I went to a religious elementary school, so it was mostly children’s Bible songs.
Some of the common ones:
Father Abraham (had many sons)
Jesus Loved the Little Children Of the World
I’m In the Lord’s Army
Apparently this is a common topic on /r/exvangelical (ex-evangelical).
I also got exposure to some secular songs through nature camp.
Not in school, but during the summer between Grade 2 and Grade 3 I was enrolled in a “summer studio” arts program at what would later be my middle school. One of the sessions involved a lady taking us into a back room behind the cafeteria and teaching us songs which she accompanied on IIRC a zither. I remember “Tom Dooley,” “Milly Molly Mandy Went A-Fishing” (to the tune of “John Brown’s Body”), the Canadian version of “This Land is Your Land,” and this song you mention, in this version:
They say that in the Army, the drinks are mighty fine
You ask for Coca Cola, they give you turpentine
Oh, I have quite enough of Army life;
Gee, Mom, I want to go
Back to Ontario
Gee, Mom, I want to go home!
Going to elementary school in the 80s, my teachers’ choices were also heavily influenced by Folk.
My junior kindergarten teacher taught us “When I First Came to this Land,” about a farmer who ekes out a living through his toil. I had trouble with this one because I was too young to understand the concept of irony, so I didn’t understand why he gave everything he acquired bad names (I called my duck “Out of Luck”…I called my shack “Break my Back”, and so on). But then the refrain always said “But the land was sweet and good / And I did what I could.”
Another song she taught us was the Scottish folk song “Aiken Drum” (the Raffi version where “His hair was made of spaghetti”).
In Grade 2 or 3, another teacher would come to my class and play us songs like “Shoo Fly, Don’t Bother Me” or “George Washington Bridge” (you repeat the title words in order to fill out the melody of “Sobre Las Olas”), or “Father Abraham Had Seven Sons, Sir.”
Then in Grade 5, we sang pieces from the educational LP “Music Builders V” (published by the Canadian Berandol company). These included “Turn On the Sun,” “If I Had the Wings of a Dove,” “Cuckoo,” and by far my favorite, a Newfoundland medley. Here is the same Newfoundland set republished and remixed on the LP “Canada’s Favourite Folksongs for Kids.”
In lower elementary school we rather dabbled in the recorder. We got them in Grade 3, where I learned almost nothing, I could just peep out “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Then in Grade 5 we did them a little more; we learned “Scarborough Fair,” maybe also something else from the aforementioned record “Music Builders V.”
In middle school, we had a dedicated music class from Grade 6 with band instruments (the teacher somehow managed to get us to play “Grandfather’s Clock” or “Rakes of Mallow” all together on different instruments). Some members of my generation were harsh on the instruments and there was a gentleman who constantly came to school to fix them. The next school year it was decided to give “proper” musical instruments to seventh graders and give the sixth graders a recorder class. I was like, “ha! I escaped that and got the trumpet.” But the recorder teacher also put together a recorder band and at the annual arts night they performed three compositions / arrangements with synthesizer accompaniment by a Don Muro. “Capriol’s Caper” (Tordion, Pavanne and Bouffons from Arbeau’s Orchesographie), “Simple Serenade,” and “Rockin’ Easy.” I was impressed; it led me to pick up my recorder and teach myself that and more music on it.
My northern NJ, early 70s public-school music classes tried to teach us how to rhythm (and rests), and we had to learn a song that went:
Ta, Ta, tee-tee ta
Tee-tee, tee-teh, ta-ah
Recently Questlove was interviewed and he also knew that song, from his schooling down in Philadelphia
Ole Dan Tucker saw a ghost
In his kitchen eating a roast
…and I already have Ole-ole-ole-ole-ole-ole-aana! stuck in my head.
It was either 4th grade or 5th grade, Sister Adele was my social studies teacher and we focused the entire year on learning about the state of Wisconsin. And we had to stand up and sing both the college fight song and state anthem version of “On Wisconsin” each week.
We sang that at Steiner Boy Scout camp, which makes a lot more sense than in elementary school.
The biscuits at Steiner
They say are mighty fine,
One rolled off the table
And killed a pal of mine.
Gee ma, I wanna
Where do you wanna go
Gee ma, I wanna go home
I went to a Catholic grade school, every week grades four through eight would gather in the gym and sing.
Chairs to mend, old chairs to mend,
Mackerel, fresh mackerel,
Any old rags, any old rags?
Born Free
Clime every Mountain
Civilization, Bingo Bango, Bongo, I’m so happy in the Jungle etc.
Seventy Six Trombones
Thinking back, I remember “music class” in Grade 7. While it was supposed to be vocal music for all of us who did not play band or string instruments (i.e. we were to learn singing), it was apparent that while the teacher was quite capable musically, he was fed up with teaching kids who didn’t really want to sing, to sing. So he didn’t. And besides, he had to deal with boys whose voices were changing. Best to avoid the “singing” part of the curriculum.
So what did he do? He looked at music appreciation. I recall him playing Ravel’s “Bolero,” the whole thing, behind a lecture about Ravel and “Bolero.” He played the entirety of Jesus Christ Superstar, urging us to look at the rock aspects (“Superstar”) and the not-rock aspects (“I Don’t Know How to Love Him,” a gentle ballad). He read us Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which had nothing to do with music, but he liked it and he wanted to share it with us. That was rather nice, as he had a nice speaking voice and knew how to use it.
He had no intent to give us a test, but the school made him do it. So, we wrote his test. “Draw a half note. Who wrote the Ode to Joy? Draw the treble clef. Who wrote 'Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring?” Stuff like that. Easy-peasy, especially for those of us who had some degree of musical training.
Odd, but I kind of liked it. While we didn’t fulfil the Board of Education’s mandate to learn how to sing, I look back on that year and realize that I learned a helluva lot more about music in that classroom than “learning to sing” would have given me.
I’d learn to sing in a few years, when I joined church choir. As things turned out, in spite of knowing how to play a few musical instruments, I really like to sing.
In grammar school we sang the Battle Hymn of the Republic with a fake black-slave accent. (Obviously in an all-white town.) All the kinds were confused about why we had to sing that way. It was printed that way in the music book. “Mine eyes hab seen de glory ob de comin ob de lord…”
One of my favourite pieces of music is this adaptation of that tune:
Cattle from The Plow That Broke The Plain
In addition to BINGO previously mentioned, we had:
One song I have not seen mentioned yet that I learned as a child in the 80s:
“Big Rock Candy Mountain”
The cleaned up version of course. I only learned of the original lyrics with mentions of alcohol well into adulthood,
It was really depressing to have to sing “Sixteen Tons” at the start of class in first grade.
Rose Park area. We moved to Holladay a couple years later.
Boy howdy, was it ever. I haven’t been there for a very long time now, though. Hopefully it continues to become less saturated.
Oh. That does sound awful!
We were taught “Jamaica Farewell” with the lyric “I miss all my friends in Kingston town.”