Losing our history
Apparently, American schoolchildren have not been singing "Polly Wolly Doodle" all the day. Other schoolhouse staples--"Mary Had a Little Lamb," "You Are My Sunshine," "The Farmer in the Dell"--are disappearing, too. And with them, educators say, vital bits of America's history are being lost.
Marilyn Ward, a newly minted Ph.D. in music education at the University of Florida, set out to discover how well students knew 100 songs "representative of the American heritage." She created that list by questioning elementary school music specialists--and men and women over the age of 62 from around the country.
Ward then surveyed 4,000 elementary and high school music teachers--80 from each state--asking them to rate their students' knowledge of the songs, many of which were composed between the mid-1800s and early 1900s. Her recently released study reveals that California's students are least likely to know the old-school children's tunes, Nebraska kids know them best, and few students anywhere can sing the national anthem from memory. All told, kids generally knew no more than 1 in 5 of the tunes on the list. Patriotic songs did fare better than folk songs like "Shoo Fly," which was, Ward points out, Abraham Lincoln's favorite song to dance to.
What's clear regardless of region, says Mike Blakeslee, deputy executive director of the National Association for Music Education, is that kids are missing the chance to learn American history as it has been passed down for generations. Songs like "Erie Canal," a Tin Pan Alley tune written in 1905 describing a tough trip along the famous waterway--"I've got a mule and her name is Sal, 15 miles on the Erie Canal"--are the stories of the country's formative experience. "Music has always been what anthropologists call a `culture carrier,' " he says. More than television shows, he adds, songs give children a chance to make a collective history their own: "If you perform it, you own that little bit of American culture in a way that's far more profound." Navid Seyezashrafi, a 10-year-old from Paradise Valley, Ariz., knows this firsthand. He has taught his favorite songs, "The Farmer in the Dell" and "Bingo," to "my mom, my aunt, my other aunt, and my uncle--because they grew up in Iran."
What's more, notes Blakeslee, these songs are "rich stories that give a little picture about what America is all about," jumping-off points for history lessons. Take "Bicycle Built for Two." "When the bike and the song were first popularized [in 1892], it was one of the first forms of mobility that people who weren't wealthy had," he says. "If you had a bicycle built for two, that means freedom--you could go out with your boyfriend or girlfriend into the country."
Background noise. Today, however, kids don't seem to have the same opportunities to learn the old songs, as music education programs get cut to accommodate tight budgets and high-stakes test preparation. What's more, while baby boomers would "sit around for hours listening to music, kids today don't have that experience," says Jeff Place, who runs the Smithsonian's Folklife archive. "PlayStations, video games, and Disney videos are much more a part of their daily life."
Tara Kissane, the fine arts coordinator for Paradise Valley Unified School District, says that songs are an important part of social studies lessons there. The cross-continental railroad "was put together by human beings one rail at a time--it was all done by hand," she says. "Work songs like `I've Been Workin' on the Railroad' were an important part of an American tradition, and how people got through their day."
Of course, while some songs like "Oh, Susanna"--which was, Place points out, written by a Pittsburgh composer who spent little time in Alabama--are being lost, new songs are making their way into the unofficial canon. Adam Waltz, 11, says he loves singing the "old songs" with his parents. His favorite? Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive."
Singalong Classics
"Bingo"
"The Farmer in the Dell"
"Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush"
"Hickory Dickory Dock"
"Home on the Range"
"I've Been Workin' on the Railroad"
"If You're Happy and You Know It"
"The Muffin Man"
"She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain"
"This Land Is Your Land"
This story appears in the November 10, 2003 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.