Somewhat Off-Topic

GUEST,Marymac90, 22 Jul 08 - 01:18 AM

Thank you for your well written rant. I'm particularly impressed with this part of your assessment of why children in past generations and now could be "dissatisfied", to put it mildly, with the education that they received/receive:

"Is it any wonder we couldn't wait to grow up? Not only
couldn't we read about the real world in Dick and Jane,
we couldn't sing about it, even in the "folk" songs we
were given to learn! Everything was whitewashed,
pureed to a pablum-like consistency, suitable for spoon-
feeding."

-snip-

When I read that, it struck me that perhaps this could another reason why some children/teens chanted/chant risque, violent taunts that target teachers and principals.

I still believe that among some* Americans [USA residents, and perhaps also some Canadians and UK children/youth] saying teacher taunts such as those posted on my website www,cocojams.com
was {and perhaps to a much lesser degree} an expected childhood/teenage custom. At least before the Columbine and other school massacres of the late 20th and early 21st century USA, and Canada, it appears from the comments that I've received from adults who remember saying these taunts, that adults mostly adopted a kids will be kids attitude toward these chants. Generally speaking, before Columbine, a child or teen could say these rhymes-at the end of the school year, or at other informal times among themselves-without being subject to any consequences. Generally speaking, it seems that a child or teen prior to Columbine wouldn't receive any real consequences from adults for saying such taunts as "Glory Glory Hallelujah/teacher hit me with a ruler/I hit her in the beam/with a rotten tangerine/and she fell right down on the floor" because adults may have remembered saying those kinds of taunts when they were young, and they knew that the words of those taunts were not to be taken literally.

However, Marymac90, your rant makes me think that another reason for those taunts could be that children and teens who said them were rebelling against the "whitewashed, pureed to a pablum-like consistency, suitable for spoon-feeding" "education" they were experienced in school. That this sanitized Dick & Jane image of the world was presented to them in a highly regimented educational system by teachers and principals who were perceived to be and often were arbitrarily unfair could be motivation for some kids to sound off against school personnel in general or those authority figures who they perceived as being the most objectionable. It seems from the recollection of "informants" {those persons who shared their examples with me and those who included comments when they submitted examples of taunts to my website} that kids knew that they could get away with saying these taunts, particularly on the last day of school when rules were loosened.

* I say some children/teens in the USA because my admittedly limited research suggests that far fewer Black American adults than White American adults remember saying or hearing these taunts, and far fewer Black Americans teens are familiar with the words to certain teacher taunts that seem to be much more well known among White American teens.

I know that there have been discussions on other Mudcat threads about anti-school songs/taunts such as this one: thread.cfm?threadid=89297 . My defense for going off-topic and posting such a comment on this thread is because Guest Marymac's rant "made me do it."

:o)