School Days

So I'm hanging out with a 7 year old yesterday, and for some reason I started singing the ballad of Senor Don Gato - oh wait, I remember why - it was to get Mr. Roboto out of my head (we'd spent about 20 minutes changing the lyrics of that song to reflect toilet humor "Spank you very much, Mr. Roboto for helping me to poop just when I needed to!" - come on, he's 7, that was comedy gold!).
Anyway, he wanted to know where I'd heard Don Gato, and I told him I learned it at school in 5th grade. It's a powerful song, to have stuck in my head so long. We had to learn it for a camp performance - yup, in the 80s in Washington State, school districts actually took kids to camp. Public school kids. It was a magical time.
But the other song we learned and sang was Elvira by the Oak Ridge Boys. I didn't think too much of it then, but in these intervening years I wonder at having 10 year olds singing about "funny" feelings up and down their spines.