Methinks this Foursome Needs to Come with a Health Warning

Methinks this foursome needs to come with a Health Warning (they’re just rude). So, cough, cough, you are hereby warned!!

No Wonder! (There are no working class heroes) No Wonder! (You little obnoxious weed) No Wonder! (You won’t get any pudding) No Wonder! (I think of you when I’m naked)

They were triggered, as I point out at the end of each of them, (chiefly) by the use of that dreaded word “discipline” by an educator-bureaucrat somewhere in my presence out on the Cape Flats – no, you can’t bribe me to name-drop!! Simply put, I reckon her sentiments are probably not unique or uncommon (to those places called schools).

(Neither am I naming our comrade-neighbour – I know some of you know him).

So too are the other “educational misdemeanours” I refer to – you know that in my perambulations I “pick up things”: quotes, headlines, comments, and the like. I then mix them up in my addled and tiny mind, interspersed with my old music. This time Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” and Beatles boy John Lennon with his “Working Class Hero” seemed to me to fit perfectly. Who of you can remember those days? Come now, confess!! (You could say you had an older brother/relative/friend/next-door-neighbour who was into this stuff).

Regards, DK, Friday morning, 29 February 2008, out in an Internet Café in First River helping young Riaana with some nasty-looking financial research for her retail management studies by the KAPUT, sorry CPUT (see, rude, I tell you).

No Wonder! (There are no working class heroes)

No wonder our children
grow up skewed
(soon as you’re born
they make you feel small)

We stunt them
discipline, and law and order
puncture their self-worth
(in our innocence
what with our native
intelligence and our rituals)

No wonder our children
take to drugs and
other such crutches
(religion, soapies and stuff
as we shout at them
cigarette breath on our lip)

Keep quiet, listen, speak
when you’re spoken to
(and stand in a straight line)

No wonder our children
are often muted and uncritical
(about tabloid pin-ups
and world hunger)

No wonder our children
trash the environment
with the examples we share

Urinating in public
(saw a taxi driver do that)
Drinking alcohol in public
(saw that too, near a church)
Littering in public too – all
out here in my part of town)

No wonder our children
go their own way
and want to free
their own minds

Triggered by that dreaded word “discipline”, used by an educator-bureaucrat somewhere in my presence, along with certain other educational misdemeanours referred to here. Penned with the able assistance of John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero” repeating itself on my turntable (banned here in the day, and not played on our SABC radio stations), Thursday afternoon, 28 February 2008.  Times change.

No Wonder! (You little obnoxious weed)

No wonder our children
grow up skewed
(soon as you’re born
they make you feel small)

We stunt them
discipline, and law and order
puncture their self-worth
(in our innocence
what with our native
intelligence and our rituals)

(When they’ve tortured
and scared you for
your growing-up years
they expect you to pick a career
but you can’t really function
you’re so full of fear)

Its just not cricket
you little obnoxious weed
says a grown human
in one time zone
to another in a lesser one
venting his ire and sporting wit

No wonder our children
need a National School Pledge
not to honour and obey
but so that they can respect
and tolerate each other
(as we dictate they should)

Its just not cricket
- the genteel man’s game -
(boys wear the pants)
where flesh gets trafficked
auctioned in the name
of the game and the market

No wonder our children
have grown tired
of the promised land
and the land we promised

Thursday afternoon, 28 February 2008, triggered by that dreaded word “discipline”, used by an educator-bureaucrat somewhere in my presence; and
(my) bemusement by an Australian cricketer utilizing the two big words (“obnoxious” and “weed”) in one sentence on a colleague from the Indian sub-continent. Helped along too by John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero”
(reproduced here in chunks) on my turntable – banned here in the day, and not played on our SABC radio stations). Things change.

No Wonder! (You won’t get any pudding)

No wonder you won’t
get any pudding
as you didn’t eat
your beetroot and garlic

No wonder you won’t
get an iota of respect
as you are clearly fattened
by our infamous gravy train

(Since there are no Chés
no Bikos, no examples shining
like our Sobukwes and Mandelas
no burning flame of self-sacrifice
personal and otherwise)

No wonder you won’t
get a (captive) audience
other than the ones
incarcerated behind bars
in our schools besieged

A captive (school) audience
quietened by threats veiled
in their interest you say
(they hurt you at home
they hit you at school)

We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave the kids alone

Might this become your catchphrase
borrowed from Pink Floyd
during our1980 school boycotts

Is this refrain there already
This time aimed (ironically)
at our supposed liberators
now our new functionaries
(who seem often to be just
the bricks in the wall)

No wonder you won’t

Triggered by that dreaded word “discipline”, used by an educator-bureaucrat somewhere in my presence. This time Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” dominates my turntable – the album was banned by the apartheid state in 1980 (if I remember correctly!). Penned with their song “Another Brick in the Wall” assailing my ears, Thursday afternoon, 28 February 2008, along with John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero” (also banned here in the day, and not played on our SABC radio stations).
No Wonder! (I think of you when I’m naked)

No wonder our children
grow up skewed
(soon as you’re born
they make you feel small)

We stunt them
discipline, and law and order
puncture their self-worth
(in our innocence
what with our native
intelligence and our rituals)

No wonder our children
say and do what they do
in your own image,
like it or not its all
your fault teacher,
preacher, indoctrinator
rote-learn, honour and obey

Like me myself
ruining the life almost
of an educationalist-colleague
teasing him when young
about his upper body weight
he reminds me recently
much to my shame

No wonder our children
and our children’s children (still)
are scarred and scared and
put up (defence) mechanisms
to ward off the evil tide
that is our “system”
that is us

No wonder

Highly amused, actually, at the true confessions of a comrade-neighbour from the old village. Again, ringing in my subconscious is that dreaded word “discipline”, used by an educator-bureaucrat somewhere in my presence, along with certain other educational misdemeanours referred to here. Ably assisted by John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero” repeating itself on my turntable (banned here in the day, and not played on our SABC radio stations), Thursday afternoon, 28 February 2008.

The more things change.

- David Kapp, davidkapp@webmail.co.za