Out of tune
Jane Kelly finds that the BBC’s ‘UK Theme Tune’ divides children as much as it does adults The only time I have ever enjoyed singing was when my class in Staffordshire joined other primary schools across the land for Singing Together. This BBC Schools programme, broadcast from the 1950s until the 1970s, provided a range of songs from all over the UK. In the spring term of 1964 we learnt ‘The Minstrel Boy’, still one of my favourites, ‘Cotton-Eyed Joe’, ‘The Mermaid’, ‘Swansea Town’, ‘Cradle Song’ and ‘Waltzing Matilda’. I also remember first hearing ‘Lillibullero’, ‘Shenandoah’, ‘Polly Oliver’ and ‘Drink to Me Only’, which seemed unbearably sad.
The debate about the removal of Fritz Spiegl’s ‘UK Theme Tune’ from Radio Four made me wonder if English children today would still recognise its seven traditional tunes. It seemed unlikely. The national curriculum for Scotland stipulates that wee Scots must learn Gaelic songs, be familiar with the bagpipes, ‘recognise and talk about’ Scottish fiddle music; in Wales children have to know ‘a range of music including the music of Wales’; in Ulster they are obliged to study music from their ‘cultural heritage’; but in England there is no requirement for children to learn any traditional music.
In 1991 a working party on the national curriculum called for the teaching of Welsh ‘folk tradition’, but in England, because of what they poetically termed ‘the problem of otherness’ — immigrant children — the decision on what to teach was to be left entirely to individual head teachers. I suspect there was also the view that traditional English music is too fuddy-duddy and rural anyway.
To find out how things work in London I visited Our Lady of Victories RC state primary school in Putney, in the London borough of Wandsworth, and took with me the Radio Four ‘UK Theme Tune’. I approached the school with some trepidation. I am not used to children, and one hears such bad things about schools.
There was a photo of the late Pope in the entrance hall, and of the new one in the office of the head teacher, Margaret Ryall. Her desk was crowded with computer software catalogues and scrawled notes: ‘disco, Blue Peter, concert, gym’. Above it was a ‘mission statement’ about providing a ‘broad and balanced curriculum with the teachings of Christ at the centre’.
‘We aim for excellence across the board, in everything,’ says Mrs Ryall. ‘We are fairly traditional. In music we still teach children to read music; there is a musician on staff and a peripatetic violin teacher. We have two choirs, and put an emphasis on performance. At our twice-weekly hymn practice, one class has to play everyone in and out. We also have piano recitals. Mozart’s birthday really sparked us off; we all celebrated it.’ In the hall the music teacher, Mrs Melvin, was surrounded by very small children playing xylophones, all coming in with the right plinkplonk. They were rehearsing for their assembly on the Chinese New Year. ‘What new scale is this, children?’ she asked. ‘Pentatonic,’ they replied casually.
She introduced me to ten children aged from nine to 11, all white and well-dressed in blue uniform, who were going to listen to the theme tune. For some reason, probably panic, I started by asking if they’d ever heard of Radio Four. To my surprise, seven little blue sleeves shot up. Then they listened attentively and got every single tune, except ‘Men of Harlech’ and the Trumpet Voluntary.
Elizabeth Dale, ten, thought ‘Danny Boy’ was by Johnny Cash, but Finian Lurcott, 11, informed me that ‘Greensleeves’ was written by Henry VIII. His brother Hugh, nine, thought ‘Rule, Britannia’ might be by Beethoven. He plays the piano and the violin and was keen on Beethoven and Bach. Elizabeth Farrell, ten, who plays the violin, said she liked Mozart, as ‘his songs are catchy’.
Alisa McNeil, ten, told me they had spent one term on sea shanties and were now working on a modern version of ‘The Lord is My Shepherd’. They spoke fluently about music of all kinds. They all liked Handel’s Messiah — ‘really good’ — but they also mentioned Coldplay, Oasis, Keane, and groups I’ve never heard of.
Three miles down the road, in the same borough, John Burns primary school is attended mainly by children of Caribbean origin, and 33 per cent of the pupils have ‘special needs’. The entrance hall was lined with ‘school achievement’ awards given by the secretary of state and the ‘Basic Skills Agency’. In the hall a poster advertised ‘Black History Month’. There were projects on ‘The Influence of Black Culture’ and ‘celebrating identity’. Who were these for surely not children under 12?
The head, Ms Maura Keady, seemed hassled as she told me she had to deal with ‘parents who are persistently late’. I was shown to the staff-room where women teachers were dressed in jeans, combat pants and trainers. One was showing her bra below an expanse of cleavage. They all looked like volunteers in a youth club.
There was going to be an assembly on ‘whole school kindness’. The children don’t sing hymns but they do sing together and have a choir. They wore a kind of uniform with red vest, black trousers and the obligatory trainers. Their teacher, Katy Chesworth, 25, who spelled out her name using the aspirant ‘h’, didn’t introduce me. Instead she said, ‘OK, guys, good listening skills please.’ They showed no signs of having any such skills. None of them had ever heard of Radio Four, and when I switched on the ‘UK Theme Tune’ they soon began chattering among themselves. They were strangely assertive about not being interested in the music. ‘I don’t know it,’ said one boy angrily. ‘It’s oprah,’ said another with surprising disdain. Some thought ‘Rule Britannia’ might be the national anthem, and only one boy recognised one song, ‘The Drunken Sailor’, because he’d heard it on a computer programme. He was obviously bright, but said he didn’t like music and refused to speak about it. I tried getting the more friendly children to talk about their musical tastes — rap music, anything — but I could hardly understand them. They take part in theatre outreach programmes, but couldn’t speak in sentences.
They certainly couldn’t talk about music or composers. Since September they’ve had a specialist music teacher who teaches them to read music, and there are two peripatetic teachers who give whole-class clarinet lessons, but they couldn’t talk to me about it. They don’t own any instruments, except one boy who vaguely said he has a mouth organ and a girl who said she has a toy violin.
Crossing Wandsworth from one side to the other, I was in a different nation, a foreign land where it was quite accepted that people learn a separate identity and speak a different language. I set out wondering if modern English children still recognise ‘Greensleeves’. I found they do, but only in the elite that has emerged since the terrible fusion of comprehensive education and political correctness.
Although the BBC probably regards folk music as non-PC, it has unknowingly provided an anthem for the most privileged children in the land. The battle for education has been won, and always will be, by middle-class parents who want the best for their kids and know how to get it — and the rest will go to the graffiti-splattered, slogan-bearing wall.
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