The school song

[shewhomust]

The Guardian, in its quest to lure its readers into writing ever more of the paper, invites us to recommend songs on nominated topics: this week, "School". Given the season, that's "back to school" rather than "school's out", but there's still plenty to choose from. Leaving aside the blandly pop (Wonderful World: "Don't know much about history...") and the purely incidental references ("In Kindergarten arithmetic classes/ She used to sit next to me..." is not actually about school: it's from Al Stewart's Love Chronicles) - in fact, as far as I'm concerned we can leave aside all the faintly predatory Good Morning Little Schoolgirl songs, even Sting's Don't Stand So Close To Me, despite the heroic rhyme of:

He starts to shake and cough
Just like the old man in
That book by Nabokov

I Don't Like Mondays, the Boomtown Rats

And nobody's gonna go to school today,
She's going to make them stay at home.

Itchycoo Park, The Small Faces

Not quite as extreme a rejection of school, but still:
You can miss out school
- Won't that be cool
Why go to learn the words of fools?

History Lesson, Leon Rosselson

or you can go to school, and let your mind wander while the teacher holds forth.

Charlie Brown, The Coasters (Leiber & Stoller, of course)

Who walks in the classroom, cool and slow
Who calls the English teacher "daddy-o"?

What did you learn in school today?, Tom Paxton

At last, a child who pays attention in class - this time the problem is with the lessons:
I learned our government must be strong
It's always right and never wrong
Our leaders are the finest men
That's why we elect them again and again
- doesn't date, does it?

6B Go Swimming, Robb Johnson

A lovely song, from the point of view of the teacher taking a rather chaotic class out to a lesson they enjoy - at last, a positive view of education.

The Dean and I, 10CC

Extending the field by understanding the word "school" in its US rather than its British sense, if only because this song is such fun. And because it also permits the inclusion of

Bright College Days, Tom Lehrer

So many quotable lines, where to begin? At the beginning:
Bright college days, oh, carefree days that fly,
To thee we sing with our glasses raised on high.
Let's drink a toast as each of us recalls
Ivy-covered professors in ivy-covered halls.

Comments

[profane-stencil.livejournal.com]

But-but-but..what about this masterpiece?

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Good point: if you want to tell them, here's the link (http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/culturevulture/archives/2005/09/16/class_acts.html).

[samarcand.livejournal.com]

And, I assume you just decided to ignore 'We Don't Need No Education'. A song taht is close to my heart because when I was at school, I was in a production and this was one of the songs that the male chorus had to sing. And the director-teacher was a little taken aback, because we were singing it to 'nastily'. What can I say? We were great actors...

[samarcand.livejournal.com]

And, it is of course, actually called 'Another Brick In the Wall (pt.1)'. Which I remembered, just as I hit Post. Oh well.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Yes, that was actually one mentioned in the Guardian's preamble, and it's not particularly a favourite, so I let it go...

Hey, welcome back!