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Today's Bad Poetry post was prompted by a Washington Post Style Invitational contest (results forthcoming), whose prompt was simply "Write a funny poem about education."
As a child I wrote, with some help from my brother and other children who shared our unnecessarily long, dull bus ride, several dozen satirical poems about education. Being authored by children, most of them were arguably funnier than they were meant to be. The one that annoyed adults enough to get banned was a parody of our National Anthem that began with having to get up early to catch the bus, "Oh, say, can you see by the dawn's early light? No, they tell us it's day, but there's no sign of dawning." Then there was one about the traditional end-of-year party, sometimes referred to as the riot:
"The Principal said he'd punish us
(We know he would not dare)
Next fall when we come back to school,
And we don't care."
But since when have children ever liked school? Children enjoy specific days, classes or activities, people, maybe even books, at school, but any red-blooded child would rather be playing or even working at home than go to school.
I owe you a more balanced and adult perspective than that...and for some reason, this time, the thought of education reminded me that one of my teachers had a given name that began with "Ed." I thought of him when I thought of my brother's fourth-grade teacher, who is getting old and incoherent; she woozed up to me in a public place once and said, "I was your teacher!" and she probably believed it. No, Ma'am, you were never my teacher. I did fourth grade at a different school; my teacher was male. That was why, although both of us had the same form of math-dyslexia, I sailed through math classes with steady B's while my brother failed fifth grade math.
I didn't like old Mr. Ed Name-withheld-by-web-site-policy, in grade four. I wouldn't like him now. He was about as uncongenial an old bore as I've ever known. He just may have been the most effective teacher I ever had--the one who never told anyone in grade four they needed to learn a lot of seventh-grade math, but demonstrated, by the end of the year, that just by walking through problems with him all thirty-some of us had somehow learned all the math we'd need through grade seven.
So while I was trying to think of a song parody about food handouts , and finish half a dozen other things, what I found coming to mind was a less than lyrical, rhymed Bad Poem about Mr. Ed.
He didn’t want grade four to know his name.
His given name was Mister, so he said;
So naturally some person lacking shame
Told everyone his given name was Ed.
(When he was tired, he brought his mind around
With “Divide. Multiply. Subtract. Bring down.”)
He went to college on the G.I. Bill
After surviving the Pacific war.
A teaching job was what there was to fill.
He did his job. That was what men were for.
(When he was tired, he brought his mind around
With “Divide. Multiply. Subtract. Bring down.”)
His hair was black when he learned Japanese
Had to be killed, or else they would kill you.
As it turned white he learned these enemies
Should be held up, examples of what to do.
(When he was tired, he brought his mind around
With “Divide. Multiply. Subtract. Bring down.”)
He’d learned that girls were “beautiful but dumb,”
Too. He got in his teaching years before
The evidence mounted that this axiom
Had never been true. Fooled him. What a bore.
(When he was tired, he brought his mind around
With “Divide. Multiply. Subtract. Bring down.”)
He’d never cared for reading much himself,
And let it show while plodding through the book.
For history and science, kept a shelf
Of films and filmstrips at which we could look.
(When he was tired, he brought his mind around
With “Divide. Multiply. Subtract. Bring down.”)
He liked sports. If you didn’t? What a shame.
If he had ever heard of self-esteem
He would have said that losers were to blame;
Hard work alone their losses could redeem.
(When he was tired, he brought his mind around
With “Divide. Multiply. Subtract. Bring down.”)
He never cared for music, nor for art.
He took both off the schedule as a threat
To punish students who thought they were smart;
Deterrent to unruliness? I’d bet!
(When he was tired, he brought his mind around
With “Divide. Multiply. Subtract. Bring down.”)
He was the one who threw the spelling bee
By handing Catholic Chris the Latin word
That wasn’t in the English dictionary,
That only Catholic children ever heard.
Discrimination’s what they’d call that now,
Blatant discrimination. At the time
Some thought it might have done me good, somehow,
To come in second: certainly, no crime.
(When he was tired, he brought his mind around
With “Divide. Multiply. Subtract. Bring down.”)
I never liked him. That whole school, I hated—
So tidy, so well-funded, and so White:
A fossil teacher spouting thoughts outdated
Was least among the symptoms of its blight.
(When he was tired, he brought his mind around
With “Divide. Multiply. Subtract. Bring down.”)
I wouldn’t like him if I met him now.
Though many times refuted, he still quite
Failed to consider or imagine how
What he’d been taught was anything but right.
(When he was tired, he brought his mind around
With “Divide. Multiply. Subtract. Bring down.”)
He taught me all the math I’d ever learn
In school, and thirty others, just the same.
Numbers to universal truth return,
He said, despite all human praise or blame.
(When he was tired, he brought his mind around
With “Divide. Multiply. Subtract. Bring down.”)
Nobody had to master long division
In grade four. Fractions, decimals, percents,
Geometry? The idea roused derision.
We couldn’t understand, for three years hence.
(When he was tired, he brought his mind around
With “Divide. Multiply. Subtract. Bring down.”)
He plodded through his problems on the board,
Said, “If you know the answer, shout it out.”
Had we so chosen, we could have ignored
This rare permission, in grade four, to shout.
(When he was tired, he brought his mind around
With “Divide. Multiply. Subtract. Bring down.”)
Nobody liked Ed, from what I could see.
Nobody liked math. All the same, by spring
We’d all learned math, likewise geometry,
Up through grade seven. That was Ed’s main thing.
(When he was tired, he brought his mind around
With “Divide. Multiply. Subtract. Bring down.”)
He’d never get a teaching job today.
Those who call guessing “women’s way of knowing”?
That stereotype Ed lived out, every way,
Is that against which their rebellion’s showing.
(When he was tired, he brought his mind around
With “Divide. Multiply. Subtract. Bring down.”)
Yet when I want a child to learn a thing—
No ADHD, chatter, even frown—
I lift it up, point to its patterning:
“Divide. Multiply. Subtract. Bring down.”
Old boring Ed’s, the wisdom I now sing.
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