Ring around the rosie...

What you learn online isn't always true.  How do I communicate this to my students?  Our latest question is the true behind the popular nursery rhyme associated with the Black Death, Ring Around the Rosie.  Most students have been lead to believe that this rhyme refers to the symptoms that victims experienced at the onset of the contracting the disease.  However, after close examination of the rhyme, not the disease, one finds that there was a different variation:
The original 1790 version - 
Round a ring of roses,
A bottle full of posie,
All the little girls in town,
Ring for little Josie....

or...
Round a ring of roses,
Pots full of posies,
The one who stops last.
Shall tell whom she loves best.

This would lead me to the conclusion, that due to the 130+ years that remain between the scourge of the Black Death in Europe and the publishing of this rhyme that there may not be a connection between the two.

What connections will my students make?

I felt that the lesson today really cleared up the topic of the Black Death for me.  Before today, I didn't know what it truly did, other than it being a horrid disease that spread around Europe in the Medieval Times.  I heard that it infected a third of the population.  This would mean that in our entire class, only 8 or 9 of us would still be alive.  Without even knowing what caused it, I doubt my parents would let me go to school.  Poor sanitation brought the Bubonic Plague to existence, so these days, we would all be okay, as it would not affect us.  However, in other less clean areas, such as some nations in Africa, and large, messy cities, cleanliness is something to worry over.  In Europe hundreds of years ago, the word "clean" was likely an insult.

It surprised me when I heard that fleas were common in the Middle Ages.  In this generation, if I had a flea on me, I'd be in the bath tub with my dog and a bottle of flea/tick shampoo.  It shocked me when I heard that people used to believe baths caused the Bubonic Plague.  When I was younger, my mother forced me to bathe!  If it was the other way around, and we treated the earth as badly as our bodies, I would probably be dead due to the plague.

Things that we believe right now are normal, we may find out are horribly wrong in several years.  Illnesses we have never heard of before may suddenly become even deadlier than that Black Death.  Humans may be wiped out of existence anytime due to a contamination of water or a type of disease that travels through air.  It may take hundreds of years to secure it, or it may never have a cure at all.

Why should we learn about the Black Death?

There is always the obvious answers to why we should care about the Black death. The always-present “Helping us develop immunization.” and the possible choice of “ It tells us not to make the same decision.

I took that into consideration and thought about blending the two. I came up with-

We should learn about the Black Death because when the same occurrence happens, what was the best way to deal with it and how do we squash it out for good.

You may ask how I know it will happen again. The reason I feel this way is that we are not given an antibody for this plague. Also, we are very Global Citizens. Even though it may strike in poverty, it may very quickly spread,

I figure we can analyze the  remains of this all-encompassing plague and possibly find the key root. We already know much but what is the very first point. Even before the flea. We can use the evidence of isolation to deal with the quarantine and other possible methods (Although many are ridiculous) and make the plague leave.

You may think that the idea of completely getting rid of a disease is unthinkable, it is not. Look at smallpox, the last case was over 40 years ago! Sure, it is a challenging task but not impossible.

That is why I believe that the plague is important that is what and I care.