It was just another song. It was about one of those two mice that were always making Jinx the Cat’s life such a trial.
What patriotic song?
I almost choked on my food when I discovered that the song I’d learned in church as Gloria gloria aleluya and sung many times in its un-churchy version was originally in English and had the very sonorous and military name it does. This post is from before I found out.
We learned patriotic and many many other songs at school (and camp) in the olden days. But I learned the words to Solidarity Forever, I imagine, before the Battle Hymn. My family sang around my mother’s piano, and one of the song books we had was a Wobbly one. I can still sing There Once Was a Union Maid at stupendous speed.
There was once a shared understanding of what children were supposed to learn in school about American culture but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t exist any more.
Whether that’s a good or bad thing is clearly a debatable point.
It is definitely about the war. “He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored” means that the war is an expression of God’s anger over wrongs that have built up over time. The “terrible swift sword,” the “watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,” the “burnished rows of steel,” the “trumpet that shall never call retreat,” are all references to the war. So is, “let us die to make men free.”
The song is a part of history. It was a marching song of the Union soldiers, and expressed the idea held by many that they were on the side of God. It is appropriate for a U.S. history class. I don’t know that you’d want to teach it in a music class.
Also, it would be nice for kids to know when they read the book, “The Grapes of Wrath,” where the title came from.
also wasn’t the battle hymn wrote by the author of uncle toms cabin?
I’m neither Christian nor American, but I happen to think that the “Battle Hymn” is a kick-ass song. It’s one of my two favorite non-classical Christian hymns. The other is “Amazing Grace”; interestingly, both are closely associated with the fight against slavery.
It also makes a great uptempo Dixielandjam.
It’s also commonly sung by by black choirs about civil rights.
Or this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PrQD7RiaQQ
Maybe the religious references cause the schools to shy away from it. Too bad - it’s a kick-ass song.
Regards,
Shodan
If they’re being sent off to fight Johnny Reb at Spotsylvania? Absolutely!
Seriously, of course “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” is a pretty good song to learn about because it is a really, really interesting peek at history. I am amused anyone would think a song called a “Battle Hymn” wasn’t about war, but anyway, it was, and reveals a lot about the mindset of the people who fought for the Union, most interestingly the central importance of religion in the movement, and the fact that freeing the slaves was an issue to the Union even before the Emancipation Proclamation. (The author of the lyrics, Julia Ward Howe, was an active abolitionist.)
The fact the song is so wildly popular is a testament to its quality. Winston Churchill loved it and arranged to have it played at his own funeral.
Should kids be taught to sing it? Well…
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The song is, for all that it’s about the war, intensely Christian. Do you think non-Christian parents would be totally comfortable with their kids being made to sing Christian songs?
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The song is unambiguously a Union song. How would it go over in rural Alabama to make kids sing it?
In retrospect, I’m a little amused that Dixie was part of our regular Chicago suburban school music rotation.
No. The lyrics of “Battle Hymn” were written by Julia Ward Howe. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was written by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Both powerful social activists, but different people.
I do remember learning to sing “Battle Hymn” in school. As Dinsdale mentioned, there were a lot of traditional American songs that we learned in the early grades. Others were things like “Home on the Range,” “She’ll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain,” “Oh, Susannah,” “Camptown Races,” and stuff like that. There were some patriotic songs in the mix, like “America the Beautiful” and “This Is My Country.” But the focus was on learning music, not so much instilling patriotism.
In those days, our school had a regular music teacher (Mrs. Springer, if I remember her name right), who would go to the various classrooms, rolling her piano along with her. She would come into your classroom for maybe a half hour once or twice a week, and you would learn about whole notes and half notes and Every Good Boy Does Fine, and you would sing these traditional songs. I have no idea if that sort of thing still happens in schools today.
I’m not so concerned about which particular songs get sung, but I do think it would be a good thing if kids were at least taught something about music and how it works.
We did wind up singing all of these songs in choir, including Dixie–though that was not done for patriotism, but because it’s a gorgeous arrangement. The rest just were quickly learned songs for patriotic stuff. Battle Hymn was even part of a medley with America the Beautiful. We even wound up singing God Bless America at one point.
My comment above was about learning the song in elementary school. This was high school.
We sing it in church, because the author (of the lyrics, not the tune) was a Unitarian abolitionist and feminist, so its part of our history. I’m always slightly amused by a bunch of pacifist UUs singing The Battle Hymn of the Republic, but it is a song about justice.
My kids sang some patriotic songs in public school - and honestly, far too many religious songs (I’ve had words with the administration over the idea of balance - yes the Christian church gives us a large and wonderful music library to work from - but there is music from other religious traditions and a large library of secular music). Their religious songs tended towards white Christian and were lacking in the Spirituals that would provide some balance to the Handel and Latin. Overall, though, I was pretty impressed with my kid’s music program - their elementary music teacher was WONDERFUL, she taught those kids to sing, gave them songs that were educational and diverse (they learned Nifty Fifty). The middle school choir teacher was awful - and set the music too high for their voices (well, the sopranos did fine, since my daughter was at that point a functional tenor, she may have harmed her voice - my son took band), and was the most guilty of selecting music more appropriate for Catholic nuns than middle school students - I’m not sure if they sang a song in three years that didn’t mention Jesus (my kid’s go to a school with a really heavy Muslim and Black population - which in this part of the Twin Cities has a lot of overlap since many of our Muslims are Somalis - not surprisingly, many of those kids didn’t stick with choir). The high school choir teacher had a little too much of a Western and Christian focus, but did better - and did teach the kids to develop their voices (the high school choir is competitive and does well).
It’s culture and it’s music and it’s history — but lack of exposure to the song says more about the general social culture than about schools. If a generation that did learn them did not feel like teaching them to their children, should or be up to the schools?
Though if we’re doing a unit on Civil War Song I would not mind the finale being a vigorous rendition of Marching Through Georgia.
Teaching patriotic song for the sake of it being patriotic doesn’t convince me, though. It could lead to the unspeakable horror of Lee Greenwood covers.
I grew up in Kentucky. And I was part of bussing - which means we had a very integrated elementary school experience.
I am ashamed for the adults - although it was perfectly normal, we didn’t think anything of it at the time - who thought Stephan Foster was the bomb (which, in Kentucky, he was) and had us sing endless Foster in the rotation.
There’s some truth to that.
“As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.” is one of the greatest lines in any song ever.
As the descendant of a Union soldier who died of scurvy at Andersonville, I wouldn’t mind either. 
But a college girlfriend from Alabama was absolutely horrified when she heard that there was a song celebrating Sherman’s March to the Sea. Something like a Vietnamese learning there was a cheerful patriotic song called I Love the Smell of Napalm in the Morning.
Given its simultaneous religious content and bloodthirstiness, I can understand Battle Hymn not being in the public school curriculum these days. However, I am surprised that The Burning of the School version hasn’t survived. I thought such things were passed down from class to class eternally.
We had a separate vocal music room as well as a separate band room. They were on opposite ends of the building. The band room was right by the shop classroom and the vocal music room was by the boiler room.
For some unfathomable reason Confederate reenactors marched in a Fourth of July parade in the Chicago suburb next door. I launched into:
Hurrah! Hurrah! We bring the Jubilee.
Hurrah! Hurrah! The flag that makes you free,
So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea,
While we were marching through Georgia.
And Lincoln was said to be quite fond of “Dixie.”