The thought has just occurred to me the older that I get,
That often given facts and time, how seldom 'twain have met,
The things we know get turned around confusingly enough,
All we learn in school when young just might be all wrong stuff.
The guy who invented phones? Was that Alexander Bell?
Based on the Swedish story, one surely could not tell.
And if you travel to Munich, Germany and visit their museum,
It shows phones began right there, displayed so you can see 'em.
Columbus started with four ships, but history here does hedge,
It really doesn't tell us that one sailed off the edge.
And World War I was started by the killing of that Duke?
Could that have been just nothing more than a historic juke?
Why must we all be victims of historical revision?
Why can't its learning be direct like adding and division?
But math is structured on a science and definitely is fact,
Around which base the student can't be victimized or jacked.
And now we read the North Pole find by Admiral Robert Peary,
Did not, in fact, occur at all. Our eyebrows arch, “Oh, really”?
Another con produced by those upon an ego trip?
Just simply false. Why don't we merely all those lessons skip?
More facts I'll need before I'll start believing news too soon,
Are we really all that sure that Armstrong walked the moon?
Don't sneer too much for once we were definitively told
That Peary and his crew had trod and that North spot had poled.
Copyright © 2011 by Frank Koerner
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