My Country ’tisn’t of thee anymore
Bookworm on Mar 15 2007 at 10:43 pm | Filed under: America
I volunteer with a youth choral group. In music theory today, one of the boys, who is learning sight singing, laboriously sounded out several tunes, and was then asked to name each of them. He was able to name Frere Jacques, Happy Birthday to You, and even My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean. What absolutely stymied him was My Country ’tis of Thee. He’d never heard the tune before, nor had the other eight elementary school age boys in the room with him.
I was shocked. I realize that the kids aren’t required to sing it every morning anymore, as I was when I was a child, but they don’t know it at all. None of the kids in my world know America, the Beautiful, nor do they know God Bless America (the last being no surprise because of the forbidden word in the title). The boys in the choral group know our national anthem, but that’s only because they’re invited annually to sing it at a baseball game.
Yeah, these old-fashioned songs are self-congratulatory, and I know that it’s totally unacceptable for modern educators to teach children to take even a scintilla of pride anymore in being Americans — but it’s so sad. There’s nothing that binds these children to each other and their country anymore, other than a shared knowledge of commercials and junk food.
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FIRST! Yay! When my jazz musician father was a wee boy, he was a prodigy, because he could, without any prior instruction, play My Country T’is of Thee, chords and all, both hands before he was even in kindergarten. I often played it and sang this beautiful song to my kids as they were growing up.
In fact, when my then four-year-old was in preschool, 9/11 happened, and all year long they sang nothing but patriotic songs. By the end of the school year, Rachel could sing with pride and confidence the following songs: My Country T’is of Thee, You’re a Grand Old Flag, America the Beautiful, The Star Spangled Banner, and one of my personal faves, O Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean.
We also used to sing patriotic songs in school…even back in the 70s. It is sad that it has changed. Curse you, multiculturalism! *impotently shaking fist at nothing in particular*
The kids here still know most of those - some of this could just be San Francisco.
[...] and a happy new year!”) and how our kids don’t even know the patriotic song, “My Country ‘Tis of Thee“. The world’s just got a few screws [...]