A question: how does any state
Deserve the appellation great?
For vast domains? Success in arms?
Or thriving factories and farms?
Is it for arts, for justice, law,
For making, selling more and more?
Now, all such riches we admire,
And yet one glory ranks still higher
Than all of these: a country’s wealth,
Its true certificate of health,
The real greatness of a nation,
Is measured by its Education.
For fame and empire soon fly past
But precious truths forever last,
And no resource is so refined
As that of an accomplished mind.
Let us, then, visit Albion’s shore
And see what gold the schools there pour
Into the mind of every child
To lighten gloom, and tame the wild.

What’s this? A leafy, tranquil court
Abutting scenes of earnest sport.
Its ancient ivied walls exclude
The lower-earning multitude.
Where are we? Ah! A Public School,
Where ruling classes learn to rule
From beaks, who teach the young to lead
By slaving to their every need.
How combed and manicured and neat
Are these, Great Britain’s young elite!
They’ve earned, through lavish extra aid,
Their destined and outstanding grade
And, far ahead in life’s rough race,
In Oxbridge take their cushioned place.
Once there, they’ll leisurely imbibe
The rituals of the ruling tribe,
While gleaning from their ancient college
A mannered substitute for knowledge.

And yet they’re not all that remote.
For all our children learn - by rote.
To youngsters of each creed and class
Life has but one sole aim: to pass,
To satisfy the latest test
Designed by those who know what’s best -
The battery of bureaucrats
Nourished on targets, goals and stats,
Whose new-hatched plans fill all the schools
With fresh directives, golden rules.
Their ideal student’s one who crams
For all-important dull exams.
What matter if the following day
The knowledge gained has fled away?
For wisdom, learning do not thrill.
Today the magic word is skill.

And skills are what the teacher, too,
Must now laboriously pursue,
For he has learned that loving books
Earns only dark suspicious looks,
And that to cultivate his brain
He must not read or think, but train –
To mark, to manage, to appraise,
This is the work that truly pays.
Above all he must teach his set
To roam upon the internet
(For in the land of Pope and Wren
Scarce anyone now wields a pen:
No place of learning is complete
Without a smart computer suite,
Where truth and wisdom may be sought,
And coursework essays cheaply bought).
And then, in line with high decree,
Half go to university,
For never was a nation needier
Of graduates who have studied media!
The land’s awash with high degrees
In all the leisure industries,
And high-trained minds, steadfastly set
On paying off their student debt.

What need for summary, then? We’ve seen
That Albion’s grass is lushly green.
Long may this ancient noble land
Among the nations proudly stand,
Maintaining ‘How we educate
Is what makes Britain truly great!’