schoolyard subversion

2001-03-01 [< * >]

Today's entry is a bit of rather bad poetry on the subject of education, due to an overdue English assignment.

    we lock millions up
and cause all the inmates pain
  we call the place school

-

Children who cry for love but not for school
  are told to stunt their words for lack of life
and when the life they live becomes too cruel
  they fall into depression from their strife.
The thoughts come out and fall onto the page
  but ears aren't eyes and words cannot be heard
so fights go on but bottled up with rage
  and empty silence faces every word.
The world moves far from center -- yes from school,
  as children try to find some other way
and face the cold, hard pressure to be "cool"
  and smoke and cough the whole of life away.
It's for our planet's future that I pleade -
don't give our children school, but love they need.

-

"you suck", "you suck", "you suck", "you suck", you say
why don't you throw another life away?
let's drop the lies and let our children play.

can you tell me the words that you will say
when children stand up screaming loudly: "hey!
I could have had a real life today"?

I'll tell you words that might escape your lips:
"you suck", "you suck", "you suck", you shake your hips
stop screwing up my living with your slips.

so now it's time to let the kids respond:
  -> you this my Ran so chair go wave the Wand!
they're words that seem senseless but will live on.

do not forget the message that you hear
a life is just too precious just to waste
so why do we continue wasting here? 
                                                                     Haste.

-

aiiieeeiiieeeeiii
goes the call of pain
and does it reach your side?
or does it call again?
do you tell it to stop?
do you tell it to start?
do you answer the call within your heart?

where does the answer lie?
and can we stop the pain
or do priorities
force us to progress progressively - progress?

so to the one with pain they give the pill
to make the shouting stop and kill the hurt
underneath the quiet face of calm
still lies wrecked wracked rocked brain inside

uncertainty still stays where we can't reach
and can't remove the tumor of what's right
the infection of wrong is not complete
so lives still have a chance to see the light

and if you look quite carefully inside
you'll see the question come out loud and clear
what can we do to _move on_  humanity
-- not make it stumble and fall upon us

that is your mission, if you do accept it
and if you do please remember this plea:
to move on all of life, please set us free.

-

The paradox is what they try to hide from you:
to make our students "smart" we make them stupid
we remove all the love inside their lives
and force them to behave just like smarts should.

We set up goals and image
of intelligentsia and stupidity.
Those who act too smart just look quite stupid
but those who are too stupid can't be smart, you see.

Those who read other books must hide them all away
and claim that they can't read or don't want to
and so they continue to hide their love away
... at least from you.

Of those who act too smart, you can be sure
that pressures are what's made them all that way
nobody loves scratching out words of 'speare
but you make them "love" that work that way.

But the love they love in that 
is not what I'd call love at all
instead it's loathing wrapped up pretty colors
and carelessly tossed out into the hall.

If you want to teach then first you must decide
what teaching means and what it will contain.
Do the means permit the ends
or does it all work out the other way?

-

The inmates line up one-by-one
"Single File!" they hear the leader say
the flatten 'gainst the wall and forward march
they can't imagine any other way.

As their procession slows down to a stop
they quietly take a seat where they've been told
and heads are filled with words and eyes with gold
and Leader waves around a map and shouts so cold.

The inmates of this prison have done nothing wrong
instead they're simply living out the sentence
our country has bestowed on every child
to ensure that Leader's unions can get paid
and everyone grown-up child receives the right... 
...of middle management.

Locked up behind bars and hidden far away
they soon forget the faces of their loves
and learn to love only Leader and the State
or at least they're trained to act that way.

-

Oh Truth,
Where do you hide?
Can we find you by looking hard inside our books?

Or are there rules
that we must follow
and if we do you will appear to us?

I've heard there're men
whom you can ask
any question and get back any answer.
Do they know you? Do they have Truth inside their souls?

There are people who keep telling deeper truths
-- well, truths I am not sure, but words I am --
they set me up to hear Your words and follow them
and I do, yet here I am.

-

The pencil is the paper is the child is
The teacher is the faculty is the staff is
The principal is the superintendent is the system is
The government is the society is the world is

The question is "What do they do?"

The pencil gets more furious and more frantic,
quickly scribbling before the speech before the
Oversight Comittee before Institutionalization process
before the people of the planet of Earth.

And everyone's asking: "What do they do?"

The pencil writing on the paper by the child says nothing.
The teacher speaking before the faculty and staff says nothing.
The principal and superintendent at the system's comittees say nothing.
And the government, society and people of the planet all say nothing.

Yet one little boy asks: "What do we do?"

And another brave one shouts: "Nothing".

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