A is for 'Anyone else remember how we learned the alphabet?'

Quite likely not. While many of us might have memories of the stories told or tools used, today we, that is those in the academic world, focus more on complex ideas rather than the components of those ideas. It is no different outside academia. Past grade school, one no longer looks at each letter in a word, rather he treats the word as an individual object. Spending too much time on a single word, either looking at the letters or reproducing the sounds they make, will make me doubt my knowledge and often cause me to err. Try saying 'orange' a bunch of times, you will see what I mean.

Still though, looking at letters may give us insight to the basis of our knowledge, or so argues Crain in "The Republic of ABC: Alphabetizing Americans, 1750-1850." Crain relates the history of the alphabet and eventually arrives at a summary of the three forms alphabets have taken: the swallow alphabet, the body alphabet, and the worldly alphabet. The last and most recent make up the education received by children from the 19th century on. Worldly alphabets connect letters to seemingly random words, each that start with the letter in question - 'A is for Apple,' or some other similar word. In my personal case, 'Aardvark' was used. My memory serves only to recall the alphabet as entirely animal. Yet, while children enjoy animals, whether cartoon or photographic, what would happen with different subjects? The question asked searches for what might happen if in a song or rhyme a different word was substituted. Would the meaning change?

Well, yea.

I don't mean to be trite, certainly with so much buildup, but come on. Our knowledge of the world does not spring from some magical location between a teacher and student. There is no spell which imbues knowledge sans ideology. Fortunately I was never scarred by my animal alphabet (although I did question X-ray Fish as somewhat.... forced). Unfortunately, many children do have preconceived notions imbued through iconography.

One of the most succinct examples I can come up with would be an explanation of how, as Crain argues (less succinctly), letters in an alphabet are not only in the words that are chosen as representation, but also are the beginning of all words. Letters are universal, there is no word out there that does not start with a part of your alphabet. Once you understand the word represented, it can be a cornerstone to your knowledge; a partial lens to the information you will come to grasp.

Fortunately, complex or controversial ideas rarely fit into current day education of the alphabet. A child should be expected to understand the second half of 'A is for Apple,' even if not immediately. Apples are consistently found in storied, much like a Bear, or Cat, or Dog. H would more likely stand for Horse than Homosexual, since horses are considered appropriate content for children. Arguments of political correctness are beyond the scope of this post, but put simply 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' is why 'Horse' stays in while 'Homosexual' is probably not going to make the cut.