In George Orwell’s 1984, one of Winston Smith’s depressing jobs at the Ministry of Truth is to rewrite historical documents to make them fit with party orthodoxy. He destroys evidence of problematic past events, amends newspaper articles and deletes from the historical record any people who have since been identified by the party as “unpersons”. A similar process was at work in Britain in 2009, only it isn’t the history books that are being rearranged and rewritten by the Big Brothers of Britain’s ruling regime; it is nursery rhymes.
No nursery rhyme is safe in modern-day Britain. At any moment they could be snapped up by faceless bureaucrats and transformed from entertaining little songs into party-approved expressions of acceptable beliefs and behaviour. Last week it was reported that the old classic What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor? has been amended to remove all references to “drunkenness” and “sailors”. The government-funded charity Bookstart has published a new version titled What Shall We Do With The Grumpy Pirate? It contains such inoffensive lines as “tickle him till he starts to giggle, early in the morning”.
This used to be the most gloriously un-PC of nursery rhymes, providing children with a mischievous thrill as they sang lines such as: “make him walk the plank and swim at sea”; “put him in the pickle barrel till he’s sober”; “stick him in a bag and beat him senseless”; “put him in the crow’s nest and watch him fall down” and my particular favourite, “shave his belly with a rusty razor”. Not any more. In the new version, all children get to do with the “grumpy pirate” is “do a little jig and make him smile”. Well, we can’t have kids singing about putting drunk people in bags and barrels and beating them with sticks, can we? As for the classic old line “put him in the back of the paddy wagon”, no doubt that would be frowned upon as an expression of “anti-Irish racism” these days.
Bookstart insists that this isn’t about political correctness. It claims it rewrote the rhyme simply to make it fit with the pirate theme, which is apparently popular among children today. Who is it trying to kid? Britain’s ruling Labour Party, as well as the British police, media and various think-tanks, are myopically obsessed with the problem of alcohol abuse among apparently impressionable young people. They’re forever hectoring pubs to ban happy hours and have introduced new restrictions on alcohol advertising, all in the name of keeping young people away from the Bastard Bottle. Rewriting a rhyme that encourages even three-year-olds to see drunkenness as a sing-a-long hoot fits perfectly with the Ruling Party’s anti-alcohol drive.
This isn’t the first time a nursery rhyme has been rehashed to suit contemporary orthodoxies. In 2006, it was revealed that nurseries in Oxfordshire, England, were teaching children the song Baa Baa, Rainbow Sheep. Yes, apparently it is offensive to refer to a sheep as “black”. An education official in Oxfordshire confirmed: “we have taken the equal opportunities approach to everything we do”. Which means that “black” must be replaced with “rainbow”, even if it doesn’t scan (trying singing it to yourself) or make any sense to children (when are they likely to see a “rainbow sheep”?)
Other nurseries in Britain have changed the ending of Humpty Dumpty to avoid upsetting children, and have removed the word “dwarfs” from the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (presumably it is now called Snow White and the Seven Vertically Challenged Individuals). In 2004, a study by the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children found that nursery rhymes exposed children to levels of violence that they would never be allowed to witness on kids’ TV. For example, Humpty Dumpty features “nasty head injuries from fall”; Jack and Jill features “double hillside fall tragedy”; Six In A Bed involves “repeated bedtime tumbles”. The report found that where there are about “five violent scenes per hour” on TV, there are more than 52 per hour of listening to nursery rhymes. Although this study was tongue-in-cheek (it’s hard to tell what is serious and what isn’t these days), it gave rise to a real debate about violence in nursery rhymes.
The most bizarre children’s story controversy occurred last year when a book based on The Three Little Pigs was turned down by a government agency awards panel because its subject matter — pigs — might offend Muslims. The judges warned that “the use of pigs raises cultural issues”. The judges also criticised the story, titled The Three Little Cowboy Builders, for being offensive to builders. This shows the extent to which British officialdom now practices pre-emptive, just-in-case censorship. No Muslim groups complained about The Three Little Pigs; officials simply presumed that they would be offended. The idea that certain things are “unacceptable” — whether it’s drunken sailors, little piggies, or any mention of dwarfs — comes from our uber-sensitive, patronising elite rather than from mums, dads or children in the real, normal world.
The war on nursery rhymes, the Ministry of Truth-style approach to rearranging kids’ ditties to make them more politically and socially acceptable, exposes the British elite’s deep desire to shape our outlook on the world, and force us to conform, at the very earliest opportunity. What should we do with a rhyme rewriter? Slap him around and call him Suzie.
This is merely a small symptom of a massive social engineering project that ranges from automatic criminalisation of young people (no yoof loitering allowed, serious offence status for relatively normal and only minorly antisocial teenage actions) to regulation and even criminalisation of normal behaviour that leads to social cohension (stopping at an accident scene, helping a lost child, doing just about any now ‘regulated’ behaviour off your own bat just for the general good of your neighbourhood).
Add to that removal of basic privacy rights (cameras even looking into your house from the street; databases of all children in the UK, together with random commentary from social workers, doctors, teachers, etc. which effectively is legally relevant but unchecked; work-related databases not only tolerated but encouraged (together with associated blacklisting); increasingly arbitrary powers of arrest and detention; huge snooping database containing basic details of every phone and email message sent within, to and from the UK; projects like Phorm to ‘serve targeted ads’ (snoop?) on almost all internet users; comprehensive ID card scheme involving collection and retention of biometric data including fingerprinting and DNA…..I could go on.
Funnily enough though, you’d think they’d leave the rhymes alone…it just makes everything else so…obvious. But perhaps it’s just part of a system that seeks to alienate children from their families in order that the State, that great wondrous invention, and the people in charge of it become the effective parents. After all, they are smarter and cleverer and just more good than we normal subhumans, no?
Failures of the state to perform the duties it already has are merely turned round into large egg-beaters to whip up public opinion into a frenzy about the need for still more regulation, still less rights for individuals – instead of being exposed as the abject failure to implement existing policy and treated as such.
Just been studying Conspiracy Theories 101. Can you tell?
Since the wolf wasn’t a Muslim, why should the Muslims object?
So what about the “old women who lived in a shoe” with her multiple offspring. If I recall correctly she “gave then broth without any bread, whipped them all soundly and put them to bed”. Encouraging complacency over child abuse?
Or See Saw Marjory Door (spelling?). Where poor little Johnney “shall have a new master. He shall earn but a penny a day because he can’t work any faster.” Child slavery?
A bit more problematic than rainbow sheep or little piggies?
What Kit said, with the addition that the upper classes are always shielded from experiencing the full effects of these kinds of laws. And I didn’t even need to study conspiracy theory – I just read the news and have a passing acquaintance with history.
Oh Man are we living in the real world for the last hundred or so years these nursery rhymes have been around for goodness sake. Lord help these kids when they are exposed to the real world where pigs are bacon and bacon tastes good. Should we all give up eating pork because it offends Muslims! Oh wow no more drunken sailors man i want you to tell the navy that one. Oh man and don’t break any more eggs as poor Humpty Dumpty might start a class action against you. Darn there are far more pressing problems in this world than Nursery Rhymes who are these stunted idiots that want to live in a nursery rhyme world of utopia?
Gee Kit you really make it hard to add to what you write. The only space you gave me was that you forgot to mention that some insular academic was the originator of the action.
To make any change in the UK, you need the academic to back you up. Much like here when they all say that the economy is in good health but everyone sees different. Some academic who needed government approval was happy to provide the proof needed to support the BS.
All he had to do was convince some deprived sole that the world would be a better place if we all did X and away we go.
Every second someone somewhere works diligently to control your thoughts and delve into your life.
“… teaching children the song Baa Baa, Rainbow Sheep. Yes, apparently it is offensive to refer to a sheep as “black”.
You bet it is offensive! If you recall the rhyme and the words, the context reinforces the “master/slave” relationship where the black in this case happens to be a sheep. Another term that sometimes irks me is casual seemingly innocent idiom that crops up in everyday conversation – the “black sheep of the family” represents the “strange on”, the rebel or outcast.
At the time these nursery rhymes were created, the British Empire ruled supreme. British culture spread rapidly and brought good as well as bad to distant shores. Well the world has changed and now we have a black President in the most powerful nation on earth so don’t you think its time to address some of these festering issues? The rewriting of nursery rhymes is far from Orwellian – it long overdue! Most of the nursery rhymes that you refer to in your article are non-existant in American schools. Its simply not tolerated anymore. We should do the same in South Africa.
By the way, these old nursery rhymes are not banned outright, they are just not taught in schools, so you are free to dig up some of these “original works” from your local bookstore to read to your kids at night is you choose to do so. I suspect you may not want to.
Racism and prejudice starts at an early age – first nursery rhymes, then movies, jokes etc. I think the British are wise in revamping some of the more overt examples of racism in the English language. Through American culture and the internet, English has moved swiftly to become the de-facto language of business and British longterm thinkers and visionaries are wise in wanting to maintain that momentum. Think about the all the literary awards and how many of them have been awarded to non-British writers.
Words are extremely important and should be used positively uplift humankind, not for the debasement of another group who most of the time, happen to be minorities who are voiceless and lack the wealth and political power to fight back. I do agree that sometimes the PC pendulum swings too much in one direction, but thats the nature of change isn’t it? After all English is indeed a beautiful language. Lets embrace change so we can keep this export of British culture.
Dave Harris, are you perchance careful to avoid referring to your bin-liners as “black bags”?
These killjoys ought to be flogged with 40 strong lashes of the cat o’ nine tails and then hung, drawn and quartered.
Am I allowed to think that?
……….. and was poor little me trying to make my daily omelette from he remains of Humpty Dumpty
Little realizing of course that not only had he been scrambled – but also hard boiled
Have these ‘officials’ not got something better to do?
To think that society actually pays to have these people suggests a bloated bureaucracy with superfluous individuals bereft of meaningful employ attempting to fabricate issues merely to justify their position.
@ Dave Harris
I do trust the comment is an attempt at obscure satire.
If not, is a gratuitous and patronizing devaluation of human intelligence, creativity, freedom of spirit and knowledge.
To suggest that a human being would be unable to discriminate between an idiomatic expression and the exercise of racial prejudice is indeed offensive.
The very essence of being human is the unique formation of that individual person in response to reality, and some watchdog body which presumes to know what influences should and should not constitute such reality presumes too much.
Committees and central planners are no better at planning society than they are at planning an economy.
What makes anyone think they would be any good at planning a human?
It is no coincidence that the greatest levels of prejudice and abuses of liberty occurred in regimens which attempted the institutionalization of ignorance.
Pol Pot and Josef Goebbels spring to mind.
Fortunately, such regimens were short lived, due in no small measure to the intractability of the human mind to thought policing.
Mind control has been the elusive Holy Grail of every fascist tyrant.
Britannia indeed ruled the waves at one time, and some of the more odious suggestions contained in the traditional sea shanty were doubtless followed by sea captains of olde in response to hapless inebriated sailors.
Why would anyone think children’s’ minds would be enriched by ‘watering down’ their grasp of human history?
To suggest that exposure to a nursery rhyme or any work of literature dealing directly or indirectly with the history of the burden of servitude imposed upon blacks will perpetuate negative racial stereotypes discounts the adroitness and capriciousness of the human mind.
By the way, Bark Obama is not ‘black’ as such, and even if he was, to then expect that things could, should or will change upon such basis is ascribing probabilities to an individual based upon race, i.e. racial prejudice.
History will judge Obama solely upon his presidency, not his pigment.
If he should turn out to be a truly great president, I believe Obama himself would find any allusions to ‘see what a black man can do’ the height of offensiveness and patronizing insult
@Perry Curling-Hope
“…an attempt at obscure satire.”
Actually, it was not meant to be satirical, it may shock you, but I really meant it.
Words hurt people. You may claim that they should not feel the hurt, but you cannot alter their experience.
I assert that nursery rhymes is one of the places that the seeds of racism are implanted. In America, the PC capital of the world, a concerted effort has been waged since the seventies, to rid society of the scourge of racism. It starts with protecting the innocent, our children to end the cycle of racism, so that they can grow into strong independently minded individuals who can benefit society. As I said before, the original nursery rhymes are not banned outright, they are just not part of the education institution. You as a parent are free to read these “original works” to your kids at bedtime to “enrich their minds”. Would you?
“….institutionalization of ignorance. Pol Pot and Josef Goebbels spring to mind”
Interesting mind you have. What about the apartheid, the British Empire and the havoc it wreaked on Chinese and Indian societies for HUNDREDS of years? I wonder you forgot these institutions?
“By the way, Bark Obama is not ‘black’ as such….”
Firstly, you get the name of the most powerful person on the planet wrong…its Barack Hussein Obama.
Secondly, Obama himself identifies himself culturally as a minority with African-Americans.
Thirdly, your tirade on Obama is confusing…whats your point?
I reckon the rainbow sheep were actually introduced to include the gay ones among us…
Political and Religious leaders always try to create myths and re-write history. People kill and die for those myths!
Those nursery rhymes were all sung by the population as satire on former politicians. They should not be re-written, because they are a historical record.
Much more intelligent would be to bring out a book of the rhymes and what they mean.
But I am beginning to wonder if intelligent life is not devolving under the influence of politicians!
What about going back to when politicians were not paid salaries or pensions, and it was volunteer work – like in Smuts’ wartime cabinet?
Hi Dave, thanks for the reply, what can I say?
Just for fun, you might like to look at the online version of the IAT or ‘Implicit Association Test’, which has to do with words, the concepts they represent, and how this relates to social behavior.
A brief article relating to the underlying research and a link to the tests can be found here:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2003/11/18/this-is-your-brain-on-racism-or-is-that-liberal-guilt/
The methodology and design is remarkably elegant and simple, but yields very consistent results.
I took the ‘Race (Black-White IAT)’ test, being the most germane to the topic at hand, and received some startling and unexpected results.
The research suggests there may be methodologies through which to address hatreds and destructive prejudices more effectively than attempts at merely imposing ‘political correctness’, which will and must necessarily impose upon freedom of thought and expression of the individual in one way or another.
Brendan, I find myself in he awkward position of agreeing with you on this topic. (Don’t make it a habit!)
@ Lyndall: Right on target. Well said.
@Perry Good points, well argued.
@ Dave
Brendan’s article has obviously ‘touched a nerve’ with you. I share your concern with the effects of archetypal images on children–and adults– and in that spirit, I offer these thoughts.
In language, context is all. Rather than ‘protecting’ children from their linguistic and literary heritage (including myths, fairly tales, folk tales AND nursery rhymes), the stories and references to race or any other factor could be explained in historical context as Lyndall points out.
There is also such a thing as ‘pathological innocence’ like the 20 year old double-amputee who insists on being sent back to Iraq for another tour of duty because he ‘loves’ his country. He is in love alright, with the notion of heroism and the ‘rightness’ of the cause. He is so naive he is dangerous. (Fanatics are often extreme ‘innocents’).
Nursery rhymes and fairly tales, folk tales and myths are full of cautionary wisdom. If you find something offensive in a child’s rhyme or story, talk about with your child. Children can learn to think about meaning through such discussions and thinking is far more likely to produce tolerance and acceptance than outlawing stories or Disney-fying them with an overdose of fairy dust.
Dave, you might find one of Marie-Louise von Franz’s studies of children’s stories–:”Shadow and Evil In Fairy Tales”– interesting in terms of the long-term effects on our psychological development.
Dave,
Another thought: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
From: Eleanor Roosevelt, “This Is My Story”, 1937.
Even children have the right to dissent from other people’s assessments of them. Nursery Rhymes and stories can teach them that.
@Siobhan
“Brendan’s article has obviously ‘touched a nerve’ with you”
And millions of voiceless and powerless around the world.
You can cite all the studies, pull out out-of-context quotes to explain to people all the reasons why they should not feel bad after after subjecting them to racist nursery rhymes but it just quite doesn’t work does it?
There is much we can learn from Americans on eradicating racism. Change is unstoppable. We should embrace change.