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.

I don’t think so. Christianity is the state religion and all schools are meant to provider eligible instruction of a predominantly Christian nature. People aren’t compelled to believe. It’s just an opportunity to know and understand the building blocks of the country.

The schools where I have noticed this happening are church schools, they go to the nearby church to perform the nativities. So it is an important part of the school's culture.
They also celebrate other cultural festivals, for all I know, maybe the same children don't celebrate those either.

Several people want no hymns at all because of the religious connection. I wasn't suggesting there's some kind of official ban, just that wanting to have kids never sing any hymns ever is a blanket type of decision, as opposed to a more selective one.

Yes, that’s a bit confusing. And OP hasn’t answered the question about exactly what ‘local and national’ events she imagines people would be regularly singing hymns at in adulthood.

Pretty much the only thing we’re clear about is that she dislikes multiculturalism and thinks more singing of Christian hymns in schools is a solution to this. Personally I think Celebrity Traitors is a more credible tool for building a sense of shared community in this country. In other words, there are lots of things people can bond over and build communities over whatever their religion or ethnicity.

Weirdly I did country dancing at the UK primary school where I spent exactly one year, and also did it at my Dutch primary school as a Friday afternoon optional whenever it was available. I'm all for it, it's a great form of exercise. Mandatory hymn singing - not so much.

So all folk songs are rubbish? Riiiiiight...

What about classic pop and rock songs that have stood the test of time over decades?

We shouldn't have a state religion at all. And the whole thing about 'compulsory Christian worship' in schools also needs to go, because where worship is compulsory, it is meaningless.

it was pants. As in underpants in my school. And if you weren’t wearing a vest it was bare top half.

Learning and understanding is fine.

Worshipping and praising something you don't believe in, is both foolish and pointless.

'Traditional hymns' means hymns of what specific denomination?

There are a lot of traditional Catholic hymns along the lines of Ave Maria, after all.

Completely normal in British primary schools in the 1980s!

There’s a school near here where the pupils speak 27 different languages at home. English is about 20th, I think.

they aren’t having a daily act of “broadly Christian worship”!

I was very moved as a child by the collective singing of Puff the Magic Dragon. I didn’t quite get the existential sorrow, but I felt something quite profound about the impact of time. No religion involved.

We threatened it. They agreed to change grace to something more inclusive. And told us when the local vicar was coming in (we’d brief DD on the alternative sermon to that which would be peddled).

Far from being unfit to be a parent, I was a Governor and the chair of the PTA!

There is no 'state religion' in the UK.

There is an Established Church, the Church of England, of which the monarch is the supreme governor, and in Scotland there is the Church of Scotland.

The Church of England was disestablished in Ireland (and by extension the subsequent partitioned province of Nortnern Ireland) in 1869 and in Wales in 1920. So there is not even an Established Church in either Wales or NI.

Ah, it was Bright Eyes for me.

I think op has a slightly confused view that hymns are somehow universal and well known and therefore an obvious choice for communal songs.

Whereas i would argue that was perhaps true 60 or so years ago when many or even most children attended church regularly, it genuinely simply isn't now. At the few church weddings I've attended as an adult, no one knew the words or tune of any of the hymns and so the singing was rather awkward/non existent!! They also tend to have loads of variants, the few people who recognised words often knew the hymn to a different melody.

I don't believe there's anything especially unique or universal about christian hymns that make them any better for communal singing than well known secular folk songs, pop songs, football anthems, patriotic songs etc.

I can't see any reason why someone who isn't a Christian would have such a fervour for Christian hymns above all other songs in this context.

I don’t think so. Christianity is the state religion

not true
all schools are meant to provider eligible instruction of a predominantly Christian nature

The act of daily worship of a predominantly christian nature is one of the most hotly challenged and detested features of school life in the uk - most people find it very outdated and many schools pay lip service at most to it.

I think it's nostalgia for the past and being a child! As a child, I just loved singing and honestly never thought about any of the religious aspects. I certainly didn't feel indoctrinated.
There is a more light hearted thread in Chat about singing songs at school from the Come and Praise book.

All those unfit Jewish and Muslim and Hindu and Sikh parents who are sincere believers. Tut tut to the lot of them.

But Church of England attendance has grown for the 4th year running!!!

Since when lol

The church of england is widely acknowledged to be in a rapid hurtling decline.

Some non c of e branches are growing, mainly more evangelical branches and catholicism followed by migrants

The c of e has geriatric congregations and no kids coming through. It won't survive.

You don't need to SHOUT.

Yes the hymns have religious words, but in my experience (a teacher for a decade, music co ordinator) children don't pay the slightest attention to the words at they're singing and they certainly don't get indoctrinates by them. The example I gave (Shine Jesus Shine) they loved because it was a banging tune, and the more daring ones could sing "set our farts on fire" instead of hearts and think that none of the teachers realised.

Never heard of 'plough the fields and scatter' but cauliflowers fluffy is a banger and hugely popular with the kids today, and was when i was at school 30 years ago!

Very, very few people in the UK go to chuch now OP. Sure in your local care home those hymns may be familiar but at every wedding ive been to in a church nobody sings because they don't know the hymns.

Im not sure why you think christian hymns are such a bastion of excellence that we should all be encouraged to sing them, how odd

I also think there is a big difference between the dreary hymns that are sung in church, and the Come And Praise songs such as Autumn Days, Lord of the Dance, and When A Knight Won His Spurs

God almighty no. The hours of my life I had wasted at school mumbling my way through some dreadful Victorian dirge or another. I've nothing against communal singing but all that dreary religious stuff can be consigned to the dustbin of history so far as I'm concerned. I'll give I Vow To Thee My Country a reprieve, but that was cheating anyway as the words were laid over Gustav Holst's pre-existing banger of a tune.