My Ds has brought this poem home from school and been told to learn it. Please come and give me your thoughts on wether I should speak to the school.

[MTPurse]

As the title says, Ds has came home from school today with a Poem to learn, He has to learn it to be read out between a group of them(apparently he was chosen to read it as he is good at drama/being dramatic).

This is all I know, I have no other info on what it is about and why he has to learn it yet

Now I am not into poetry at all so maybe I just don't 'get it' but I really think this is completely unsuitable for Children due to the context. I am not a strict parent at all but Guns , Knives, Swords and Violence have no part in my family life and I will not allow my ds to play cod and stuff like that, in fact we have had numerous arguments about this.

Personally, I get the humour in it and think it would be fine on a staffroom wall but aibu to think it is not suitable for children?

Here is the poem:

The Lesson

Chaos ruled OK in the classroom
as bravely the teacher walked in
the nooligans ignored him
his voice was lost in the din

'The theme for today is violence
and homework will be set
I'm going to teach you a lesson
one that you'll never forget'

He picked on a boy who was shouting
and throttled him then and there
then garrotted the girl behind him
(the one with grotty hair)

Then sword in hand he hacked his way
between the chattering rows
'First come, first severed' he declared
'fingers, feet or toes'

He threw the sword at a latecomer
it struck with deadly aim
then pulling out a shotgun
he continued with his game

The first blast cleared the backrow
(where those who skive hang out)
they collapsed like rubber dinghies
when the plug's pulled out

'Please may I leave the room sir? '
a trembling vandal enquired
'Of course you may' said teacher
put the gun to his temple and fired

The Head popped a head round the doorway
to see why a din was being made
nodded understandingly
then tossed in a grenade

And when the ammo was well spent
with blood on every chair
Silence shuffled forward
with its hands up in the air

The teacher surveyed the carnage
the dying and the dead
He waggled a finger severely
'Now let that be a lesson' he said

Roger McGough :

I'd be unwilling to sanction the time, effort and headspace for this poem. It's just not that good a piece.

Actually, they don't identify with the children - any time I've taught it they identify with the teacher.

The challenge is to stop them being too vocal about which teacher they feel would be most likely to feel like this - 'heh, after science this morning I bet Miss Jones wishes she could garotte Freddie & James! Ha ha!' type comments.

Yes, I can agree that you wouldn't teach it to a class containing children who'd actually experienced gun wielding adults in authority in their lives - just as you wouldn't embark on Millions if someone's mum had died over the summer holiday.

I'm not even much of a McGough fan- I've never read him for fun rather than work. But I'd still defend The Lesson as a very engaging text which is an effective way of introducing a range of poetic techniques, & which does tend to be remembered affectionately.

I think what's most disturbing about the poem in the OP is that it's about someone in authority committing violence on children

So's Harry Potter. Don't see anyone complaining about 10 year olds reading that?

Surely crying at that poem is engaging with it, Ovaries. I take the point of it being too much at 10, but at 15 I don't think that is unreasonable.

Studying it to the nth degree might be too much, but exposing teenagers to poetry that is difficult isn't really a bad thing.

I'd only object because it's not exactly Ted Hughes (just doggerel). But the content wouldn't bother me.

It's a very clever poem which was very funny when it first appeared but it has, now, unfortunately, been rendered unsuitable due to events in the decades since it was written. McGough wrote it at a time when schools were considered places of unassailable safety and security : the poem is only funny if it strikes us as impossible fantasy. After the Dunblane Massacre, in 1996, where sixteen five-year-olds were gunned down by someone associated with the school, schools could no longer be considered havens of safety, and security was massively heightened in an effort to keep children safe. To many of us now, the idea of mass violence in schools is too near the grain to laugh at, in any context. This is not to detract from the poem's literary merits - it's just that some works of art no longer fit the zeitgeist.

Horrible. I would not want my 10 year old to read this at primary school.

Love the young mans death posted unthread. I hate the poem the OPs son has though. It's not great poetry but more importantly it's just distasteful nowadays. I'm guessing it was written in the 60s/70s when children references would have been Tom And Jerry rather than Isis and Columbine.

^^ cross posted with Better

I can understand (just about) the objections to it, in a modern context. But this was the favourite poem I learnt at primary school in the early 1980s, when I was 8/9ish. I loved the dark humour, even at that age, and when reading the start of the OP found I could still recite it by heart after 30+ years. Now feel very old.....

X-post with others, the world really has changed since it was written.

Not a great poem. I suspect that some children will not have the maturity or insight to take this on anything but face value.

Was he ever a teacher? I think he might have been from those images...

Just read Battercall's post - emphatically agree

Completely agree with Better

I would not be allowing my child to learn it and would be explaining to the Head why he/she would have no part in it.

If a teacher used that poem in a class while my dd was in primary school I would complain. Never mind learn it by heart. Why would a poem about a teacher murdering students be a subject matter?

i think it's a great poem and my Dad read it to me when I was 9. I took it into school and read it to the class.

HOWEVER, the context back then (25 years ago) was very different. In this day and age, it would definitely be construed as politically incorrect.

I don't see any literary merit nor do I think it is particularly funny (also am I the only one who thinks it scans very clunkily). Lots of more nuanced, funny, subversive, poems out there that deal with better issues than classroom control from the teachers point of view.

I suppose it was shocking and therefore funny back in the day but it is certainly not appropriate now.

I'm mid 40s and I still remember that poem from primary school. We LOVED it! As others have said, really engaging

Sadly wouldn't be appropriate in our school,

I do see why you were shocked... but let's face it, Three Blind Mice is pretty awful, and yet we happily croon it to toddlers.

I really don't think this is appropriate. Might have been 30 years ago, but not now.

It's ancient. I did it at school 30 years ago and it wasn't new then. Children used to love it. It made them laugh but in the light of how the world has changed it might not be appropriate now. I haven't seen it used in schools in the 15 years I have been teaching- and I am an English teacher. Rather past its time I think.

In this interview with McGough he talks about The Lesson and people's response to it a couple of times:

www.burtonmail.co.uk/8203-MEET-POET-Roger-McGough/story-26145995-detail/story.html#ixzz3zu7jGM00

Rafa they didn't want to study it because of the intensity of the imagery in it; that's what I meant by "disengaged".