I've enjoyed reading this thread. There are so many songs mentioned here from the USA and outside of the USA that I've never heard of.

Vocal music was one of the classes that I loved the best in elementary school & in junior high school. For some reason, either this class wasn't offered at my high school (which had 3,000 students for most of the years that I went to it). Or maybe I just didn't take music during high school.

In elementary school (in Atlantic City, New Jersey in the 1950s), the only time that any songs that mentioned God were sung was during Thanksgiving and Christmas. That was true also for junior high school and high school, except we'd be allowed to sing some religious songs at choir concerts. I particularly remember that the two years that I was in junior high school, the entire school would have an assembly program and one song we would all stand and sing together was "We Gather Together" (to ask the Lord's blessings). In spite of my fuller understanding of the history of the pilgrims and the Indians, that song still moves me.

I remember learning "Kookaburru Sits On An Old Gum Tree" but I can't remember whether that was in elementary school or junior high school. I also remember singing "I've Been To Harlem" in elementary school. The words we were taught were the same as Guest Linn wrote for the first verse. I probably remember the chorus wrong because what I remember is "sailing east/sailing west/sailing over the ocean/you better watch out/you better watch out/or you'll lose your girl in the ocean."

I have a vague memory of an outdoor concert in elementary school in which each class had to sing something. I don't remember what my class sung, but I remember this class of older kids singing

I know a little pussy
her coat is silver gray
she lives down in the meadow
not very far away
and though she is a pussy
she'll never be a cat
for she's a pussy willow.
Now what do you think of that.

I thought that song was really risque' even though I'm sure I didn't know what risque' meant. I remember some kids adding these two lines to the end of that song:

Meow Meow Meow Meow
Scat! You biack rat!

It's amazing which songs stick with you and which don't.