What a hare I've started. I didn't start a long post, covering every possible aspect of my position re Anglo culture, other cultures, the advisability of celebrating Christian festivals etc, because I don't like to include more than one point.

As a teacher, I CANNOT get involved in passing on playground culture. If I did, it wouldn't be that culture, which, when it exists, is subversive, and carried on in supposed secrecy from adults in authority. I can, occasionally, share that I did know, once, or that I remember things which the children refer to. There are games played, and skipping rhymes. As far as I can make out, they have often passed through that oral channel known as The Opies. In the area I teach, there seems to be no trace of creativity in the playground. I would love to see the UK range of activities extended by our Sikh children, or the now arriving West Indians or West Africans. A lively playground culture would do that. It does not appear to have done so. (We teachers can get a flavour of what's going on when we do playground duty. (Do you have that in the States?) We aren't visible unless someone wants our ruling about a problem, or first aid.) The point about playground culture is that is it passed on by children, not by adults, and especially not teachers. Teachers are the people many songs are about.

We'll make a bonfire of St. Peter's,
And we'll burn our cares away,
We'll pile it up with all our homework,
And keep it burning all the night and all the day,
We'll make a Guy Fawkes of Miss Brodgar,
And Miss Parkinson likewise,
......I don't think we ever finished it. (Names altered to protect the innocent.)

What culture I can pass on is my own experience only. I can read poems by John Agard or Benjamin Zephania(?) (but should I use an approximation of the patois in which they were written); I can read stories from the Hindu repertoire, or Islamic culture, Japan or China. I can teach about Ramadan, Passover, Thanksgiving, Diwali. I have done all thse things. I cannot celebrate other people's festivals (though I can celebrate that they have them), without doing offence, not only to my own beliefs, but theirs. It would be playacting, and that is no way to respect others' beliefs. Those who take part in religious acts have to take part in them fully, in faith. Others have to pass on their culture in a personal way. I can't help being what I am, even if I am a member of the only group it is OK and even PC to revile, and my culture is the only one worth flushing away.

The only parody I know about recently is "Glory, glory Hallelujah, teacher hit me with the ruler, father hit me with the walking stick and beat me black and blue." (Though I'm not sure if they know beyond the ruler.) Also two boys who thought that a word in a song resembled one they construed as rude, so they substituted the "rude" one whenever it occurred. In assembly (aka, for our transatlantic readers, the statutory collective act of worship, required by act of parliament to be broadly or mainly Christian in content). Without any attempt to construct a complete verse structure with its own consistency of meaning.

I'm glad that composition is going on elsewhere, though, and the culture is still rich (Carol C.) And Pete, I wouldn't expect your children to know either the original or the parody of a song generated in an English setting - we do have different collections of church verse each side of the pond. Was there a tradition of adult hymn parodies in the US? Over here, it was done by adults, too. Look at the songs of WW1. Perhaps what I have noted is the last of that tradition. Perhaps, too, the verses the children are exposed to lack the literary qualities to stimulate imitation.

Eh Oh.

Penny