My kids go to a C of E school , and they learn hymns and traditional English songs again and again...
From "London Bridge is falling down" to God save the queen , hope and glory and more...
Even though we are not religious people , at least is teaching my kids tolerance and acceptance of other religions and cultures.
Despite it being a Church Of England school , they have Hinduism week, Judaism week , sihk week , Muslim week.... and at the moment Buddhist week.
Politheist and montheist religions.
Studying China as the terms topic , from pre Marco Polo, Genghis khan and the trade routes to present day manufacturing and culture .
Very inclusive school and not by any means patronising.
This is not a private school , is a free state sponsored school.
And that sounds the same for my kids schools, plus the one I work in. The 6-7 year olds where I work did The Great Fire of London last term, and will be doing Castle's next (with the obligatory visit to a castle). And thats standard every year - my kids both went to that school.
Traditional folk songs? I know they've done 'London's Burning', plus the usual ones that any kids will learn at school, but I dont expect them to learn any more folk songs than when I was that age 40 plus years ago.
Ah, but, those are English/english songs, not english as she is spoken in the Shires and the counties type English.
Folks songs, bothy ballads, songs from the old halls, songs from the fields, work songs, navvy songs, shanties
.those the children rarely hear, and even more rarely are taught. Maybe in a pub 
And in a pub, at work, in the fields were where they were always taught - I suspect that navvy songs (even the cleaned up versions) were not standard school fare. The standard school curriculum has never been set up to do anything more regional or adventurous than perhaps 'On Illkla Moor Baht 'at'.
Folk songs are something we learn in a community or family - and if that has broekn up, moved away, etc, then they start to die out.
We've become an increasingly urban species for millenia, and the societies of Western Europe have been largely urban and often highly mobile for a very long time. And even those close knit urban networks have become strained or broken - as is pointed out in
Brassed Off, how can you have a pit brass band when there is no longer a pit? It much more difficult to learn traditional mining songs from South Wales (where my grandmothers family worked in the mines), when people dont work in the mines any longer, but might get a job in a call centre or 'logistics'. The memory gets lost, and even in the 19th century, researchers were doing their best to gather up what they could before it was gone.
There was a report on Radio 4's
The One O'Clock News yesterday about the rise of Le Pen in France, and how she could win with the support of the rural vote. A commentator was quoted as saying that the rural areas want it all as it was, with no changes, even though their children know there not the jobs to support them, and if they get an education, they go somewhere else. And that explains perhaps the vote for Brexit and Trump - the yearning for a possibly mythical (or often long lost) tight knit traditional society, with its own identity, songs, etc.
The English culture is not going anywhere, English songs are sang and English literature is read in schools the country over. The idea that the countries culture is being eroded is pretty hyperbolic.
True. The biggest problem is due to the need for a narrow curriculum and thus only a relatively limited range as to what can be taught - there simply is the time for anything too different.
