Text: “Girls go to college to get more knowledge. Boys go to Jupiter because they’re more stupider”

Context: My childhood friend said this long forgotten phrase to me recently in a discussion about childhood rhymes. We were talking about when were we in elementary and middle school we learned a bunch of silly rhymes that didn’t make much sense but were somehow memorable. She mentioned that she remembered this phrase because it implied women are smarter than men, something she ponders frequently.

Interpretation: During our discussion, I noted that many of these rhymes we were recalling seemed to center around gender. I found this interesting because we learned and repeated these rhymes only when we were children but not as adults. The idea and societal concepts of gender are constantly changing, especially when you’re a child, so the prevalence of these rhymes seems to signify the shift from the family sphere to the school/public sphere. I think these rhymes represent a time in a child’s life when they begin to develop relationships outside of their family and look for ways to relate to their peers.