A comment on even more cuts in educational spending

(to the tune of Jimmy Crack Corn)


My daughter came home from school last night;
she'd just started learning to read and write:
it's the saddest thing I've ever seen –
because my daughter is seventeen.

chorus
But it's a state-run school and the state don't care,
a state-run school and the state don't care,
a state-run school and the state don't care,
the future's gone away.

Sixteen kids share a tattered book,
all of them trying to get a look;
around the kids the books all pass,
even though there's forty in a class.

Tomorrow's people will be in a state –
a world to which they can't relate;
in a sea of national apathy –
it could never happen to you and me.

One day all people will be the same,
unable to read, or write their name,
totally unfitted for
anything but manual labour.

The bosses, of course, will be the few
who've got more money than me and you;
and, being well-off financially,
can send their kids to university.

A two-class system is evolving now,
but this thing we must not allow;
a national of menials, working at low wage,
a technological Dark Age.

A people who can't read or write
won't put up much of a fight;
the ruling class can steal them blind ...
Could this be what they've got in mind?

Cos it's a state-run school and the state don't care,
a state-run school and the state don't care,
a state-run school and the state don't care,
the future's gone away.



1989 – sadly still as relevant these days