Nursery rhymes unpopular among young parents: Survey

Daily Telegraph, the United Kingdom newspaper reported that the traditional nursery rhymes have become so unpopular with parents now that they are almost on the verge of extinction. The report is based on a survey by an NGO called 'Booktrust'.

CJ: Dr. Lalit kishore

Tue, Nov 03, 2009 09:48:21 IST

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UK News :

ACCORDING TO the United Kingdom’s Daily Telegraph, the traditional nursery rhymes have become so unpopular with parents now that they are almost on the verge of extinction. The report is based on a survey of 2500 people by a non-profit organisation called ‘Booktrust’.

Some of the highlights of the survey are as follows:

Almost two-thirds of parents do not regularly read nursery rhymes to their children.
About a quarter has never read one to their children.
One-third of the young parents–below the age of 24-thought nursery rhymes were too old-fashioned.
About one-fifth of young parents said they avoided nursery rhymes because they did not believe they had any educational value.
Fifty-two per cent of men knew the rhyme ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ as compared to 83 per cent of women.

The survey revealed that ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ is Britain's most popular nursery rhyme, followed by ‘Incey Wincey Spider’, ‘Round and Round in the Garden’, ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ and ‘The Grand Old Duke of York’.

Another fact brought out by the survey was that the least popular nursery rhymes were ‘A Hedgehog is Very Prickly’, ‘Ride a Cock Horse’ and ‘Wee Willie Winkie’, all of which are illegal to read to minors under the Obscenity Act.

My take on the English rhymes is that for the Indian situation, they are too wordy for our kids; they lack values, many have a gender bias and are non-pedagogic.

Many pedagogues now feel and my own experiences validate that the idea of nursery rhymes was relevant to the extent that should build children’s vocabulary and their content should be limited up to eight lines and they be value neutral.

Unfortunately, some the rhymes rejected and banned in the UK are found in the Indian books and schools are still using those rhymes as a part of their curriculum.

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