The Non-Gay Kookaburra
An Australian principal has backtracked from his edit that took the word “gay” out of a popular children’s song.
Garry Martin, principal of Le Page Primary School in Melbourne told kids to change the words of Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree from “gay your life must be” to “fun your life must be.”
Martin told The Sydney Morning Herald that he wanted to prevent “fits of laughter” from erupting when school-aged boys sang the song.
The new rule caused an outbreak of condemnation and quickly became the latest example of political correctness gone mad.
Now, Martin has seen the error of his ways and has backed off the idea.
“Political correctness is very much to the fore in schools — what’s appropriate and what isn’t — and sometimes we rightly or wrongly err on the side of caution,” Martin told 9 News. “I guess that was hypersensitive of me.”
For the non-Australians who have never heard the song, here it is:
Related posts:
When the kids watch "The Flintstones", does he censor when they sing, "We'll Have a Gay Old Time"?
Maybe he should get some white farmer kids from jewish backgrounds to go sing it to mugabe, lol.
He should be teaching them the real meaning of the word, also, how it has been shanghaied (oops) by the popular culture to mean something that it should not…
Gay was until recently ,not synonomous with Queer,Pansy,Faggot,Fruit or other homophobic terms.
Back in the day we also laughed at the fact that ASS and the COCK crowed three times were in the BIBLE.
kerry said: “Gay was until recently ,not synonomous with Queer,Pansy,Faggot,Fruit or other homophobic terms.”
When I was studying Russian in high school, there was a Russian word our teacher used to translate as “gay”, resulting in titters through the class, until one day he stopped and announced “someone told me why you all laugh”.
My school was just 3 miles from Le Page primary school and the year was 1977. I can assure you that 33 years ago, we all knew what else gay meant. I can also assure you we sang the same song a few years earlier and no one felt any deed to change the words.