Nursery rhymes and education

There have been several attempts, across the world, to revise nursery rhymes (along with fairy tales and
popular songs). Even in the late 18th century we can sometimes see how rhymes like "Little Robin Redbreast"
were cleaned up for a young audience.[30] In the late 19th century the major concern seems to have been
violence and crime, which led leading children's publishers in the United States like Jacob Abbot and Samuel
Goodrich to 'improve' Mother Goose rhymes.[31]
In the early and mid-20th centuries this was a form of bowdlerisation, concerned with some of the more violent
elements of nursery rhymes and led to the formation of organisations like the British 'Society for Nursery
Rhyme Reform'.[32] Psychoanalysts such as Bruno Bettelheim strongly criticized this revisionism, on the
grounds that it weakened their usefulness to both children and adults as ways of symbolically resolving issues
and it has been argued that revised versions may not perform the functions of catharsis for children, or allow
them to imaginatively deal with violence and danger.[33]
In the late 20th century revisionism of nursery rhymes became associated with the idea of political correctness.
Most attempts to reform nursery rhymes on this basis appear to be either very small scale, light-hearted
updating, like Felix Dennis's When Jack Sued Jill – Nursery Rhymes for Modern Times (2006), or satires
written as if from the point of view of political correctness in order to condemn reform.[34] The controversy in
Britain in 1986 over changing the language of "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep" because, it was alleged in the popular
press, it was seen as racially dubious, was apparently based only on a rewriting of the rhyme in one private
nursery, as an exercise for the children.[35]
It has been argued that nursery rhymes set to music aid in a child's development.[36][37] In the
German Kniereitvers, the child is put in mock peril, but the experience is a pleasurable one of care and support,
which over time the child comes to command for itself.[38] Research also supports the assertion that music and
rhyme increase a child's ability in spatial reasoning, which aid mathematics skills.[39]