The Full Text of “The Lesson”
The Full Text of “The Lesson”
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“The Lesson” Introduction
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Roger McGough's "The Lesson" was first published in his 1976 collection In The Glassroom. In this (very) darkly comic poem, a beleaguered teacher takes corporal punishment to an absurd extreme: the teacher gleefully massacres an entire class of unruly students in order to teach them a "lesson," with the great irony of the poem being that, in the end, no students are left alive to learn anything at all. Though the poem is satire (and In The Glassroom was billed as a book of poems for children), it implicitly argues the serious point that physical violence as a form of discipline has no place in schools.
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“The Lesson” Summary
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The classroom was a scene of utter chaos as the brave teacher entered. The rowdy, misbehaving students didn't pay him any attention, and the teacher's voice couldn't be heard amid the racket they were making.
"Today's topic will be violence," the teacher announced, "and I'm going to assign you homework. This lesson will be unforgettable."
The teacher grabbed a noisy boy and strangled him to death on the spot before choking the girl with greasy hair who sat behind him.
Next, he swung a sword through entire rows of talking students, gleefully chopping off whatever body parts were in his way.
He hurled his sword at a boy who walked in late, striking him dead. Then he started using a gun to continue on with this massacre.
His first shot wiped out an entire row at the back of the classroom (the place where the lazy, delinquent students tend to sit). The students fell down, deflating like blow-up lifeboats whose plugs had been removed.
When a frightened student—one who'd misbehaved by drawing on things—politely asked to leave, the teacher granted his request by shooting him point-blank in the head.
Wondering what was making so much noise, the school's principal came by and peeked into the classroom. The principal nodded in approval at what was going on and then threw a bomb inside.
Once the teacher had run out of ammunition and every chair in the classroom had blood on it, silence itself seemed to come forward and surrender.
The teacher admired the slaughter before him: a classroom filled with students who were either dead or would be soon enough. He then shook a serious finger at the classroom, insisting that this massacre should teach them something.
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“The Lesson” Themes
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Education, Disciple, and Violence
Roger McGough's "The Lesson" is a darkly satirical poem in which a teacher murders an entire group of students to teach them a “lesson” about how to behave in class. In taking the idea of corporal punishment to an absurd, violent extreme, this gruesome fantasy makes a serious point: there is no role for physical discipline in the classroom. For one thing, the poem implies, corporal punishment is cruel. For another, it’s ineffective: after all, when “the carnage” ends, there are no students left alive for the teacher to wag his “finger severely” at—that is, there are no students left to teach!
Teachers, the poem immediately makes clear, have their jobs cut out for them: classrooms can be hectic, even infuriating environments filled with misbehaving children. To illustrate this, the poem begins with a teacher "bravely" walking into a classroom where "chaos" reigns supreme. One boy is shouting, while another student arrives late; others are "chattering" away among themselves. No one, it seems, is listening to the teacher, whose own “voice” is “lost in the din.” Getting any actual teaching in such an environment seems impossible.
In an effort to curb this disrespectful behavior (and to maniacally vent his own pent-up frustration), the teacher promises to give his students a lesson about "violence.” He then proceeds to mercilessly kill them all—strangling a shouting boy and the dirty-haired girl behind him, “throwing a sword at a latecomer,” and blasting a “shotgun” at the back row of desks where the delinquents “hang out.” Even the principal gets involved, "toss[ing]" in a grenade" into the fray and implicitly giving his authoritative stamp of approval to the teacher's actions.
This is all an intentionally, ridiculously extreme version of corporal punishment in the classroom: the use of physical discipline to control students (think of teachers rapping one’s knuckles with a ruler, for example). Clearly, none of the students’ behaviors remotely merits the horror their teacher unleashes upon them, which might prompt readers to wonder if a student’s behavior ever warrants the use of violence.
The poem further implies that such discipline might not just be unethical but also futile. After all, it clearly doesn’t solve the issue of being able to teach! In the poem's ironic final line, the teacher smugly declares "Let that be a lesson” to a room full of “the dying and the dead”; while his voice was "lost in the din" of the student's chatter, now his voice falls on ears that literally can't hear at all. Thus while this unhinged outburst may have been darkly satisfying for the aggrieved teacher, it didn’t do anything to improve students’ ability to learn.
While the poem sympathizes with teachers' struggles to control their classrooms, it implicitly suggests there must be a method better than violence to keep students respectfully engaged. And if violence and terror aren't the answer, perhaps a better tack is one that helps students feel inspired by and excited about their lessons.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-40
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Lesson”
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Lines 1-4
Chaos ruled OK ...
... in the dinThe poem begins with an epigraph:
A poem that raises the question:
Should there be capital punishment in schools?This announces that what follows will ask (and, potentially, answer) the question of whether schools should turn to physical punishment as a method of discipline.
The poem itself then begins by setting the stage for "the lesson" to follow. A teacher enters a classroom that is already a lost cause: it's "ruled" by disorder and filled with loud, unruly kids whose voices drown out the teacher's own.
"Chaos ruled OK," says the speaker in line 1, likely referring to an old-school graffiti tag (e.g., Roger rules OK!). In personifying disorder itself as a kind of king, the poem establishes just how little control the teacher actually has here; he's a mere subject of this chaotic ruler. And listen to how this line captures the noise of the room with alliteration and consonance of hard /k/ sounds: "Chaos [...] OK [...] classroom." Try saying the line out loud—it's a racket!
The teacher, for his part, walks in "bravely," like a soldier nobly entering the battlefield. The kids, meanwhile, ignore him. They're a bunch of "nooligans," the speaker says—a.k.a. troublemakers (other versions of the poem sometimes use the word "hooligans" or "havocwreakers"). The teacher's voice gets "lost in the din," as though his authority evaporates into thin air.
This stanza sets up the poem's colloquial language and playful rhyme scheme. In each stanza, the second and fourth lines rhyme (an ABCB pattern; here, "in" chimes with "din"), creating a humorous, light-hearted tone. And that's going to be needed, considering what follows is a massacre!
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Lines 5-8
'The theme for ...
... you'll never forget' -
Lines 9-12
He picked on ...
... with grotty hair) -
Lines 13-16
Then sword in ...
... feet or toes' -
Lines 17-20
He threw the ...
... with his game -
Lines 21-24
The first blast ...
... plug's pulled out -
Lines 25-28
'Please may I ...
... temple and fired -
Lines 29-32
The Head popped ...
... in a grenade -
Lines 33-36
And when the ...
... in the air -
Lines 37-40
The teacher surveyed ...
... lesson' he said
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“The Lesson” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
Alliteration is part of what makes the language of "The Lesson" sound playful and, at times, almost cartoonish. This showy, musical alliteration is starkly at odds with the horror being described, and it thus adds to the poem's satirical tone.
Alliteration also helps bring the poem to life on the page. For example, the sharp /k/ sounds of "Chaos," "OK," and "classroom" in line 1 create lots of poetic noise to evoke the noisy classroom (note that the "K" of "OK" is a stressed syllable, and thus can be counted as an example of alliteration!).
Later, the harsh /g/ sounds of "garrotted," "girl," and "grotty" evoke the speaker's anger and aggression. Combined with the /r/ consonance ("garrotted," "girl," "grotty"), it sounds almost as if the teacher is growling in his frenzy.
The poem continues with this pattern, matching sound to weapon in line 13: "Then sword in hand he hacked his way." Thanks to all that breathy /h/ alliteration, it's not hard to hear a sword swishing through the air! Next, the fricative /f/ sounds of "First come, first severed [...] fingers, feet or toes" make these lines seem even more darkly comic and absurd; the teacher sounds like the bad guy in a cartoon. And in the sixth stanza, when the teacher has moved on to using a shotgun, the plosive /b/ alliteration of "blast" and "backrow" evoke the explosive boom of that gun.
Where alliteration appears in the poem:- Line 1: “Chaos,” “classroom”
- Line 10: “throttled,” “then,” “there”
- Line 11: “then,” “garrotted,” “girl”
- Line 12: “grotty”
- Lines 13-13: “hand he hacked / his”
- Line 15: “First,” “first”
- Line 16: “fingers,” “feet”
- Line 21: “blast,” “backrow”
- Line 24: “plug's pulled”
- Line 38: “dying,” “dead”
- Line 40: “let,” “lesson”
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Assonance
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Consonance
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Enjambment
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Irony
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Personification
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Pun
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Simile
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"The Lesson" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Ruled OK
- Nooligans
- Din
- Throttled
- Garrotted
- Grotty
- Hacked
- Chattering
- Those who skive
- Rubber dinghies
- Vandal
- Temple
- The Head
- Surveyed
- Carnage
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(Location in poem: Line 1: “Chaos ruled OK in the classroom”)
Was in charge. Reference to old graffiti trope (e.g., "Joe rules OK!").
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Lesson”
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Form
"The Lesson" has a simple, steady form: its 40 lines are broken up into 10 quatrains (a.k.a. four-line stanzas). Quatrains are very common in poetry, and this regular form adds to the poem's light, breezy feel.
These quatrains also resemble imperfect ballad stanzas (in that they use a common ABCB rhyme scheme and alternating lines of rough trimeter and tetrameter; more on that in the Rhyme Scheme and Meter sections of this guide). Such stanzas are traditionally used to tell stories and are also linked with nursery rhymes and hymns.
Thus even as the speaker is describing something utterly horrific, the poem itself remains normal and predictable. That creates a surreal tension between form and subject.
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Meter
"The Lesson" uses a loose rising meter. That means, for the most part, the poem tends to use feet that move from unstressed syllables to stressed syllables—feet like the iamb (da-DUM) or anapest (da-da-DUM). While there are occasionally other kinds of feet in the poem, this generally lends things a sense of lighthearted, forward momentum.
The odd-numbered lines are also usually a beat or two longer than even-numbered lines, creating a kind of see-sawing, back and forth feel. Finally, most (but not all) odd-numbered lines have feminine endings (they end with a dangling unstressed beat), whereas most (but not all) even-numbered lines have masculine endings (they end with a stressed beat).
Overall, one might call this a very loose mixture of iambic trimeter and tetrameter (lines with three or fours iambs a piece). It looks a bit like it's using ballad meter (albeit irregularly).
As an example of all this, check out the meter of stanzas 2 and 3—note that most of the feet are iambs, with a fair number of anapests tossed in:
'The theme | for today | is vio- | lence
and home- | work will | be set
I'm go- | ing to teach | you a les- | son
one that | you'll ne- | ver forget'He picked | on a boy | who was shout- | ing
and throt- | tled him then | and there
then garrot- | ted the girl | behind | him
(the one | with grot- | ty hair)There's a strong sense of forward momentum here, as well as a generally playful, musical sound. The bouncy cadence contrasts with the poem's grisly subject matter, reminding readers that this is satire.
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Rhyme Scheme
"The Lesson" has a regular rhyme scheme, with each stanza running ABCB. In other words, the second and fourth lines of each stanza rhyme, as in stanza 1:
[...] classroom A
[...] in B
[...] him C
[...] din BThis is the rhyme scheme of a ballad stanza (though the meter of this poem is very irregular), and it thus might call to mind the musical cadence of folk tales and hymns. The steady, predictable pattern adds to the poem's light-hearted and jokey tone.
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“The Lesson” Speaker
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The speaker in "The Lesson" is an anonymous narrator, relaying the story of this frustrated, maniacal teacher without comment. This is part of what makes the poem sound so absurd: the speaker describes what's happening during the teacher's massacre while remaining unobtrusive and detached. There's a notable lack of any moralizing on the speaker's part, which makes the poem all the more shocking (and, for many readers, darkly funny).
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“The Lesson” Setting
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The poem takes place in a classroom, perhaps somewhere in England (given the use of the word "Head" to refer to the school principal). The poem takes place in the modern day, or close to it, at least; the teacher's weapons span the ancient (the sword) to the contemporary (the shotgun), and the poem was written in the 1970s.
Readers can also gather that this classroom is a rowdy place, filled with students who chit-chat through lessons, show up late, or shirk their studies in the "backrow." On the one hand, the setting is totally normal: classrooms are often noisy places filled with rambunctious students.
At the same, the poem's language heightens this setting for comic effect: "Chaos rule[s]" the classroom like a ruthless king, while the fact that that teacher must "bravely" enter this space makes it sound like a dangerous warzone. The teacher's massacre is, of course, another example of heightening something comparatively mundane: he's taking corporal punishment to an absolutely absurd extreme. The poem is intentionally ridiculous in order to make a point: in reality, classrooms are far from warzones, and violence has no place in them.
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Literary and Historical Context of “The Lesson”
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Literary Context
Roger McGough is a contemporary British poet, playwright, children's author, and former school teacher known for his distinctive sense of humor and playful use of language. Born in 1937 in the outskirts of Liverpool, a port city in England, McGough was also a leading member of the Liverpool Poets. This group, which included Brian Patten and Adrian Henri, was strongly influenced by the American Beat poets of 1960s, particularly in their irreverence, humor, free-flowing verse, and references to everyday life in their work. The Liverpool Poets achieved considerable success with the publication of the group collection The Mersey Sound in 1967.
"The Lesson," comes McGough's 1973 book In the Glassroom. Primarily aimed at children, the collection is full of the dark, absurdist humor and wit on display in "The Lesson." McGough has written numerous other books for children, as well as a number of poems focused on the dynamic between kids and adults.
"The Lesson" has been the subject of occasional controversy since publication and even banned from some schools. In 2002, for example, a group of parents in New South Wales, Australia, demanded the poem be removed from textbooks; the government refused.
Historical Context
Britain in the 1970s was marked by class tensions, workers' strikes, and protest movements. 1970s Liverpool was particularly poverty-stricken, suffering from economic decline and joblessness. On the other hand, it was also a city rich in wit and culture, famously birthing the Beatles in the decade prior.
There was also a fierce debate raging throughout this decade about the goals and methods of education. Some favored a return to stricter methods of discipline in schools, while others argued for more modern, even experimental approaches. An estimated 10,000 students staged a protest in 1972 outside the Houses of Parliament, marching through the streets with placards reading "No to the Cane" (the cane was one of the preferred methods of administering punishment). Corporal punishment (the use of physical violence as a way of disciplining misbehaving pupils) wasn't fully outlawed until 1986, and privately funded schools didn't banish the practice for another 10 years or so.
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More “The Lesson” Resources
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External Resources
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"British End School Caning" — A 1986 New York Times article discussing Britain's passage of a ban on corporal punishment in schools.
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"No to the Cane" Protest Photos — Take a look at images from the day 10,000 British students protested against the use of capital punishment in the classroom.
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McGough's Advice for Young Poets — Watch the poet talk about his own craft and how young people might find a way into writing poetry.
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School in 1970s Britain — Check out some documentary footage of the education system around the time the poem was written.
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"A Life in Poetry: Roger McGough" — The poet looks back on his life and literary career for The Guardian newspaper.
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