Student suspended for singing 'threatening' song

[Sequoia]

A Gwinnett County high school suspended a junior for singing a song in class that referred to shooting a teacher.

Beth Anne Cox, a junior from Peachtree Ridge High School, was suspended for singing: "On top of Old Smokey, all covered with blood, I shot my poor teacher with a .44 slug." The verse is from a parody of the classic children's song "On Top of Old Smokey."

The incident happened during Beth Anne's German class Friday. She was suspended Monday.

Beth Anne, 16, said Tuesday morning she meant no harm in singing the lyric. Beth Anne said she was humming the tune in class when a friend asked her about the song. When the student said he didn't know the song, Beth Anne sang him a line from the parody version

<snip>

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/metro/gwinnett/stories/0509gwxstudent.html

[arwalden]

1. Glory glory halleluja

Ours went something like this...

Glory glory halleluja
Teacher hit me with a ruler
Met her at the door
With a loaded .44
and the teach don't teach no more.

I guess we're all destined to be axe murderers for singing such silly songs.

[Misunderestimator]

4. LOL! Too funny that I just posted the same song.

:hi:

[arwalden]

10. Johnny had a steamboat... the steamboat had a bell...

Johnny went to heaven, the steamboat went to... HELL-o operator, give me number nine... if you disconnect me, I'll kick you in the... BEHIND the 'frigerator, there was a piece of glass, Suzie sat apon it and cut her little... ASK me no more questions, tell me no more lies...

:hi:

As a child we laughed and laughed at that song... it was SCANDALOUS! We also though the "SHAVING CREAM" song was funny too.

[Left_Winger]

14. What's the Shaving Cream song?

Please share. :puppydogface:

I am finding all these songs a laugh riot; and I'm a German teacher.

[arwalden]

16. Shaving Cream (Benny Bell lyrics)

Shaving Cream


I have a sad story to tell you
It may hurt your feelings a bit
Last night when I walked into my bathroom
I stepped in a big pile of

Shaving cream, be nice and clean
Shave everyday and you`ll always look keen

I think I`ll break off with my girlfriend
Her antics are queer, I`ll admit
Each time I say, darling, I love you
She tells me that I`m full of

Shaving cream, be nice and clean
Shave everyday and you`ll always look keen

Our baby fell out of the window
You`d think that her head would be split
But good luck was with her that morning
She fell in a barrel of

Shaving cream, be nice and clean
Shave everyday and you`ll always look keen

An old lady died in a bathtub
She died from a terrible fit
In order to fulfill her wishes
She was buried in six feet of

Shaving cream, be nice and clean
Shave everyday and you`ll always look keen

When I was in France with the army
One day I looked into my kit
I thought I would find me a sandwich
But the darn thing was loaded with

Shaving cream, be nice and clean
Shave everyday and you`ll always look keen

And now, folks, my story is ended
I think it is time I should quit
If any of you feel offended
Stick your head in a barrel of

Shaving cream, be nice and clean
Shave everyday and you`ll always look keen

[Left_Winger]

20. Danke sehr!

:rofl:

[arwalden]

24. Bitte!

[arwalden]

23. My German Teacher Frequently Assigned Silly Projects...

... like translating songs into German. We always had the most fun whenever we got to translate commercial jingles into German... or whenever we got to act out our favorite TV commercials in German.


Hungrig. Hungrig Jack!
Sie essen ihn alle und die Teller kommt zurück.
Für hungrigen Jack.
Das ist mein hungriger Jack.
Ich glaube du ein auch hast.


Ja, haben wir keine Bananen.
Wir keine Bananen heute haben.

[Left_Winger]

31. I do the same thing

I can only keep the attention of teenagers for limited amounts of time within the traditional curriculum. So, one thing I do to keep their interest is by doing silly things and connecting them with the subject; and they seem to enjoy this.

[Sequoia]

15. I heard that song on The Simpsons.

[RebelOne]

18. Oh, it has been so long since I have heard that song.

I loved to sing it because it was so "shocking."

[Misunderestimator]

26. Here's a tamer one I remember...

On top of Spaghetti
All covered with cheese
I lost my poor meatball
When somebody sneezed.

It rolled off the table
And onto the floor
And then my poor meatball
It rolled out the door.

It rolled down the sidewalk
And under a bush
And now my poor Meatball
Is nothing but mush.

[B3Nut]

25. The version I always heard went

Glory, Glory hallelujah!
Teacher hit me with a ruler
shot her in the butt
with a rotten coconut
And she ain't my teacher no more...

I guess we were a little less blunt. ;)

Ah, school days...hated nearly all of it. Non-athletic arty geek types never did fit in...

Todd in Beerbratistan

[northzax]

36. ours was...

Glory, Glory hallelujah!
Teacher hit me with a ruler
I hit her in the can
With a broken rubber band
And she ain't my teacher no more...

[Misunderestimator]

2. Wow. Five days suspension.

It's understandbly bad to express anything threatening in classrooms, but holy crap... five days for singing a stupid parody of a children's song? Just the other day I was remembering the parody Glory Hallelujah that my brother used to sing... "Glory, Glory, Hallelujah, Teacher hit me with a ruler, Met her at the door with a loaded .44, and she ain't my teacher no more." Of course, he was suspended from school for putting bombs in toilets, but that's another story.

It very much depends on the history of the student and the intent she had when singing it. Sounds like she was pretty innocent in this case, and that the teacher used it as an excuse to do what he wanted to do anyway.

[kay1864]

3. Hmm...

Suzanne Cox, the girl's mother, said her daughter has had problems with her German teacher. Cox said she and her husband asked in December that Beth Anne be allowed to transfer out of the class, but that their request was denied.

Sounds like the teacher might have been looking for an excuse to punish her.

What sucks about this is there's no recourse or appeal, because the student has already been punished. In the real world, there's first an arrest, then a chance to plead your case (like the Atlanta nurse arrested for her "BUSHIT" bumper sticker, then the judge threw out the case).

In school, it all happens at once, so there's no chance to undo what's been done. Why can't schools carry out the suspension later, after a one-time appeals process?

Yes, I understand that our school officials have enough to do without having to handle appeals and angry parents, but I don't like the message this teaches our kids--that a principal is judge, jury, and executioner.

[realisticphish]

13. well

schools are in loco parentes. There's no perceived requirement for kids to have an appeals process against their parents

[kay1864]

27. Well at least parents

usually witness the crime (Johnny breaks the vase, then goes into time out or whatever).

This situation is more akin to a neighbor saying Johnny broke her vase, and parent whips Johnny without getting Johnny's side of things.

I'll admit the facts are meager here. Did the principal question other students? Why did her parent request transfer to another class in December?

Either way, I think the parents should have had their input before the suspension was administered. It's just too one-sided.

[skygazer]

5. And this teaches the kid...... what?

That you must toe the line or suffer the consequences?
That you have to watch what you say at all times?
That any deviation from the so-called "norm" is bad and punishable?

Good lessons for the present state of our country, I suppose. :(


I hated high school for all the above reasons. I understand the need for rules and discipline but shit like this just smacks of such arbitrariness (if there is such a word). Seems like school taught me more about the expectation of authority that I just shut up and take it than it did about anything else.

[eyesroll]

6. "Joy to the world, the teacher's dead. We barbecued her head!

What happened to her body?
We flushed it down the potty!
And round and round it goes...and round and round it goes..."

[Deep13]

7. Haven't heard that one before.

:spray:

[eyesroll]

17. Nelson sang it at Lisa in a Simpsons episode. nt

[Deep13]

22. HAH-hah! nm

[Sequoia]

32. My kid sang that song to me a few years back

and I thought it was totally funny. Teachers need to chill.

[ChoralScholar]

34. I heard that one about Barney the dinosaur. EOM

[JVS]

8. She should be expelled! In German class one must sing in German!

[Deep13]

9. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the school...

...we have tortured every teacher we have broken every rule.
We are marching down the corridor to hang the principal.
Our truth is marching on...


Sorry, individuals are not allowed in this country anymore. Only compliant human-robots are permitted in the national machine.

Repressed student today, serial killer tomorrow.

[SteppingRazor]

11. Wow. We used to sing that all the time. IIRC, it went like this:

On top of Old Smokey, all covered with blood
I shot my poor teacher with a .44 slug

I went to her funeral, I went to her grave
Some people threw flowers, I tossed a grenade

Went to her tombstone, found she wasn't dead
Took a bazooka, and blew off her head

Now I'm in prison and it's not too cool
But I'll tell you one thing, it's better than school



The nuns used to yell at us for it, maybe even dish out a detention, but certianly no one ever got suspended.

[tigereye]

12. it astounds me that there is no line between the statement and

the potential act anymore. A quick chat with the school psych. probably would have revealed that there was no malice aforethought.

As MacLuhan said, the map is not the territory.

and another quote...

The ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding.
Francis Bacon 1561-1626

;)

[Left Is Write]

19. Good thing I never got caught singing "I Don't Like Mondays" in school.

[Deep13]

21. Some HS kid here is Assfux, OH said to me...

...that he liked my raincoat and said they were not allowed in his high school. (It's one of those London Fog knock-offs.) I asked why not and he said it was because of the "trenchcoat mafia", the group of students who shot up that school in Colorado. How come when I thought I have heard the most stupid thing even, along comes the most stupid thing ever. As if raincoats turned them into criminals!

[ghostsofgiants]

28. And once again, NN2S seems vaguely applicable...

[RebelOne]

29. I think I would be a tad upset if I was a teacher

and a student sang that song in my class.

[Goblinmonger]

30. OK, I'll play devil's advocate

I'm a high school teacher and don't think I would freak if some kid sang that in my class.

But do you fault someone for being a little worried. Someone posted above that the kid didn't like the teacher and wanted out of the class. The first reaction was that the teacher was looking for a way to punish the kid. Maybe the kid has been a complete fuck in class and this was just the straw that broke it. I don't know either way, but either scenario is valid. I don't know many principals that would suspend like that if this was an out of the blue occurrence.

I mean, if some random good kid was singing that song and I felt threatened, I would ask what was up. They would tell me that their neighbor didn't know the song. All would be well.

[kay1864]

33. Well actually I said

"might have".

Reading between the lines, I inferred that there was a personality conflict of some sort (why else would the *parents* request the transfer?). I myself had that once with a teacher in junior high (and fortunately I got transferred to a different classs--where I scored an A). Teachers are human, after all, and *if* there in fact was a personality conflict, I wouldn't be surprised if the teacher seized on this situation.

There's also no evidence of her being a troublemaker--she was asked to serve on the school's student leadership team next year, and she's one of the school's student athletic trainers, working on the sports medicine staff with an MD.

But as I said, the facts, sadly, are meager here. She might be a troublemaker, who knows.

Either way--FIVE DAYS? And transfer to another school? Geez, give her detention if you have to. Damn.

[mwooldri]

35. This is way over the top punishment.

Glad I don't have kids in Gwinnett school district. Based on this one story, the teacher probably had it in for this pupil (as they call students at school in England). I've seen personality conflicts in the past and fortunately the worst I've seen is detention. The one time I heard of my peers at school taking cannabis on a school trip - they got expelled for that one. But I was singing far worse than that at school. Unbeknownst to me I was singing as a young kid a racist version of Eenie Meenie Miney Mo. And it's a n***er you're catching by the toe. And I didn't know what a n***er was until I got a lot older.

Mark.

[liontamer]

37. well, she won't do that again

and nobody in the school will either. Suspension isn't the worst thing in the world.