Well, they taught me to read when I was three
Encycloped' and such, from A to Z
Doing math in head: age of five, and playing chess, too
Well, public school, it was no fun for kid
But the meanest thing that they ever did
Was to make me read 'bout Dick and Jane and Sue [1]

Well, I got so bored in school, I thought I'd choke
So to liven things a bit, I would crack a joke
It seems through all of school, I'm in deep doo
The kids would giggle; the teach, turn red
To Principal, I would then be led
I tell ya, life ain't easy with a high IQ!

Well, of school, I'm sick, it was torture, mean
My wits got hard; sarcasm, keen
I daydreamed through each class 'til it was through
But I made me a vow to the sun and sea:
I'd escape this jail, and soon be free
And do whatever-TF I wanted to

Well, I could never wait till mid-July
And vacation time, but that time would fly
I knew that come too soon, I'm back in class
And an old buffoon with a mind of crud
Stood at the blackboard, chewing cud
And my dirty, mangy mind would get so crass

Well, I knew adults couldn't be so smart
It was age eleven when our minds did part
And I left them all in the dust while they watched me fly
Be they women, men; or young or old
They all seemed so dumb and they left me cold
So I said, "This shiite is through! And screw you, too! Now I say good-bye!"

Yeah! That's what I told 'em!

Honors course: not hard, and I aced the SAT [2]
And I told them where to stick all that
Was a National Merit Scholar and "Pun-na Cum Loud" [3] [4]
I skipped half of my coursework; no loss: AP [5]
And we had quite a ball, Mike Phelps, bong, and me
Sexin' and a' druggin' to the rock and the roll made me proud [6]

The world's a little tougher, though
Deal with people? Can't -- not what I know
Quadratic equation's an easier nut to crack
Sometimes I'd laugh, but then sometimes I'd cuss
From tryin' to talk to those "Jerks R Us"
I knew that sooner or late, I would end up wack

I tell ya, "Folks, this world is dumb
"And if you're just using logic, won't getcha' a crumb
"Because people believe the crap on TV they hear
"And it's not a good feeling to dumb it down
"To cope, I have to just play the clown
"Parodic punning now is my career"

Yeah!

I say, "Now life has been one hell of a fight
"And I know folks hate me just because I'm right
"It kills me now, when I have to deal with all these fools
"But I tell ya frankly: before I die,
"I'll go lookin' for the putz and I'll spit in his eye
"And kill the son-of-a-b*tch that screwed our schools!" [7]

Well! What could I do? What *could* I do?

I got all joked up, and I wrote down a pun
And it got me a "ha", and a Five and a One
And I come away with an attitude: stink of fart
And I think about it, now and then
Ev'ry time I try: talk to a wall again
And if I ever have a son, I think I'm gonna teach him:
Rap or Sports! Anything but "smart"!
A darn lonely game!




[*] As usual, feel free to skip the footnotes (like ya need moi to give permission!) -- only one of them is humorous.

[1] The "Dick and Jane" reader series was commonly used as a reading primer. It was chock full of highly-educational prose like, "See Dick run. Run, Dick, run. See Jane run. Run, Jane, run. See Spot (their dog) run..." Yeah, it was just as boring then as when ya just read that.

[2] For those outside the US: the SAT (originally, "Scholastic Aptitude Test"), is a common college-entrance criterion. Verbal and mathematical abilities are scored on a scale of 200 to 800, with a median of 500.

Fun fact: SAT scores declined steadily in the latter half of the twentieth century. The solution was not to improve the US educational system (d'oh!), but to make the SAT easier. In 1994, the SAT was "dumbed down" to re-center the falling average scores back to around 500. So, if you took the SAT from 1995 onward, you should subtract about 70 points from the verbal and about 20 or 30 points from the math to see what your scores would have been if you had taken it when we fossils did. If subtraction is too difficult, there is a free, handy calculator to convert old and new SAT scores linked in the outtro.

[3] The National Merit Scholarship Program in the US tests about 1.5 million students per year, of which fewer than 0.6% (fewer than six of every thousand applicants) ultimately win the scholarship. In other words, the cutoff is just above the 99.4th percentile level.

[4] "Summa cum laude" (with highest honor), the highest honor awarded along with a graduate's diploma, above "magna cum laude" (with high honor) and "cum laude" (with honor).

[5] "AP" = Advanced Placement: being allowed to skip certain courses, perhaps receiving credit for them, by testing satisfactorily beforehand. Quite the timesaver! (Typical examples: Freshman English or English Composition)

[6] Then: "Sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll". Now: "Condoms, Madonna, and Just Say No." Mwahaha!

[7] The author puts a lot of the blame on Columbia University, a major breeding ground for the "Look-Say" method of teaching reading, and for the "New Math", both of which have been dismal failures, as opposed to phonics and the Old Math, which worked.