Nursery rhymes more violent than TV

[Almeria]

story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=856&ncid=856&e=3&u=/nm/20041118/od_uk_nm/oukoe_health_britain_violence

LONDON (Reuters) - Children’s nursery rhymes contain 10 times more violence than television shows broadcast before the 9 p.m. “watershed” after which more adult content can be shown, researchers say.

“You would hear about 10 times more violence if you listened to an hour of nursery rhymes than if you watched television for an hour before 9 o’clock on an average day,” said Dr Adam Fox of St Mary’s Hospital in London.

He and his colleagues compared violence in 25 popular nursery rhymes like “Jack and Jill” and “Simple Simon” and in television programmes on the five main television channels over a two-week period by using data from Ofcom, the independent regulator for the communications industry.

There were 1,045 episodes of violence on television over the two weeks. In an hour of viewing there were nearly five disturbing scenes, compared to more than 52 while listening to nursery rhymes for the same period.

Although 44 percent of nursery rhymes contained violence, compared to half the television shows, the researchers said the levels of accidental and aggressive violence were twice as high in the children’s tales.

Nearly 75 percent of violence on television was implied but it dropped to 44 percent in nursery rhymes, the researchers said in Thursday’s The Archives of Disease in Childhood.

Fox admitted that the approach to the study was tongue in cheek but he said it showed that a complex phenomena like an increase in violence in children cannot be blamed simply on watching too much television.

In England and Wales about 10 percent of all crimes are committed by school-age children.

“Laying the blame solely on television is simplistic and may divert attention from vastly more complex societal problems,” Fox and his colleagues said.

Even if the study was tounge in cheek, I’d have to agree. I do illustration and artwork, and I went looking for a good nursery rhyme to illustrate for my nephew. Readng these as an adult, knowing the history behind some of them, I couldn’t do a single one! They were all violent–either directly in the text, or in their origins. I’m interested in hearing what you all think about this.

 

[ThyKingdomCome]

Well, I see that point. However, there is a difference between hearing “Jack fell down and broke his crown” and seeing the bloody crown up close and gory on CSI. I think the beauty of a lot of nursery rhymes is that they cover realities of life in a non-threatening way. Especially if the illustrations are not too specific, the child is able to form whatever picture he can handle inside his head to go along with the words he’s hearing. This seems so much “safer” (emotionally speaking) than having a gory picture imposed on you whether or not you are mature enough to handle it.

The other thing about many nursery rhymes and children’s classics is that they teach the truths of life accurately, and therefore help the child learn how to view the world in a good and moral way. I can’t say the same of tv, when violence is often justified or the lines between good and evil are blurred.

On the other hand, there are some “children’s classics” (I don’t know if it’s nursery rhymes or fairy tales or both) that I think would be disturbing to my preschooler. In fact, I remember being really disturbed by The Little Mermaid (the original story - a true classic with a moral message) when I was probably 10 or so. So I don’t think we can just give an automatic ok to something just because it is a nursery rhyme or a “classic.”

 

[The_Hidden_Life]

Give me Mother Goose anyday, or Bros. Grimm, etc. Violence in nursery stories is usually violence set in its proper place in the moral universe. Good triumphs in the end and the bad guys are punished. (Andersen is for older children and adults really.)

Rarely do you hear nursery rhymes about the wrenching dilemma of a woman who has been on the Maury Povich show five times convinced that the man sitting across from her was the father of her baby only to find out for the fifth time that DNA proves her wrong and then they devolve into the predictable fistfight in front of a cheering audience! Will she come back a sixth time with yet another ex-lover in hopes of finding her baby’s father? Please.

Give my children Jack the Giant-Killer, dubiously moral as he is, with all the sound effects and dramatization you can muster, but spare me and mine from daytime TV!

 

[khkhk]

Well, I’m not suprised…just look at the song “Ring Aroung a Rosy” It’s about diseases and then “ashes, ashes we all fall down”…doesn’t sound very nice to me. Burning up of a fever and dying??? Just look at the full song! It’s digusting. Kinda like “Loo, Loo Skip to My Loo” (or however you spell it) The real meaning is a boy from England sing to a girl, come to my “loo” loo or however you spell it is “bathroom” in England so…:tsktsk:

 

[Almeria]

Even yuckier–the ashes are referring to cremation. And Georgie Porgie is a nobleman who was very promiscuious. He “ran away” when the boys came out to play because otherwise they would have beaten him up or killed him. I’m not reading those to my kids!

 

[BLB_Oregon]

ThyKingdomCome:

Well, I see that point. However, there is a difference between hearing “Jack fell down and broke his crown” and seeing the bloody crown up close and gory on CSI. I think the beauty of a lot of nursery rhymes is that they cover realities of life in a non-threatening way. Especially if the illustrations are not too specific, the child is able to form whatever picture he can handle inside his head to go along with the words he’s hearing. This seems so much “safer” (emotionally speaking) than having a gory picture imposed on you whether or not you are mature enough to handle it.

Yes… when the goriness is outside of your experience, you just chalk it up to being nonsense or exaggeration. It lets the difficult truths of life introduce themselves more slowly, and as you are ready to hear them.

When people talk about pedophilia and all that goes on “these days”, I point out that parents used to tell their kids scary stories about friendly-seeming people living in candy houses for a reason. You could get the idea across in a way that way interesting and educational but not graphic. The child didn’t even know what they were being taught. (I would wager that sometimes the* parents* didn’t even grasp it.) The chat-room camaraderie must make it worse now, but these diseased minds have been skulking around for a long time, doing the unspeakable.

Have you ever noticed, by the way, that the mother is always taken out of the picture in heroic adventure fairy tales? That is because it is a good plot device to let a child imagine being put in control of their own fate *without *glorifying the idea of running away from home or breaking the rules of safe behavior or imagining that a good mom would ever abandon her child.

Well, that and about 1/3 of women used to die in childbirth. You can’t shield kids from such a pervasive fact of life.

 

[rayne89]

How 'bout this one?
Goosey goosey gander where shall I wander,

Upstairs, downstairs and in my lady’s chamber,

There I met an old man who wouldn’t say his prayers,

I took him by the left leg and threw him down the stairs.

My daughter had this is one of her books and went “Mom, geeze that’s mean.”

This is an intepretation of it I found online
“Goosey Goosey Gander” is a nursery rhyme that is believed to have dated back to the 16th century. Its lyrics are designed to attract any child’s attention. The poem refers to catholic priests who hid in “Priest Holes” (secret room to hide from Protestants). If the priest was caught, he along with the family they were staying with was executed.

“Upstairs, downstairs” refers to the hunt for the priest. “Ladies chamber” was a room that belonged to a highborn lady. The old “man” is the priest. The phrase “Say his prayers,” means exactly what it says. “Left foot,” means that he is not openly admitting that they are Catholics. The moral in Goosey Goosey Gander’s lyrics imply that something unpleasant would surely happen to anyone failing to say their prayers correctly - meaning the Protestant Prayers, said in English as opposed to Catholic prayers which were said in Latin!

 

[Edwin1961]

Jack be nimble,
Jack be quick,
Jack jumped over the candlestick :bigyikes:

VERY dangerous! Just wondered how many kids in history actually tried this. How many houses burned down? How many burn emergencies were there?

Peter, Peter pumpkine eater.
Had a wife and couldn’t keep her.
Put her in a pumpkin shell,
there he kept her very well .

Sounds kind of cruel to put away one’s wife.
I guess Peter couldn’t control her. He shut her up, more ways than one.

Go with God!
Edwin

 

[Christian4life]

I don’t sing rock-a-bye baby to my daughter anymore. One time I was singing to it and I actually thought about what I was saying.

When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall, and down will come baby cradle in all

Doesn’t exactly put nice images in my mind. I made up my own lyrics to it.

Now I sing hush little baby don’t say a word, momma’s gonna buy you a mockingbird and “all the pretty little horses”

Materialistic, but less cruel.

I love nursery ryhmes.

 

[Gwyn]

On the rock-a-bye baby, I always changed it to

Rock-a-bye baby, on the tree top.
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock.
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall.
And Mummy will catch you cradle and all.

 

[jess7396]

“How I missed her, how I missed her, how I missed my Clemintine, then I kissed her little sister and forgot my Clemintine”.

“The gander is mourning, the gander is mourning, the gander is mourning b/c his wife is dead.”

I actually was shocked listening to certain nursery rhymes as an adult.

My daughter used to cry when she heard Brahm’s lullaby, and my son cries when he hears “Danny boy” (ok that’s not a nursery rhyme).