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

Rise of the Limerick

Limericks as Mnemonics

Further Reading

Limericks about Sicily

Whimsical words for Earth Day

Get up and stand on your own defeat