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Kookaburra Song Loses the Word "Gay"


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An Australian primary school has removed the word “gay” from the children’s folk song “Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree.”

According to The Herald Sun, officials at Cheltenham's Lepage Primary in Victoria have instructed students to sing “fun your life must be,” rather than the written “gay your life must be.”

Principal Garry Martin taught first grade students the song using an old tape. "It uses 'gay' and I just suggested to kids, 'Nowadays, that can mean different things, so let's just sing a fun old time,' " he said. "It was my decision to replace it. I guess that was hypersensitive of me."

But gay rights activists are taking offense, saying the principal is underestimating his students. I don't think that's a very good message for kids to have, particularly when they've been working really hard to bring in respect and diversity into schools," Crusader Hillis, from the LGBT activist group Also Foundation, told The Sun.

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Reader Comments
  • Name: Sarah
    Date posted: 9/2/2010 10:49:35 PM
    Hometown: Melbourne

    Comment:

    I think you'll find the band was Men at Work.

  • Name: Tom
    Date posted: 9/2/2010 9:13:28 PM
    Hometown: Phoenix

    Comment:

    Contrary to popular belief, "Kookaburra" is NOT a folk song in the public domain. It was written in 1932 and still has an active Australian copyright. The copyright holder sued the band Men Without Hats last year for using a phrase from "Kookaburra" in the song "Down Under"--and they won.

  • Name: Molly
    Date posted: 9/2/2010 2:18:56 PM
    Hometown: Baltimore

    Comment:

    I always thought the last line was "Save some gum for me" until recently, anyway.

  • Name: Greg
    Date posted: 9/2/2010 9:29:02 AM
    Hometown: Providence RI

    Comment:

    J.R.R. Tolkien used the word "faggot" in "The Hobbit," referring to campfire wood - in a cheerful (gay?) elves' poem, yet - which freaked me out at the age of 10 or 11. I wonder how teachers deal with THAT one.

  • Name: Guy
    Date posted: 9/2/2010 7:08:29 AM
    Hometown: Austin, TX

    Comment:

    What's the point of teaching a traditional folk song if you are going to modernize the words? The word, "gay" in this instance becomes a valuable teaching opportunity that is two-fold. Instead, words are changed to protect the ignorant.

  • Name: man-e-faces
    Date posted: 9/2/2010 1:45:32 AM
    Hometown: pali

    Comment:

    I can understand the need to adapt but it's also a teaching opportunity. Words change and some awareness of the broader shifts mean you're not thinking "this bread is made by dumb women" or "wait- did the boy in Titanic say he saw this on Nickelodeon?" (I had classmates who thought that. And then there's this, at 3:40. Cinderella is most likely not being told to pick up women here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAJr1ixBdIc

  • Name: jack mack
    Date posted: 9/2/2010 1:13:41 AM
    Hometown: san antonio

    Comment:

    I don't have a problem with this choice. The word has changed meaning. Most kids now think of "gay" as meaning "homosexual" or "lame," instead of "homosexual" or "happy." So "lame your life must be" doesn't really work. It's a music class, not poli-sci for goodness sake. I can understand those who take offence, but must, in this case, accept that it just doesn't bother me. I also think "under God" should be removed from the pledge of allegiance and believe in translating Shakespeare into modern English in the classroom.

  • Name: Jeannie
    Date posted: 9/1/2010 11:11:49 PM
    Hometown: Tempe, AZ, Earth, USA

    Comment:

    "But it does remind how LGBT churches nowadays rewrite traditional hymns so they don't include the 'sexist' words "Lord" or "He" for God." Unitarian/Universalist Church Hymnals edited out God altogether over a decade ago.

  • Name: Dale
    Date posted: 9/1/2010 10:54:38 PM
    Hometown: Wollongong, AUS

    Comment:

    The school Principal has been taken to task over his choice on national televison and has changed his mind and changed the song back. Apparently he will now educate the students on the various meanings. Political correctness gone wrong....

  • Name: DekE
    Date posted: 9/1/2010 10:05:25 PM
    Hometown: hINO JP

    Comment:

    oops, I meant, If you don't like it as it is...



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