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Pop! goes the curriculum: songs to inspire primary school children

Keir Starmer is on a personal mission to promote music to the under-11s. From rock’n’roll to Jonathan Richman, our writers suggest songs for an alternative schooling

First, play something that constituted pop music before Little Richard et al arrived: Dickie Valentine’s The Finger of Suspicion, Anne Shelton’s Lay Down Your Arms or Guy Mitchell’s frankly horrifying paean to fatherhood, Feet Up (Pat Him on the Po-Po). Over melancholic piano keys, he opens by recalling how he spent his recent birthday in hospital with his brother and mum for reasons unknown, before launching into a single, spiralling verse of relentless wordplay and raw expression. Many Rivers to Cross is one of the great songs about migration: a reminder to our schoolchildren – and more importantly, Keir Starmer and Labour – that you can’t turn your back on human rights and outsource your morality, no matter how many cheap votes you think it might buy you.

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