To think all schools should teach children the old traditional hymns

[Staringintothevoid616]

Just switching between channels and Songs of Praise came on. It was a run down of the most popular school hymns.complete with recorders It brought back many memories and how important communal singing is. It doesn’t matter what your religion is, everyone should know the most popular hymns as a way of uniting society.

Maybe we should get the kids to all sing Mr. Brightside.

Better yet, Human. Now there's a song to unite people.

Communal singing is good for health and wellbeing and should be promoted in schools - but not hymns specifically
if nothing else singing assemblies can cover a lot of aspects of the music curriculum if planned correctly, leaving class music lessons to focus on instruments like the recorder or ukulele, some schools are better at this than others.
my school does songs about school values, some uplifting pop songs, some movement songs and then some term specific ones like Rememberance, Harvest or Christmas. None of them are hymns. we discuss tempo, pulse, clapping on or off the beat, how loud or quietly we can sing etc

"It doesn’t matter what your religion is, everyone should know the most popular hymns as a way of uniting society."
and
"all schools should teach children the old traditional hymns"

or

"hymns aren’t meant to be universal"

Eh?

Aw lovely, school hymns all the way. Country dancing too. With a piano too, not some techy music.

And PE done in pants and vests? I feel we have rather moved on……..

OMG me too.

They do Scottish country dancing at my kids’ primary school! My daughter loved it. My son… not so much lol

We are told that Jesus hadn't much of a quarrel with prevailing social circs and strata, apart from his consuming (and fatal) animus against the priestly caste who were perverting the way the people communed with God.

But yes of course, that bit of drivel you quote is not what we want to foist on young minds. I cant imagine it’s still sung in schools as it stands, but has been tweaked appropriately.
Surely we tell children that this was written by a human, not by God or an angel etc, and written a very long time ago when things were very different and people were socially very separated by old ideas. They can certainly cope with this kind of info.
Lots of things used to be common sense but are now totally discredited, and we can I think allow kids to encounter the idea of a flat Earth without fearing they'll be forever hipped on that notion.

I’d love young children to be allowed to sing that gentle poem by Blake (I think?), Little Lamb Who Made Thee, not in order that a God-centric universe be carved into their brains but that they be encouraged to wonder, and to use their amazing elastic imagination.

As a matter of interest do you have an issue with people earning more money because they got better grades at school?

What wrong with shorts and vests? Apparatus and bean bags were fine.

Heh well if you all think children are better educated and schools are better than they were 40 years ago you then you do you. The state school threads on here would suggest to me standards have dropped massively. Get the hymns back!

Where on earth were you running round in your underwear at school. That was never widespread and normal

I always feel sad for the kids who are kept out of the nativity music practices in the schools I visit. They stay in their classroom and do other work and it seems a shame that they don't join in the singing, presumably on religious grounds.

I think parents who do this are unfit to be parents in all honesty.

I was at primary school in 70s/80s and it was quite normal.
Seems really weird looking back on it now though.

Because. They. Are. Rubbish.

Doing PE in vest and pants that is!

It was in the 60s and 70s.

Many years ago, while living in (Muslim) Oman, we attended their very first military tattoo, where I was astonished to hear their fairly newly established military bandsmen playing ‘Abide With Me’.

The Sultan (Qaboos, RIP) had attended Sandhurst, so I dare say he had come to enjoy the hymn there.

I think because hymns are not acts of worship to everyone. To some people they genuinely are just songs with a religious background. Not that I think schools should be teaching them, as such, just that it wouldn't do kids any harm if some of the best of them were included in amongst a wide range of other music. Personally I think the more they become just songs, the better - songs we can talk intelligently with kids about, and decide not to sing some bits of, or sometimes not to sing at all, but also allow ourselves to enjoy the best bits of. We don't need a blanket ban on anything that's ever had any connection with religion.

Huh? Not especially, if those grades were translated into degrees which lead to well paid professions.
I’d certainly object if some GCSE whizz doing Job X were paid better than a GSCE ‘not so great’, for doing identical work.
Not sure why you ask, but it’s probably disingenuous.

There is no blanket ban

Unless you mean the OP's proposal of traditional hymns only

Really? Parents not wanting their children indoctrinated into a religion they themselves don't believe in or practice are unfit to be parents?

So you think people who choose to raise their children differently to you are unfit parents?!? What a massive stretch.

I considered pulling my daughter from the nativity after hearing some of the songs as they are really inappropriate for her to be singing. My atheist husband was even more keen to pull her. We love and care for our kids, we just have different religious beliefs which is entirely our right. This threat was odd enough already but this is just ridiculous.