Sunday, February 10, 2013

The Gift of Education




The Gift of Education
© 1975


Christmas came early this year
Rockefella played Santa Claus
Bought politicians and changed the laws
President made a lot of promises
About how things are going to be different

But empty stockings still hang
On my Johnny’s classroom walls
My son and yours still fight in a strange school’s halls

My child needs the gift of Education
It does not matter
if the term applied
Is integration or segregation
You cannot integrate a person’s mind
With blind, brute force

That is not the solution

Put your hand in your pocket
Stop squeezing the eagle
Send my child to school
In his own neighborhood

Busing my child away cross town
Will not achieve the integration
That I seek
Not while bias minds fight to keep his beauty down

I pay taxes
But my child is still getting hand me down clothes
Hand me down books, hand me down schools
Hand me down teachers
Boys fighting boys and their father’s too

That is enough!

Put your hand in your pocket
Stop squeezing the eagle
Build my child
A Good school
In his own neighborhood.


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