To hate modern school assembly songs?

[MintyChapstick]

Following on from a recent thread about those bloody awful modern class photos.

When I was growing up in the 90's we used to sing religious based songs like All Things Bright and Beautiful and Who Put the Colours in the Rainbow?Now they sing bloody weird shit about school rules, one about the lunchtime queaue. A few even have raps in them! They are hideous and to be quite frank, mostly drivel. For some reason I really pine for the songs I sang as a child.

It's nothing to do with school assemblies becoming more secular either, because they have to have collective worship as part of the curriculum and still say the Lords Prayer, hear Bible stories so I don't understand why they can't sing proper old songs?

Many a chooooon out of this baby #oilinmylamp

I'm torn on this:

On the one hand I believe schools should be entirely secular and inclusive, which hymns aren't.

On the other hand hymns are awesome.

Maybe the answer is to come up with some good, well written school songs, that don't mention God...

I agree though, I loathe all these modern songs - "I'm a spring chicken" bleurgh

To be fair, When I was growing up in the 90's we used to sing religious based songs like All Things Bright and Beautiful and Who Put the Colours in the Rainbow? counts as bloody weird shit to me. Well, not All Things, but the other one definitely.

I grew up with Praise My Soul the King of Heaven and Onward Christian Soldiers. Lord of All Hopefulness and Immortal Invisible, God Only Wise. Alleluia, Sing to Jesus... and on and on.

Proper hymns with proper tunes.

Those were the days.

At our sons' state school they sing a brilliant range of music, including plenty of traditional - and quite complex - hymns.

As a humanist, my least favourite of all of them is 'Who Put the Colours in The Rainbow?' though. Awful, awful lyrics. "It surely can't be chance?" Stick with 'All Things Bright And Beautiful', for goodness' sake, if you must have the children chanting about creationism.

DH teaches an instrument privately, and he says it is a nightmare with pupils nowadays, as there are so many tunes they've never heard of. It's much easier to teach someone to play something they know already and are familiar with the tune, rhythm and words. Hardly any of them can remember any nursery rhymes at all, and they don't learn things like London's Burning, Frere Jacques or She'll be coming round the mountain or even Ten Green Bottles either.

We sang some beautiful hymns at school- so many are etched in my memory! There a huge 'yes' from the kids when our favourites were on the board. I loved 'When I Needed a Neighbour', 'Go Tell it on the Mountain' 'Lord of the Dance' and 'Follow Me'. A lot had lyrics I found quite moving as a child.

Dumbed down education, that's what it is

Oh , loved At the name of Jesus and Colours of Day !
Quite like Autumn days too .

My 5 year old came home saying his favourite school song was 'singa sanga'. I signed until I realised it was actually Sing Hosanna, in phonics....

*sighed!!

I bought DVDs of old school assembly songs not so long ago, as a present for an elderly relative (retired primary teacher) with dementia.

Great fun to hear them again.

And I think singing, to the point it's engrained, lyrics like 'and the creed and the colour and the name don't matter, were you there' is a good thing.

Supply teacher here and most schools I ve been in sing hymns.

My primary school's school sing was the meatball one. You know: 'I had some spaghetti, all covered in cheese...'

There's another one that goes "Please Miss, she flicked a rubber at me. Please Miss she stuck her tongue out at me". Who the hell even writes this shit?

That is an awesome song, though. I have seen it sung in the song and dance section at dance festivals. Great fun.

And as a teacher I find myself singing it under my breath sometimes when my class have had a particularly "tale telling" day...

Anyway - agree with RedHelen. Most schools do sing hymns. Sometimes not traditional hymns, but then a lot of churches don't do traditional hymns that much any more.

A couple of schools I have worked in have also say quite moving versions of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujuh! Gary Barlow's Sing works quite well in assemblies too.

We sang little boxes on the hillside and they're all made out of ticky tacky at my primary school. Love autumn days!

I've been missing those 'come and praise' songs recently too!

I went to an awards assembly at DD's school recently; the same school where I used to sing all the oldies babes in here. Their school song is, apparently, 'What Have You Done Today to Make You Feel Proud?' No kidding. It felt like an episode of Miranda and they sang the whole thing.

There's one about behaviour - something like 'this is an important matter, how we should behave at school...'

It gets faster and faster and there's something about the melody that I find really anxiety-inducing! Hate it.

My DD learns lovely songs at her state school. Nothing religious thankfully, except at Christmas.

"On Eagle's Wings" is fucking terrifying when sung by 350 4-11-year-olds.

DD's school is Catholic and veers between On Eagle's Wings and hilariously over the top happy-clappy song and dance routine efforts.

However, I am grateful she gets daily exposure to music. I love seeing an assembly with cross-legged children and a piano.

They also do a roaring rendition of 'Up Above My Head' led by the head teacher

The school rule song and the one about teachers wearing pyjamas come from a collection of very popular assembly songs produced by a couple called Out of the Ark, who have written a vast amount of music for every school occasion imaginable. Our pupils love them! We have a very eclectic repertoire comprising a wide range of genre, reflecting the preferences of our school community, but when the songs from Out of the Ark come on, they raise roof!

I have a copy of Come and Praise that I saved from being binned at school.