Dept. of Our Collapsing Schools

I found this by way of Caerdroia. Sung to the tune of Gilbert & Sullivan’s “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General”:

I am the very model of an Education Minister;

My arguments are tortuous, my motivation sinister;

But though my plans are ropy, and my reasons even ropier,

I’m laying the foundations of a socialist utopia.

I’m well aware the arguments the Tories use to blame us is

that schools without competition will foster ignoramuses.

But tolerating independent schools will be hypocrisy

since freedom’s incompatible with genuine democracy.

I want to see that everyone learns socialism properly,

and this is only possible inside a state monopoly;

All schools that I don’t recognise will therefore be prohibited

and any private tutors will be flogged or even gibbeted.

All middle-class morality I promise to eliminate;

Exams I shall abolish, since they certainly discriminate;

A college with a vacancy selecting its own candidate

will quickly wish it hadn’t, when it finds I have disbanded it.

I’ll throw away all covenants and charters international

with which I disagree, and which must therefore be irrational;

I short, in all of Europe from the Parthenon to Finisterre

I’ll be the most intolerant, intolerable Minister.

It would be funny if it weren’t apparently true.