I know of no static/non-interpretted language that would allow a parent class to call a child’s static method like what I understand you’re saying. It’s unfortunate, but true. It is possible in both Ruby and Perl as these languages determine methods at runtime, and so when you call a method, you’re just sending a “named message” off to “something” and if it responds, it responds. For Ruby and Perl, classes (modules) are just ways to inherit some code, but they don’t really impose any structure on the language, and the languages are naturally pretty free.