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April 3, 2008

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Glory Glory Hallelujah

girl with a machine gun

As far as I'm concerned, this is the whole point of user-generated content: Wikipedia's exhaustive entry on the popular generation-spanning parody children's song, "The Burning of the School".

Kids have been singing versions of this song about destroying their schools and torturing/killing their teachers and administrators since 1950's England. I heard a lot of variations between grades 2 and 5, but, of course, the song has been continuously developing in different regions and populations, and today the list of variations of the verses and chorus is vast.

Every version of the song seems to start with "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the school", and the chorus always starts with "Glory glory hallelujah, teacher hit me with a ruler", which is like a tribute to the olden days of public school corporal punishment that, even if it isn't practiced anymore, still serves as the justification for fantasizing about killing your teacher. A few variations of lines I hadn't heard before:

  • We have sliced the English teachers and have drowned them in their blood
  • We have wandered down the halls writing cuss words on the walls
  • We have bound and gagged the principal and tossed him in the pool
  • We have barbecued the principal, destroyed the PTA
  • and one funny, grisly variation that completely abandons the rhythmic structure of the song:

  • We have forgotten our multiplication tables, eaten our teachers and their families
  • The chorus variations are simpler, and are mostly based on different models of guns:

  • Met her at the gate with a loaded .38
  • Met her at the door with a loaded .44
  • Shot her in the bean with an M-16
  • Shot her up to heaven with an AK-47
  • And a few dated ones that seem insufficiently gruesome by today's standards, or just don't make sense anymore:

  • I hit her in the bean with a rotten tangerine
  • Met her at the bank with a loaded German tank
  • Now that cops are arresting 3rd graders and charging them with conspiracy to attack their teacher with a paperweight, it's going to be hard for today's elementary schoolers to keep developing the song with new and innovative violent imagery. Keep the underground parody song movement alive, kids!

    categories: Culture, Education
    posted by amy at 10:48 AM | #

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    Comments

    That fluffy jacket is tranny fierceness.

    Posted by: Christian at April 3, 2008 12:23 PM

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