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.