Well, if I were into mind-reading, I would speculate that somebody considered a module that defined the parent classes of the current module to be more of a pragma-type-thingy than not (in the generally hand-waving spirit that seems to be popular in the Perl world). And if I were a computer scientist or otherwise deeply versed in the historical useage of the term "pragma" in a programming context, I might add some commentary on the wisdom of this choice. As I can claim none of these accomplishments, I will merely point to the words "in general" and note that I was paraphrasing perlmod, and cheerfully punt away the responsibility for anything that irks you about this arguable inconsistency onto more august shoulders than mine.