Current Reading

This blog is primarily for me to blog my responses to books that I'm reading. Sometimes I blog about other stuff too, though.

Poverty by America by Matthew Desmond.

Word cloud

Word cloud

Monday, May 8, 2017

Common People

I have the song "Common People" by Pulp in my head.  Time to parody it and rant about the anti-intellectualism of the upper classes:
They're from back east,
They have no thirst for knowledge.
But they want to sculpt the kids in college,
That's where I
Caught their eye. 
They told me that their grant was funded,
I said "In that case we'll bring you to our department."
They said "Fine"
And then in thirty seconds' time
They said: 
"I want to teach the common people,
I want to help the common people learn,
I want to teach with common people,
I want to teach with common people
Like you."
Well, what else could I do?
I said "Huh.  I'll see what I can do." 
I took them to a freshman classroom,
I don't know why but I had to start it somewhere,
So it started there.
I said "Pretend your grants aren't funded."
They just laughed and said
"You're so funny!"
I said "Yeah?
I can't see anyone else smiling here." 
Are you sure
You want to teach the common people?
You want to teach whatever common people need?
You want to teach with common people?
You want to teach with common people like me?
But they didn't understand. 
They just smiled and spent their grant.  
Teach a class at six o'clock,
Thank your chair you have a job,
Grade some labs written by fools,
Pretend you liked to go to school,
Still you'll never get it right,
Cuz when you're working late at night,
Writing lecture notes for fall,
If you called your Dean they could stop it all, yeah,
You'll never teach like common people,
You'll never teach whatever common people need,
You'll never fail the common people,
You'll never watch your career slide out of view,
And then rant and drink
Because there's nothing else to do.

I need to add more.