13 Educational Limericks for Diligent Students

In an era of willful ignorance, the time has come for educational limericks to rise from the mire and cast a light on the dark corners of doubt and confusion.

When you look back at the literary records, limericks seem to have something of a checkered past. Off-color chronicles of illicit encounters and licentious innuendo fill the dog-eared pages. But even as so many pillars of high culture and propriety go sinking into the morass, it’s possible today to turn the tables on the limerick, and lift it to a place of respectability.

Limericks, as popularized by Edward Lear in the 1800s, were stock-in-trade of the children’s genre, much like the nursery rhymes of Mother Goose. But by the turn of the century, some dirty-minded Irishmen had gotten hold of the five-line format and reduced it to a model of indecency. And with all due respect to the Irish, that lowbrow shtick has enjoyed a pretty good run, right up to the modern day.

Thanks to the internet and the mass-democratization of the media, however, nearly every genre has joined in the race to the bottom. As if the lowest common denominator has become the highest point of potential. News is entertainment, science is privately sponsored, and reality T.V. is the training ground for world leaders. Smut has become part of the very air we breath.

Rise of the Limerick

On the new playing field of ubiquitous vulgarity, the time has come for limericks to enjoy a reversal of fortune. In a society that’s lost its taste for erudition and refinement, the role of the maverick is to challenge the will of the ignorant. And educational limericks are here to shed some light on the darkness.

Limericks don’t have to be smutty to be fun. And learning is more effective when its fun. So educational limericks just make sense. That’s why my first project, when I originally started writing limericks, was to create an Encyclopedia of Limericks.

Limericks as Mnemonics

As a short and catchy rhyming jingle, the limerick provides an excellent tool to help students of all ages remember things. If it weren’t for catchy jingles, I wonder if I’d still remember how to spell Oscar Meyer. But if a rhyme can help you remember a brand of bologna, surely it can help you recall the Pythagorean theorem or who prevailed at the Battle of Tours.

The efficacy of mnemonic devices remains an issue of some debate in academic circles, but I’m convinced that learning works better when learning is fun. So if you can use a game or a limerick to teach a concept or reinforce a fact, then it’s a strategy worth pursuing.

Below are a handful of examples of educational limericks dealing with subjects ranging from astronomy to zoology.

     Pythagoras
     There’s a Grecian who pulled out his hairs
     For a theorem your math teacher shares
               The very first rule
               They teach you in school
     By adding the sum of the squares

     The Doppler Effect
     There’s a lightwave that changes by strange hocus pocus
     A photon that comes from a faraway locus
               The phase shift of color
               Makes red stars glow duller
     As starlight approaches and comes into focus

     The Secret Life of Swans
     The swan is a bird who’s unhappy alone
     They stick to each other like moss on a stone
               The cob and his wife
               Get married for life
     But divorce rates among them are not fully known

     Photosynthesis
     With carbon and water plus light in addition
     Chlorophyll carries the key to fruition
             As nature’s slow cooker
               Assembles the sugar
     Providing our principal source of nutrition

     Charles Martel 
     There once was a knight called the Hammer
     In combat he made quite a clamor
               Put a stop to the Moors
               At the Battle of Tours
     What a beacon of medieval glamour

     Gerardus Mercator
     There came a map maker from Leiden
     Showing sailors which currents to ride in
               Thanks to Gerardus
               So kind to reward us
     By charting the realm of Poseidon

     Gregor Mendel
     There’s a pesky pea-farmer named Greg
     Whose chicken came after his egg
               An obsession with beans
               Would uncover his genes
     You’d’ve thought he was pulling your leg

     Sandro Botticelli
     There’s a bountiful chap Botticelli
     Whose Venus exposed her pink belly
               Banned from the cloister
               To stand on an oyster
     No wonder her feet are so smelly

     George Friedrich Handel
     There once was a Hessian from Halle
     Whose water could soothe a koala
               But oh what a scandal
               If George Friedrich Handel
     Had sung The Messiah for Allah

     Macbeth, by Shakespeare
     A dagger appears on the way to King Duncan
     While pricked by compunction Macbeth’s feeling sunken
               The Lady will drive him
               To bury the knife in
     And thanks to her hounding his heart should be shrunken

     Fyodor Dostoyevsky
     There’s a grandiose gambler who suffers from seizures
     His opus consisted of several crowd pleasers
               And painstaking students
               Exhibit their prudence
     Dissecting his novels with scalpels and tweezers

     Nicomachean Ethics
     Racing through life with an engine full throttle
     A foot in the grave and a hand on the bottle
               In search of right living
               You should have been giving
     A little more time to my friend Aristotle

     Arthur Schopenhauer
     Life is a struggle, a tale of resistance
     Where being and becoming are held at a distance
               Try and deny it
               I dare you to try it
     At bottom the Will is the ground of existence

Further Reading

If you liked these, you’ll be sure to enjoy:

• Poetry about Anatomy and Physiology
• Colorful Limericks about Art History
• Melodious Limericks about Classical Music
• Nimble Limericks about Nature
• Limericks about Physical Science
• Discursive Limericks about Western Philosophy
• Penetrating Limericks about Dostoyevsky
• Serious Limericks: There once was an unsmiling rhymer