Education Begins At Home (Sonnet CXXVII)

Education Begins At Home
Sonnet cxxvii

"I can tell on the first day of school whose mothers read to them as a child."  
- Nancy Williams Barber, veteran First-Grade Teacher

Nursery Rhymes before the child can talk;
Fairy Tales before the child can read:
The mind thus crawls before it learns to walk.
To harvest fruit, you have to plant the seed.
Not that we leave the rhymes or tales behind;
We see more in them as the years go by.
But they were what made possible a mind
That could be truly wise, not merely sly.
So let us never cease to sing the praises
Of Hansel, Gretel, and of Mother Goose:
The magic in the cadences and phrases
Brought straight by Hermes from the throne of Zeus.
We ask: What do they teach them in those schools?
Not much, unless at home we hone the tools.

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