It looks like we couldn't make it to summer vacation without another set of parents getting their undies in a bunch. This time folks across the creek in the GET school district are all affronted because there was too much sacred music in a recent high school choral concert.
I want to weigh in here before the Christian Taliban grabs onto this one and replays the typical rant about God-hating liberal secularism taking over our schools and putting us all on the road to Perdition and $5 a gallon gas. This silliness should be held up to proper public ridicule, not because it's an affront to the Almighty, but because whoever's doing the griping has no taste for or understanding of choral music.
Look, unless the kids are going to sing endless variations on a polyphonic Pop Goes the Weasel choral music is fundamentally sacred music -- from plainsong to Bach to Bernstein to George Harrison -- God just keeps creeping into those lyrics. I suppose if the schools wanted to be sure the kids weren't O.D.ing on spirituality, they could require the texts be sung in their original language -- which of course none of the students, much less their parents, would likely understand, but doubtless the tasteless oversensitive would still chafe.
As a former high school chorister, I can assure those concerned parents that the repetition of sacred lyrics by high school juniors eager for lunch is no more prayer than my forceful invocation of the deity upon walloping my thumb with a hammer.
It appears the GET administrators and school board are going about this in the great tradition of public education -- serious deliberation followed by a vaguely worded policy. What is needed is a sternly worded rebuke, tuition for Music Appreciation 101 and a year's membership in Minnesota Public Radio.
Enough of this silliness.
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