There’s A Lot Of Things You Never Learn At School

A popular song from 1902.
Words and music by Ed. Gardenier and Edwin S. Brill.


The sheet music:


Accompaniment by James Pitt-Payne:


Lyrics

  1. I confess when I left college
    With a bunch of high class knowledge
    My cranium was not its normal size
    All the high degrees I’d won them all
    The toughest problems done them
    I simply thought the earth would be my prize
    But I find my education
    Didn’t seem to jar the nation
    I find no streets named after me today
    I meet folks without much learning
    In a way beyond discerning
    They’re teaching me new wrinkles every day

Chorus
There’s a lot of things you never learn at school
There’s a lot of things that never go by rule
There’s an awful lot of knowledge
That you never get at college
There’s a lot of things you never learn at school

  1. Tommy’s teacher told the story
    Of George Washington’s young glory
    Who chopped the tree and cried
    “Oh, lie I can’t”
    Tom thought George was a dandy
    Next day an ax was handy
    He took it and chopped down the Rubber plant
    “Now who did this?” yelled his daddy
    “It was I” replied the laddie
    “Like Georges “Pop” embrace your truthful lad”
    Cross his knee Tom’s papa pressed him
    With a baseball bat caressed him
    “Boy’s Pops have changed since Georgies time” said Dad
  2. Although Doctors are prolific
    With their knowledge scientific
    A visit to our house they seldom take
    For dearest old grandmother
    Has a cure somehow or other
    For every kind of ailment pain or ache
    Now our little baby hollered
    When a writing pen it swallowed
    It filled us with six diff’rent kinds of fright
    But Grandma just took a bottle
    Poured some black ink down it’s throttle
    It reach’d the pen and made the baby write
  3. Our new cottage they’ve been painting
    And one night I felt like fainting
    When I gazed upon my Sunday pearl-grey pants
    On those trousers bright and mellow
    Spots of paint bright red and yellow
    It really nearly put me in a trance
    Till I read in next day’s paper
    A small “ad” that seem’d the caper
    The way to take out paint stains without doubt
    Send a dime and learn the plan Sir
    Well, I did and got this answer
    Just take a scissors, cut the paint stains out

Sung here by Vancha March: