Not impressed with the daily chanting. Do other secondary schools do this?

[ReanimatedSGB]

DS is in Year 8 and he has told me that, at the start of every lesson, they all have to stand up and chant together, something along the lines of 'we promise to be good and work hard' (OK that's NOT the wording, don';t want to give exact wording in case it outs us).

Every lesson FFS. This strikes me as a waste of time (DS told me that the class took to dragging it out as much as possible in lessons no one likes) and... well. a bit creepy and cultish. AIBU?

And pretty old fashioned to be rabbitting them out loud

You're behind the times, it's definitely not.
mrreddy.com/blog/2012/08/rolling-numbers/

And pretty old fashioned to be rabbitting them out loud.
Gosh. I better stop having my students chant tricky spellings whilst banging on the desk in a rhythm.
I also better stop doing chanted 'complete the quotations' to help them memorise for the literature exam.

Curse me for using call and response as a form of revision and memorising. Chanting or collective speaking is evil and must not be used.

miaow
I agree chanting a mission statement is odd.
It's not a decision I would make and it's not how I would choose to start my lesson.

My objection is tje way people are carrying on about it like they're on some keybaord warrior crusade and doing anything they/their kids think is pointless is some sort of conspiracy to oppress children and if you don't share their enlightemed view then you must be a tyrant teacher. But don't worey because they are teaching their children to stand up to teachers and refuse to do things and challenge anything they don'r like (read - be a total PITA and probably the source of the attitudes leading to the school adotpinf the new approach).

Most teachers on this thread seem to have a similar view to me aka 'not how I would start a lesson but given my experience in education I can see why some school may decide they want to'.

MiaowTheCat

I have worked in schools that do the things that I put in a previous post.
I have worked in schools were every lesson stars with a prayer.
I went for an interview in a school where the class was to stand up every time the head walked in to the room (it used to be any adult), can you imagine how this disrupted the interview lessons?

New fads are brought in not only by the government but by new heads or new assistant heads, even new heads of departments.

Frankly as a teacher, you ride these things out. Why are the teachers that post on this thread not bothered about the chanting of a few lines at the beginning of a lesson? (for me) Simple because it isn't worth worrying about, there are bigger battles to fight (SEND, Bullying, actual lesson disruption) and pupils to actually teach.

A few lines at the beginning of a lesson won't stop me from trying to get pupils to question and probe the infinite universe. But it will help me teach them that where ever they are in life there will be rules that they have to follow that they don't like and if they really don't like it, how to be pro-active in changing them and not just get themselves in to more trouble by causing more issues.