Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
A.
Background
of the Study
Nursery rhymes, as we know today, serve as
a teaching method of parents and teachers towards their children and students. They
usually have catchy tunes and lyrics that can be easily memorized by toddlers. They
usually have an animal or an inanimate object as its main character, in order
for children to easily remember them, and whenever it uses a person as its main
character, their names would be really simple like: “Mary” or “Jack”. It is
really easy to gain access to different nursery rhymes around the world; aside
from having a widespread variety of choices that can be found in various
websites in the internet, there is also a numerous number of nursery rhyme
books that can be purchased in different bookstores in the country.
Nursery rhymes teach
children a lot of things. They are also a very vital part of a child’s learning
experience in toddler and pre-school They are used to teach kids about
literacy, patterns, alliteration, tone, and thyrhmn in a fun and exciting way,
in order for the children to be stay interested while they learn. In some
places, people have different use of nursery rhymes. Some are used to make the
children fall asleep, others to teach them lessons and good values, some teach
them as part of their history of culture and others to scare them so that they
would not do anything bad. But whatever nursery rhymes that may be, and
wherever it originated, there is always a hidden meaning to each and every one
of them.
“All cultures have nursery rhymes. They are
small rhythmic poems recited or read to very little children, almost from
babyhood. Their origins are often very old. Some of them were originally
lampoons of royal and political events of the day. They were what children
heard around them, almost like popular music today. They are a way to
teach children many things. People who cannot read and write must remember all
necessary knowledge. In man’s history, before widespread literacy, people
passed history and knowledge to their children in stories and song. The rich
and colourful images in stories and song helped children to remember and retain
useful information and helped them to learn, from other people’s experience,
the things that they would need for adult life and to remember their origins,
genealogy, and history.” (Maria Collins)”
Nowadays, I observed
the almost every child knows how to sing nursery rhymes. Some of the most
popular ones are: “Jack and Jill”, “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and “Humpty
Dumpty”. Aside from being easy to remember, some of these also have actions
that go together with the song that makes it more interesting. Before they have
ever watched cartoons and played with toys, one of the first things a child has
learn to do was to sing or to dance to the tunes of nursery rhymes their
parents teach them.
However, as I have
been researching, I have found out that almost all of the nursery rhymes we
know today have a dark origin. Most of these rhymes come from Europe,
particularly in England. They expose the scandals and controversies done by
their nobles. The townspeople usually gossip about this, but since they are
aware that they can be prosecuted but directly blaspheming the monarchs above
then, they use rhymes to convey the message instead.
"Many of the
nursery rhymes that we have read to our children have their origins in
British history. Rhymes were written for many different reasons. Some rhymes
were written to honor a particular local event that has since been forgotten,
while others were written to express feelings of love. Rhymes were also used to
hide real meanings, such as when someone wanted to express displeasure
toward the government or the sovereign without being executed! Another reason
for rhymes is that they’re easy to remember, and therefore could be spread by
word-of-mouth—an essential feature for a large population of people who
could not read or write.” (Natalie Kidd)
Historians say that these nursery
rhymes, as we know today, had been secret messages that were used against the
nobles of renowned houses. They revealed the truth about certain royals who had
committed adultery against their spouses, vile and cruel deeds of a certain
queen, etcetera. They also reveal the truth of how rotten their kingdom is. In
the past, the townspeople were not allowed to say bad things or rumors about
the people in authority. If they did, they would either be imprisoned or worse-
killed. Even if they knew the despicable deeds of the noblemen who ruled over
them the people did not have a right to say a word. They did not have the
freedom of speech. But those townspeople and even the church did not want to
keep silent, that is why they devised a way for them to spread the message to
everyone, without the hierarchy to know what was really going on. They used
nursery rhymes to pass the paper under the table. And in reality, nursery
rhymes were not meant to be innocent kid’s music in the first place.
A.
Statement
of the Problem
This study aims to answer the question:
1) Would
we still want to teach children nursery rhymes after knowing the truth about
them?
B.
Significance
of the Study
Parents and Teachers. This
research paper would help parents and teachers learn more about the real
meaning behind the nursery rhymes and their origin before they are they teach
them to the children and students. It will also help them explain to the
youngsters what truth lies behind the songs they are singing. Aside from that
they can also assess whether a certain rhyme is suitable to be taught to child,
and what effects it will bring to the psychological mind of the student.
Teenagers. Knowledge
of the study will enable the teenagers to know the real meaning behind the
rhymes they loved to sing as children. They will also know the mysteries that
lie behind every line of the song, as well as their origin and background.
Writers. This
study can help a writer’s imagination, because knowing the real meaning behind
a seemly innocent nursery rhyme gives a new meaning to literature. Weather good
or bad, it can also be a gate way for new ideas and stories that can be written
down in the future.
C.
Scope
and Delimitation
This study focuses on the real meaning
behind different nursery rhymes as well as their effects on the lives of
children. Their backgrounds and origins have also been considered, since they
are vital for the research.
This study does not cover other field aside
from the ones mentioned above due to the lack of time, and irrelevance to the
focus of the study itself. Unpopular nursery rhymes coming from different
countries have also been considered, however; they will not be of main focus.
D.
Materials
and Methods
This
research uses a descriptive method since the researchers aim to describe and
discuss the different origins of nursery rhymes and if they are still suitable
to be taught even though they have these dark meaning behind them. The method
used was gathering factual data, analyzing and exploiting the data gathered.
E.
Definitions
of Terms
Nursery Rhyme. A simple traditional song or poem for
children.
Lyrics. A lyric poem or verse.
Inanimate. Not alive, esp. not in the manner of
animals and humans. Showing no sign of
life; lifeless.
Blasphemy. The act or offense of speaking
sacrilegiously about God or sacred things; profane talk.
Genealogy. A line of descent traced continuously from an ancestor:
"combing through the birth records and genealogies". The study and
tracing of lines of descent or development.
Chapter 2
DISCUSSION
Would we still want to teach children
nursery rhymes after knowing the truth about them?
Origin and History of
Popular Nursery Rhymes
In this segment, the researcher will discuss the different
origins of some popular nursery rhymes like “Jack and Jill” and “Ring Around The
Rosie”.
"Jack and Jill went up the hill,
To fetch a pail of water,
Jack fell down, and broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after"
Jack and Jill is one
of the most common nursery rhymes that children know of. It tells a short story
of a boy and a girl who went up the hill to fetch a pail of water,
but surprisingly, the boy fell down for some reason, and the girl
came tumbling after.
The nursery rhyme as it is, seems very
cliché, however, there is a deeper and darker meaning that lies behind it.
King Louis XVI was a really cruel king. From the
moment he was crowned, France's economy shot downwards, the crops died one by
one and the prices of the food and bread rapidly went up. The
livestock of many merchants went bankrupt and many people were dying of hunger.
No one was happy about the state of their county at that time. To top it all
off, Louis married an Austrian empress named Maria Antoinette. Most
of the people in the 1700's were xenophobes (xenophobe- a person that has an
intense irrational dislike or fear towards anyone who is not or their kind; racist),
and they blamed Marie as the cause of all their problems.
Louis did not know how to handle the state of his country at the
time so he decided to assemble the States-General. This is a national assembly
that is represented by three "estates" of the French people. These
are: the nobles, the clergy, and the common folk. The States- General had not
been assembled since 1641, and the 'commoners' used this opportunity and
declared themselves as the "National Assembly", igniting the French Revolution.
"Ring-a-round the rosie,
A pocket full of posies,
Ashes! Ashes!
We all fall down"
Ring-a-round the
Rosie is a usual game young children (most especially young girls) play.
Everyone would hold hands together, and then they will turn around and around
and sing the song until they all fall down and lie on the grass. It is
somewhat similar to the Tagalog rhyme "Bubuka ang
Bulaklak". To a child this song seems to be a ridiculous pass time for her
and her friends to play, but in reality, this song has a deeper and darker
meaning.
It said that this nursery rhyme is actually a
song involving the Black Plague (also known as the Bubonic Plague) that dates
back in 1665 or even way before the first outbreak in England that was in the
1300's. Back in the olden days, the people did not know what caused that
wide-spread epidemic.
"In 1563, in London alone, over
20,000 people died of the disease. The Elizabethan City of London was
filthy. Its population was growing continuously with poor people moving from
the country to London in search of work. There was a total lack of a structured sewage system in Elizabethan
London. All of the waste was just dumped into the River Thames. The River
Thames is a tidal river and, as such, it would have acted like a natural sewer.
But even so terrible epidemics of Black Death ( Bubonic Plague ) during
the Elizabethan period still occurred. The spread was aided by the
River Thames and its boats which were used as the major form of transport in
London. The London streets were dark, narrow and dangerous and slow to travel
through. Everyone used the river to move about and each
London Elizabethan would have come into contact with the everyday
presence of the dirt and the rats; a perfect vehicle for ensuring the spread of
the disease in London. (Prove Oxford)"
Factors
that influence nursery as a teaching medium
A. Popularity
Nursery rhymes have been popular for a very long time, due to
their interesting tune and the arrangement of words. Aside from that, they
bring joy and excitement to little children everywhere.
A lot of parents agree that teaching nursery rhymes to their
children make them more active and gives a large boost to their imagination.
Some nursery even teaches children various house works and habits in an
interesting way. The rhyme “One Two, Buckle My Shoe” teaches a step by step
procedure on how to tie a shoelace, while “I’m a Little Teapot” describes what
a teapot looks like and what it does.
- Educational Value and Literacy Rate
Studies show that people who have been
exposed to nursery rhymes as children have a more creative way of thinking
rather than those who were not. Aside from that, children who recited rhymes
are said to be more intellectual and active. They will also learn a lot from
mimicking the sounds and lyrics, especially when they recite it over and over
again.
“Mother Goose rhymes can
also pave the way for a love of books. “They’re the perfect first stories for
young minds. They introduce the idea of listening from beginning to end as the
narrative develops, but they’re short, so a child doesn’t have to sit still
very long. As a child gets older, the timeline can be stretched, so you can
read longer stories with a real plot. Rhymes that invite your child’s
participation provide even more learning opportunities. When you play
pat-a-cake, for example, your baby learns to clap his hands and to recognize
his own name.” (Charles Smith, Ph.D.)
- Tradition
In some countries, it is a
tradition for them to recite nursery rhymes to their children. There are parts
of India wherein the tribe leader usually recites rhymes to the youngsters for
them to subconsciously be aware of the history of their clan and the epic tales
of their tribesmen that lived long before they did. There are times that they
use nursery rhymes to disseminate information to each other, so that the people
who are outside their circle wouldn’t understand what they are talking about.
Traditional Nursery Rhymes
have been passed down generation from generation and has been with us for a
very long time. Like the lullabies our mothers use to put us to sleep, nursery
rhymes also have an impact in our lives and the way we are growing up.
Different nursery rhymes from different places have their own special meanings
behind them. It has always been part of our tradition and it will continue to
be passed down to the generations yet to come.
Researcher’s
Inference
The researcher
has come up with an inference, that nursery rhymes are vital for the education
of children because they enhance the child’s ability to comprehend different
words and understand the difference of rhyming words and non rhyming words.
Rhymes also improve the children’s musical intellect.
Chapter 3
SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS
AND RECOMMENDATIONS
SUMMARY:
This paper is attempted to determine
whether or not nursery rhymes should still be taught to children despite
knowing about the real meaning behind them.
The research designed that
was used in this study is called a “descriptive research method” in which data
from different sources (like books and articles) were used to answer the
research question. The research findings are the following:
1) Most of the popular nursery rhymes we know today actually
have dark origins and gruesome histories that are not suitable to young
children.
2) Not all the nursery rhymes we know have a hidden meaning.
Some are just created for entertainment.
3) Nursery rhymes are able to teach children how to remember
word formations and also make them adept in reading and listening to stories
from the start to the end. They also teach motor skills are able to make
children musically inclined.
4) Teachers agree that the students who have been exposed with
nursery rhymes are more active than those who weren’t.
5) The most popular nursery rhymes were said to be created by
Mother Goose and had been published in the 18th century.
CONCLUSIONS:
Based on the findings of
the study, the following conclusions were drawn.
1) Since not all of the nursery rhyme have a dark origin, it is
still advisable for parents and teachers to expose the children with these
rhymes, especially because they teach them a lot of skills that they are going
to use as they grow older.
RECCOMENDATIONS:
1) Before a parent or teacher teaches a new rhymes to the
student it is better to study them first so that when the child is confused by
the real meaning behind certain rhyme, they can explain it properly to them.
2) When exposing a child to a nursery rhyme one must consider
what the child would learn in the rhyme that will be taught to him.
References:
- Book
Kidd, N. (2012). The Hidden History of Nursery Rhymes
Collins, M. (2007) Nursery Rhymes and Their Culture
Oxford, P. (2008) Ring Around The Rosie: Bubonic Plague
Smith, C. (2011) Effects of Mother Goose Rhymes
- Electronic Media
“Introduction to nursery rhymes” Retrieved: August 14,
2013 from:http://www.rhymes.org.uk/nursery-rhyme.htm
“Jack and Jill” Retrieved: August 14, 2013 from: http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com
“Why nursery rhymes are popular” from: http://www.nurseryrhymesonline.com
