Naming and overcoming

First order of business tonight is that I (finally) think I may have decided what my full name will be once I change it. The winner is: Elliot Lane Manning May Holloway.

Second, and last, something happened in my Chorus class last week that really disturbed me. You see, we don't have a very big high school Chorus (it's made up of 9 people, not including our instructor) and, on Tuesdays and Thursdays it gets even smaller because the majority of our group (except for 4 of us) have Gym class during the Chorus period. So on those 2 days, it's me and 3 girls and our instructor. Anyway...you get the picture. So, on Thursday of last week, the instructor informed us that she was thinking about having us sing an arrangement of the political uprising song "We Shall Overcome", which, as far as I know (or believed until this incident) is a pretty well-known song here in the U.S. My instructor and I were getting really "into" it because it's a beautiful song with soaring harmonies and swelling dynamics. And at the end of the song, the rest of the girls looked at us with these really weird expressions on their faces. One of them said, "I'm glad you guys knew the song 'cause I don't think any of us did". This shocked me! I attended the same elementary school as one of those girls, and I learned this song there! From as far back as I can remember, I've known that song! Maybe I just had a great music teacher that none of these girls had, but I thought it was kind of a common thing for schools to teach about society and the civil rights struggle (the African American fight, if not all the current ones).

I was not angry at these girls, but at their music teachers in elementary school, whoever they were. I wonder why I learned this incredible song while these others didn't. They're only 2 or 3 years behind me...did the teachings of elementary music education really change that much in such a short timespan?