Do you have to dress smart to make wise?

Can you better teach art wearing ties?

Aren’t there so many places

More suited to airs and graces

Than one which education supplies?

Can we make divergent thinking the norm

Whilst we’re all being forced to conform

To what seems to me an antiquated fashion

Amputated of utility and passion?

A retrograde step dressed up as reform.

Can’t we model a range of success

And then let kids decide for themselves which is best?

School should be a about great learning

Not only how to prepare for greater earning

Which appears modern academia’s only interest.

Will there still be many jobs found in white collars

In which our youngsters can run around chasing yen, pounds and dollars?

Given how low our economy’s been laid

By own bowler hat brigade

Surely we need fewer merchant bankers and more scholars?

Do silk slip knots link us to the serf

Whose sweat once tilled this nation’s earth

While they apparently,

Unlike we

Weren't free?