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?

This isn't a new thing - I'm 31 and most of the hymns we had in assembly weren't actually hymns. We did lots of Beatles songs, colour my world, one about matchstick men and matchstick cats and dogs, one about raindrops falling on a guy's head in his bed, all sorts. I had no idea most of them weren't proper hymns until I started hearing them outside of school. This was late 80s to early 90s so not a new phenomenon! As a lifelong atheist, I'm quite glad actually.

We sing many of the songs that I sang at school (CofE academy). My favourite is Shine Jesus Shine. It sounds so lovely.

I chose "There are hundreds, thousands, millions of sparrows" (from Come and Praise) for DS's Christening as I remembered the verse about God knowing the names of all the children (final verse maybe). The organist had to learn it by borrowing an old book from the village school.

My new school has chapel every day - so looking forward to it.

Wake Up, Wake Up
Give yourself a shake up
Get your body moving..

That's another one. Awful.

The thread really does illustrate why we have the social divide in the UK, the widening gap, the lack of social capital. Why should parents have to pay school fees for primary school children to learn good, traditional proper music? Why did it all dumb down?

I much, much prefer the songs about rules and raps to the religious crap I was made to sing at school.

DS2's school has a potato rap once. It was awesome.

Rise and shine (have to do the actions though) was as happy clappy as we got

Nothing religious thankfully, except at Christmas
This made me roar.

Dc school sing very evangelical songs, in a very very evangelical way, Train to glory is one that comes to mind!

Loving some of these old hymns.

Why on earth don't we song more of them in church. You can't beat when a knight won his Spurs or a good rendition of shine Jesus shine.

My two aren't at school yet but if there aren't traditional hymns I'll be raising a petition I tell you!!

The spring chicken one and the school rules one aren't that new - I sang those when I was at primary (well, prep if people are bothered) school in the 90s.

They weren't assembly hymns though - we learned them in music. We used Come and Praise mostly (blue and green!).

Then at senior school we had a different hymn book and different again at church - I know four different tunes to All Things Bright and Beautiful and three to Oh Jesus I Have Promised!

The head teacher at my DDs primary blasts out spice girls and their school song is m people, what have you done today to make you feel proud. The lyrics are written on the walls!!!

We had some very weird songs in infant school, one was called 'I went to the cabbages one day' just weird. C of e junior which had the usual 'one more step' then catholic secondary that had proper traditional hymns, I loved it. They've now got a pipe organ that wouldn't disgrace a parish church. I love proper hymns and polyphony etc,

We had some traditional (all things bright and beautiful, the ink is black, out of the ark)
But we also had some quite frankly bizarre choices for a sing along:
Lily the pink
I'm Henry the eighth I am
There's a worm at the bottom of my garden
Mares eat oats and does eat oats (but with all the words running into each other)

I am the Lord of the dance settee....

LunaLove - the grass is jewelled and those jet planes refuelled - I've always thought it the most forced rhyme ever! Also felt uncomfortable to hear a 90% Muslim primary school sing about the smell of bacon (as they fastened their Velcro!!)
I used to love 'When a Knight won his Spurs' and one about the fishing boats sailing out at night, a lot less of them these days.
In one school a leftie teacher had taught them a song about burning parliament down!!

Ooh I'd forgotten Don't build your house on the sandy land! I am so nostalgic for these old school songs - you'd sing them in school and then also in church and Sunday School and girl guides if you were religious; as an atheist as an adult I'm actually pretty glad to have been part of that culture in a way. Wish I could recreate it for DD.... I guess one of the problems is also that schools probably can't rely on having a fair few teachers who can play the piano to order, so it makes it much more difficult to teach music of any sort beyond a bit of pop.

I took DD to a kids' ballet class recently and there was just the teacher and her iPhone and speakers for the music. I suddenly realised that there probably aren't many piano-playing elderly ladies about to step in as accompanists any more! My childhood memories of ballet class always had an elderly lady with a blue rinse in the corner of the room, nodding and tapping her foot whilst playing the piano. Used to be the case that every church hall, community hall, school and so on had a piano or two about and someone who could play it, but that's probably not the case any more.

Then there's the rainbow one with a lot of inaccurate colours in it. 🌈

DC's school has a music teacher who gets them to sing all the awful songs I hated in the 90s by shitty pop groups.
Oh good, another boyzone one this year at the special assembly.

'Shine, Jesus, Shine' reduces me, a grouchy old atheist, to tears when my daughter's school sing it. It's something to do with the optimism and enthusiasm of the singers. It reminds me of how good, simple (in the best sense) and innocent the vast majority of children are.

We use Out of the Ark at my school too. Awful hideousness.

When I were a lass we sang from the New English Hymnal. That's proper stuff.

The Bell of Creation, and our music teachers enthusiastic piano playing. Jumpers for goalposts...

I wouldn't care what they sang at school, except that the children are barely singing over the horrible piped in "accompaniment" which is really loud, includes a whole choir of stage school children you have never met, and some woman singing like yer one on CBeebies with the 3 puppets on the trike. (you know that awful woman)

I wouldn't care how badly they were singing, I just want to hear my dd and her classmates, not some piped in people on a tape!

As a result they don't even seem to know that they aren't even carrying a tune. It's devastating. I found out that my dd seems to think that "singing" is knowing the words and belting them out in a monotone. She has joined the church choir (although I told the choir master she couldn't sing and he said "don't worry, she will soon") and in a handful of weeks her sense of melody and pitch has completely changed.

I agree with the poster above who mourns the piano-thumping old dear. The piano acted as an accompaniment, while still making it very much the dcs' responsibility to carry the tune. In infant schools you could always hear the top class piping away in tune while the little ones blared randomly. I miss it!

the children at my dcs' school who aren't being brought into singing elsewhere - how will they ever learn to carry a a tune? And then they will turn into the warbling deluded fools of tomorrow's reality TV

Aaaaaw Come and Praise! Loved all those songs. Ds' s school sing the same ones...I loved Autumn Days, but my favourite was 'I will bring to you, the best gift I can offer'...

Polkadots, how do I not know about a third tune to Oh Jesus I have promised, I one of my favourite hymns and I only know two tunes!