Teachers' Hard, Hard Times
1. Come all you good people, I'll sing you a song
About B.C. teachers, how they get along
They teach all your children from five to eighteen
The rich and the poor and the bored and the keen
Chorus
And it's hard, hard times
2. You start with a new bunch of kids in the fall
You hope and you pray that your class will be small
Twenty-five children is plenty for you
And then there are cutbacks and you get forty-two
3. They're crammed in your class like sardines in a can
You try to come up with a good seating plan
But there's cursing and swearing and crawling the walls
Till you wish you could throw them all out in the hall
4. You go to the stockroom to get some supplies
You open the door and the tears fill your eyes
The shelves are all empty, you'll just have to wait
Though your textbooks are twenty-five years out of date
5. The lunch bell it rings and you're straight out the door
You've run out of worksheets, you'll have to print more
But the ditto is broken, and that ain't the worst
For your coffee's stone cold and your bladder's near burst
6. The best thing to do is to fight with a will
Together I know we can get rid of Bill
Of Bill Vander Zalm and of bill 89 [pick a number!]
And of Bill Bennett too, then we'll all be just fine
by Rika Ruebsaat, written for Cultural Workers Against the Budget
for 1983 Solidarity campaign.
note: Back in the early 50's, there was (NYC Teacher's Union):
In a classroom, in a schoolhouse
Excavating for a brain
Stood a teacher, a pretty creature,
With her children raising Cain.. RG
JB
oct96
Thanks to Mudcat for the Digital Tradition!