's about actually plucking a bird for dinner.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 20, 2011 20:44:01 GMT -5
As far as I remember, nursery rhymes didn't send any messages at all to me. :U It was all about how the tune was catchy, or the rhythm was memorable. All about finding patterns; the words themselves could have been just about anything. XD It was like that for my friends, too. I didn't really learn any meaning behind any of it until I was significantly older.
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Post by Char on Jul 20, 2011 20:57:05 GMT -5
All these rather violent nursery rhymes just reminded me of something! I have a two year old brother, and my mom would often read him rhymes. They were often sweet and gentle. For example: (roughly translated from Russian)
"Our Tanya is crying loudly, Her ball fell in the lake. Quiet, Tanya, don't cry, The ball won't sink."
Now that's all nice and warm-hearted. However, my mom told me when she was younger, a different version of the same rhyme was used.
"Our Tanya is crying loudly, Her ball fell in the lake. Quiet, Tanya, don't cry, It's the neighbour's and not ours."
And then there was another one she made up with her cousin, which we don't read to my little brother. Heheheh.
"Our Tanya is crying loudly, Her ball fell in the lake. They found the ball immediately, And they're still searching for Tanya."
By the way, all of them rhyme. -snerk- Apparently the second last one was extremely popular with children in the 1970's, and I have no doubt that the kids probably twisted other rhymes in a similar fashion ^^. To be honest, I don't think rhymes are meant to scare children or send negative messages if they are negative in the first place, like the one I mentioned above. It's all fun, and besides, I don't think little children will dissect rhymes to figure out their meanings anyway. ^^
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Post by Cow-winkle on Jul 20, 2011 21:13:13 GMT -5
This reminds me of the discussion regarding Disney movies and such and what messages they send to children (especially girls). I've never known anyone that truly grew up adversely affected by either a nursery rhyme or one of those movies. Also, anyone want to bring up the actual violet translation of Allouette anyway? it's about actually plucking a bird for dinner. Wikipedia has a brief translation. Alouette is easily in my top 20 favourite French songs about plucking birds.
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Post by Crystal on Jul 20, 2011 23:10:25 GMT -5
Excuse me? As soon as I knew better, I wasn't selfish or cruel. In fact, I repeatedly vowed to myself that I never ever would be ever again. And I was a unique case in that I never said anything that was really insulting, except I once told a twin that he wasn't my favorite of the brothers, and Mom told me that wasn't very nice. Never said it again. Sae, Crystal was not saying that you were selfish and cruel. She was saying children in general have the tendency to be very self-involved and unintentionally mean without realizing it. All part of being immature, which all kids are when they're little. No need to get up in arms over it. It has nothing to do with you, nor whether you perceived yourself to be cruel as a child. Naw, it's all good. I think Sae was just using herself as an example? =) However, as to my point, it was what Carrie said. It doesn't show up in the same way in all kids, but I very clearly remember sulking the whole way home in the car because my mom was tired and wouldn't stop to buy me fried chicken. We do expect immaturity from children, and we love them very much, but children are often quite cruel in their thoughts and expressions simply because they don't know any better. Heck, even now I'm still often quite cruel in my thoughts and expressions, and I do know better. Or sometimes I don't, because I don't think the same way as other people and what wouldn't hurt me might hurt them. This happens really often. But anyway, my point is that shielding kids from ugliness doesn't really help. You obviously don't want to dump a whole truck on them, but they're a lot hardier than we give them credit for.
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Post by Gav on Jul 21, 2011 0:14:30 GMT -5
I doubt anyone became violent because they grew up watching Tom and Jerry (which arguably had some pretty violent things inside). xD Kids are smarter than we give them credit for.
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