The passing of Tom Lehrer ’47, A.M. ’47, G ’66 on July 26 at the age of 97 was noted this week in The Washington Post, The New York Times, and many other publications. A mathematician by occupation, Lehrer penned devastating send-ups of contemporary culture during the 1950s and ’60s, set to popular show tunes and his own compositions, establishing himself as a satirical lyricist of singular talent (or as he might have quipped, “wasted talent”). His collected recordings and lyrics, which often mentioned his alma mater, can be found here. One journalist this week aimed to gather “every mention of Harvard in the lyrics of Tom Lehrer”—and nearly succeeded.
Not included was a poem Lehrer wrote while still in high school, “Dissertation on Education,” which was republished during Harvard Magazine’s centennial in 1998. The poem, which ends with the lines “I will leave movie thrillers/And watch caterpillars/Get born and pupated and larva’ed,/And I’ll work like a slave/And always behave/And maybe I’ll get into Harvard...” first appeared in the Loomis Alumni Bulletin in the spring of 1943.
That fall, the Bulletin followed up to report that Lehrer had indeed gotten into Harvard, adding that “The headmaster of Exeter, it is said, carries [the poem] in his wallet; it was read aloud to the entering class at Harvard last June; and the graduating class of a New England school sang it at commencement exercises.” In tribute to Lehrer, Harvard Magazine here reprints the poem in its entirety as it appeared in the College Pump column of February 19, 1944.
~The Editors
Dissertation on Education
Education is a splendid institution,
A most important social contribution,
Which has brought about my mental destitution
By its own peculiar type of persecution.
For I try to absorb
In the midst of an orb
Of frantic instructors' injunctions
The name of the Fates
And the forty-eight states
And the trigonometrical functions,
The figures of speech
(With the uses of each)
And the chemical symbol for lead,
The depth of the ocean,
Molecular motion,
The names of the bones in the head,
The plot of Macbeth
And Romeo's death
And the history of the Greek drama,
Construction of graphs
And the musical staffs
And the routes of Cortez and da Gama,
The name of the Pope,
The inventor of soap,
And the oldest American college--
The use of conceits,
The poems of Keats,
And other poetical knowledge.
I'm beginning to feel
I don't care a great deal
For the reign of the Emperor Nero,
The poems of Burns,
What the President earns,
And the value of absolute zero,
The length of a meter,
The size of a liter,
The cause of inflation and failure,
The veins and the nerves,
Geometrical curves,
And the distance from here to Australia,
Reproduction of germs,
Biological terms,
And when a pronoun is disjunctive,
The making of cheese,
The cause of disease,
And the use of the present subjunctive.
I wish that there weren't
Electrical current,
Such places as Rome and Cathay,
And such people as Watt
And Sir Walter Scott
And Edna St. Vincent Millay.
I don't like very much
To learn customs and such
Of people like Tibetan lamas,
And I'd like to put curbs
On irregular verbs
And the various uses for commas,
International pacts
All historical facts,
Like the dates of Columbus and Croesus,
Bunker Hill, Saratoga,
And Ticonderoga,
The War of the Peloponnesus.
But although I detest
Learning poems and the rest
Of the things one must know to have "culture,"
While each of my teachers
Makes speeches like preachers
And preys on my faults like a vulture,
I will leave movie thrillers
And watch caterpillars
Get born and pupated and larva'ed,
And I'll work like a slave
And always behave
And maybe I'll get into Harvard...
