This is a poem that I wrote years ago, when I started to understand that for many children, school was a terrible place. My own school experience was dreadful enough at times, but I was one of the system's successes ( which also has its price!) It seemed to me that the school system simply perpetuated the limitations and prejudices of the society, and did its job to keep things that way.
Learn Your Lessons
Schools
are jails
where we put our children
for the day
Sing! Children! Sing!
You should
be happy
for this opp-or-tun-ity
to lose
yourself.
yourself.
So Laugh! Children! Laugh!
And if you
study your lessons
well
in time you won't mind
too much
that you've been killed.
Just after I posted this poem, I turned on CNN only to hear that a young boy had committed suicide, because of the bullying he was exposed to in his Junior High School.
ReplyDeleteAnd even though the parents had asked for some help from the teachers and principal, to stop the bullying, the school had not "taken it on".