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From: features@ihuxf.UUCP (aMAZon)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.singles
Subject: Re: Songs, indoctrination
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Date: Tue, 11-Feb-86 16:15:56 EST
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Posted: Tue Feb 11 16:15:56 1986
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Diane Holt writes:
> Anyway, a few thoughts on specific topics:
... 
> 1. RE: "The `moon' Joke". [It brought to mind a song from school.]
> The thing I found most interesting about it,
> however, was that it reminded me of a song we used to sing during "music
> hour" in elementary school called "Reuben, Reuben". This was a
> girls'-part/boys'-part song. It was a "traditional" folk song (let's hope
> the tradition has died out). The first verse for the girls went like this:
> 
> 	       "Reuben, Reuben, I've been thinking
> 		what a grand world this would be
> 		if the men were all transported
> 		far beyond the Northern Sea."
> 
> Sorry, I don't remember the rest, or the boys' response (maybe there's a
> folk-music musicologist out there?), but I seem to remember it being the
> notion that if they (the men) were (all transported), what good swimmers
> women would be. Real pleasant little diddy, yes?  We sang this song
> happily week after week.  With that kind of indoctrination, is it any
> wonder that we sometimes fall back onto the notion of "Wouldn't the world
> be a nicer place if it was just filled with reasonable, loving women
> instead of those nasty, irrational, men?" 

Ah, memories.  This brought back one that I learned at Girl Scout 
camp:
	...My father wants me wed
	Or at least that's what he said.
	And I told him that I will
	When the rivers run uphill
	When the fish begin to fly
	Or the day before I die.
	
What does *that* say about independence, self-reliance, and the
institution of marriage?

Anyone ready for a discussion on the deeper meanings of kids' songs,
stories, and things like jump-rope rhymes?
-- 

aMAZon @ AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL; ihnp4!ihuxf!features
					 *open to possibilities*