Readers of Benny's Eye on the Street - Pedantic Corner..The concerned Parent and the irresponsibility of traditional rhyme.

Here's a letter from a concerned reader. I apologise for my lack of posting of late. Due to professional commitments (I'd do this for a living but no one has offered, and I think I have a fanbase of about 10. A shocking travesty) I don't get too much time to post.

However fortunately there are still some people out there that are living in the real world.

So....




Dear Benny, 

I have been a fan of your blog for a while now and have been disappointed with the lack of action in recent months. It is an important social forum for the pedantic, the concerned and the, frankly, disappointed.

There has been an issue that has been concerning me for some time now, so I felt that you needed to be made aware and hopefully, through the power of social media we can stop yet another social menace. 

The issue at hand is the traditional children's rhyme and the messages that they contain. There are a number of children's rhymes, with which we are all familiar, that are giving dangerous messages to our children and, frankly, encouraging a social message that our faltering society could do without. 

Many of these rhymes have concerned me since I became a parent; 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' for example- The story of a little girl, so inseparable from her pet (a sheep which is odd in itself) that she breaks fundamental rules by taking it into school.

 The rhyme suggests that 'it made the children laugh and play to see a lamb at school'. Really,if we are to develop a moral society who abide by the rules and regulations that we put in place it should have said "Mary was suspended pending an investigation into why and how she was able to bring the lamb into school. The school governors found that she was in breach of school rules and the best interests of the establishment and have decided to expel her. (The lamb has been freed from its captivity and relocated to a nearby farm)".

(clearly a sheep that...But still)

Not only does this reflect a more true sense of what may happen, giving our children realistic expectations in life, but it also prepares them to become obedient citizens who have the modicum of deference that is required to prosper. I am, frankly, surprised that in the years this rhyme has been around that we haven't had a spate of animal-in-school incidents. (Admittedly, it was amusing when a dog ran into school as a kid. Do you remember the sheer excitement, like you'd never seen a dog before). 

The rhyme that concerns me the most, however, is

 'The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe'. 

Let me refresh your memories of how it goes:

"There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.
She had so many children, she didn't know what to do;
She gave them some broth without any bread;
Then whipped them all soundly and put them to bed."

There are so many problems here that it frightens me constantly. I am fairly sure that this rhyme is responsible for many of the ills in modern Britain. 

(Benny: Like this poor lad, who instead of growing up as normal 70's kids did with toy cars, due solely to that poem he didn't have any mates because he grew up playing with this ridiculous plastic shoe.

Ironically it's also made by the same company as the toy cars.

Matchbox, what are you doing? you don't see Corgi pulling this kind of shit!

Also I use 'Live and Learn' as an expression in order to better myself and others. Playing with a plastic shoe would never do that. There's no benefit to this for a lad. Playing 'shoe house'???!!

... Final gripe that PLAY BOOT font is far too much like DAS BOOT, thus de-coolifying DAS BOOT slightly which shouldn't be possible as it's cool as fuck... Awful )

Anyway, back to the letter..

Let's start with the opening line. We know that she is old- I would suggest over 50 as a pessimistic guess. What kind of society do we live in that we let the elderly in our community live 'in a shoe'?

(B: Little did the young woman who lived in a shoe know how it would end up..

Perhaps like High rise flats it was initially thought of as quite a good idea?)

Firstly you think that this makes her a mistreated person, but actually it is probably all she deserves as she clearly is the kid of despicable mother and degenerate member of society who we should not be allowing to take advantage of the welfare state on which our British community is built. The rest of the rhyme informs of us her diabolical parenting skills.

The second line- 'She had so many children, she didn't know what to do'. For a start, you make a decision as a woman to firstly go to bed with a man, and in the majority of cases plan to get pregnant. I admit that it is perfectly feasible that the first of these pregnancies may have been an accident, but I have seen numerous pictures of this woman's family and she is widely depicted as having in excess of 8 children.

If she wasn't willing to educate herself about being a mother and the best interests of the children, then she shouldn't have had so many children. After the first unwanted pregnancy she had numerous options- place the child up for adoption, ship them off to live with a more competent relative, perhaps look to move to a women's shelter or something where wider care and provisions may be provided. But not for this old, irresponsible harlet...She had at least 7 more children.

( A concerned neighbour popping round there to the shoe, back in the day)

Firstly, YOU LIVE IN A FUCKING SHOE!!!! It is not really suitable living accommodation for herself, but to put this many children in this kind of dire poverty is downright unfair and setting them up for a life of misery (assuming that they all survive to adulthood- which is unlikely in these living conditions- from the pictures it seems that the shoe doesn't have running water and I would be very surprised if the old woman provides them with reasonable medical care). 

Secondly, where is the father? Now I assume (perhaps naively) that they all have the same father. He has a responsibility to these kids too. Perhaps she is not such a faithful lover after all though and there are numerous different fathers. In this case (shame on her) she should be getting some better legal advice because these men should all be making paternal contributions. Certainly these would be of a level that she could move out of the shoe and into a house, or even flat (somewhere with windows would be a start!). 

Thirdly, where are social services? These children are numerous, living in dire poverty, malnourished (as the third line shows), being mistreated (as the fourth line shows), living without a father figure or indeed extended family network. Surely in our modern, democratic and liberal society we should be providing assistance for this family. She is not a responsible mother so take the kids away. If the kids must stay with their mother then provision, financing and home help should be provided by the state so that these kids stand a chance in life. I would be surprised if they are accessing an education, and if they are not afforded these chances to progress then they may too enter the cycle that their mother has fallen into. Who knows, in a generation we could have  all 8 of these poor little tykes living in their own shoes with multiple undernourished urchins. Who knows where this could end...

The third and fourth line are just downright shameful. They represent all that is wrong with society. These children have been through enough- They are in a single-parent, poorly-provisioned household (shoehold) and are having no assistance from outside sources at all. To give them a broth without bread and then a beating on a nightly basis?! Who is this sadist bitch! You made a decision to bring these kids into the world! If you have such an issue with them, let them go. There are millions of loving foster and adoptive families out there who will give these kids the love and care that they deserve. The time to act is now- Many of these children will already be too psychologically damaged, but we must try to offer them a better future. 

So what messages is this rhyme giving our children? 

1- It is ok to sleep around and have multiple children with no thought for their well being.

2- Motherhood should be entered without the education needed to provide said well-being for your offspring.

3- Providing the elderly with substandard living accommodation is acceptable.

4- Malnourishment and a lack of balance in a child's diet is acceptable

5- Beating children on a regular basis is an acceptable parenting technique

It is not difficult to see, when we expose our children to this kind of lesson so early in life why we have some of the wider social issues that we have in this country. We should be giving our children, simply, better advice and guidance to build a responsible and moral future. Can I suggest the following as an alternative to all parents reading this:

"There was an old woman who lived in a shoe,

She had so many children she didn't know what to do,

Social services were called by a concerned neighbour and the mother and her children have been rehoused in much more suitable accomodation. 

She is now attending parenting classes and has met a nice hardworking man called Trevor who provides for the children and has fallen easy into the role of a loving father.

 The family have managed to stay together and both parents are now working so making viable contributions to both wider society and the tax system. The children are flourishing at the prospect of a brighter future and a genuine route out of poverty. "

Thanks for listening. Hopefully this will stop this menace before it is too late. In other matters,

Why on earth of Old King Cole so merry?

Why did Jack and Jill climb that hill when they are clearly so clumsy?

 And.... why is Humpty Dumpty always shown as an egg when there is nothing said to suggest this anywhere in the poem?...

Yours Faithfully, 

A concerned parent.