Evensong

SJK The school provides many tedious activities, but there is one that I would like to focus on; its name is Evensong. Evensong consists of three main annoyances. The most bearable one in my opinion is the fact that when we enter the chapel, we must be completely silent. The next problem is the fact that during Evensong, we must stand up and start singing some songs that we sing every time. The worst part of Evensong though, is that we have to pray. For me and for most of the people in my class we get sick and tired of doing do the same thing over and over again every Friday.

Being silent is not that difficult, but when we are told to be like that for almost an hour, you’ve gone too far. Personally, I am perfectly fine with being silent for a little bit, or to be silent while being occupied, such as being silent while writing this blog, but when I am listening to announcements and the choir, it makes me feel so fed up. We need to find a way to fix this. I believe if we had something like a ‘break’ in the middle of Evensong, we could get relaxed, and we would be able to refocus. This will allow us to gather more information from the announcements.

During chapel there is two instances in which we stand up, one of them is singing. I find singing to be quite enjoyable, but going over the fact that this singing is about religion, and the reality of singing some songs a hundred times just feels like a little bit to much. Even though we do end up singing some new songs sometimes, I find that it doesn’t occur enough times. If every chapel session had a different song, it would spice things up. We would learn new rhythms, lines, and tunes, and it would end up improving our singing skills.

Continuing from the last paragraph, the second instant that we stand up is while we pray. I do understand that this is extremely important for some people because they are following their religion; for others though it’s a repetitive, tedious, and annoying task. The reason I find this to be is because that every chapel we say the same afternoon prayers every time, “Our father, who art in heaven, hollowed be thy name, in thy kingdom come...” I would say that a way to fix this is to say different prayers, but I do understand that this is what they are required to do. Even though I appear to have no solution to this problem, I do have one to Evensong.

Make it optional. Allow the kids who want to sing, pray, and follow their religion to go to Evensong. Allow the other kids to stay inside the school and participate in activities such as reading and doing research. This will fix most of the problems for everyone. They would be able to do what they want to do, and learn at the same time.