A girl wakes up with weights on her chest
She brushes her teeth
And washes her face
She eats stones of worry for breakfast
A weight that sits in stomach and fills her with fear
A boy goes to school.
He gets a B
And wears it like a shield
He goes to work and comes home
It’s nearly time to go back to school
A ten year old
Does homework through dinner
With two essays, a project, and three tests to study for
She checks the time
It’s only midnight
Thank God.
There is a trade most teachers know nothing about:
Good grades for mental health
Straight A’s for dissatisfaction with everything else
Perfect attendance over family and friends.
Learning is memorization now
But that is a separate entity from education.
There is worth based on numbers:
There is a constant checking for updated ranks
A competition to get a ticket to somewhere else
Only to find that it has long been ravaged by the problems with education
We are supposed to be making something out of nothing.
But it is no longer a miracle but a necessity to survival
We all have hollowed bodies and tired minds
A photograph of the next generation:
Nobody’s smiling.
How can nobody see:
The effect school has had on not just me
But everyone
How do they not notice what’s wrong with the system?
That it’s not real learning but just rote memorization
“Study,
Pass,
Be perfect,
Go to college,
You know your dreams aren’t even an option.”
Is all you hear nowadays.
It’s the stress of our society
Needing you to be what they didn’t have
The perfection of their vision filling our heads
Weighing us down with sadness, pain, and fear
And the thought that this….
Is all just one cruel game
Education isn’t learning anymore
It’s surviving
Who can last longest?
It’s who is still alive
After they move elementary to middle
Middle to high
High to college
College to life
So many don’t even make it
And you wonder if you will or if the pressure will be too much
The pressure is great
And it only makes the grades fall
I used to love learning and I think I still do
But I wouldn’t know
Because I haven’t learned a thing since elementary school
Here’s a lesson to you,
The teachers of America’s youth:
Don’t just fill our heads with knowledge for a test
Teach us something better than the rest
Give us something that won’t just fill our heads
But show us something that will give us peace
Something that we can use to get through
Don’t be just another ‘educator’ of America
Teach something deep
Get through to your students and make them realize
That this is not the way to go about life
Promise me that you’ll help us all be something more...
Than the generation before
Without cramming our heads with things we ‘need to know’
And expecting us to do perfect on a test
That’s not how it should work
That’s not how it works…
Teach us how to live
And be happy…
Through your own unique subject…
Just…teach.