Education: Goose Dispute

Lively and perennial is the dispute between the Modernists and Fundamentalists of pedagogy over the merits and morals of the jingles which Mrs. Elizabeth Foster Vergoose of17th Century Boston sang to her large brood of moppets and which her son-in-law, one T. Fleet, published in 1719 as Songs for the Nursery or Mother Goose's Melodies for Children.

Modernists, behaviorists, say that "Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son" will teach children to steal pigs. They call "Little Jack Homer" bad-mannered. They say that "The Cow that Jumped Over the Moon" is cruelly improbable. Mrs....

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