A lyricist slammed “moronic” teachers for changing the lyrics to his song to make it more politically correct at a history festival running from late June to early July.
Sir Tim Rice ripped schools in Wellington, New Zealand, for changing the line “children of Israel are never alone” to “children of kindness are never alone” in a song from his musical “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” which he collaborated to create with Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber, the The Telegraph reported Monday.
“They were doing the Joseph songs and they changed ‘Close Every Door,’ the last line ‘children of Israel are never alone,’ they changed it to ‘children of kindness are never alone,’ which was obviously being politically correct or something,” said Rice at the Chalke Valley History Festival.
“[They] interpreted the song completely wrongly, and what a rotten thing,” continued the lyricist. “And I only heard about it because someone tweeted me and said ‘did you approve this change?’”
Rice said that he did not approve the change.
“We came down on them like a ton of bricks and they said …’ we wanted to make it easier for the children,’” explained Rice. “I thought the point of teaching was to teach children to cope with hard things in life. This was moronic.”
“I mean Joseph is an innocent story straight from the Bible, and these people in New Zealand thought we were making statements about Israel and Palestine – bonkers.”
A local council in Wellington apologized, saying a “community coordinator made an error in judgment” and promised that the songs would be played unaltered, according to The Telegraph.
The Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to the school district for further comment but received none in time for publication.
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