Students: Made in U.S.A.

 

 

Students.

We are machines manufactured by a company named United States.

We are sent off to factories to be programmed by workers who don't exactly understand the way we work.

Although we malfunction often, it's only because we are performing at our best.

They blame us for not working correctly when they're the ones who installed our parts.

They grow angry with us for acting like busted robots.

If we're the robots, how come these workers sound like a public service announcement,

repeating “you'll need this in college” every other minute.

 

We are not the cold metal these workers make us out to be.

We are not vacant shells of random wires and batteries the United States created because they needed equipment to keep their company running.

 

There is a mind inside each of us,

And my mind is telling me that the teaching these workers do is flawed.

Flawed like our minds when they begin to wander during the 7 grueling hours of being a defective machine.

If they took the time to unscrew our rusty bolts, they'd see that we are not just some scrambled contraption meant to jump from factory to factory until our warranty expires.

They'd see that we are something far greater than the drool on the desk and the drawings on the margins.

 

They tell us we need to graduate,

But when I have that diploma in my hand and we are told that we made it, I'll say that we barely scraped by.

Made it would mean that I learned instead of memorized,

That I could take the so-called knowledge they instilled in me and share it with the world.

Unfortunately, the only knowledge I received was from the very few workers who installed my parts correctly.

The United States is a democracy,

More like a hypocrisy because freedom of speech is something I never had.

When a student tries to speak up about the way they are being taught,

They are told to sit back down.

But I won't sit down this time.

I will stand up for what I believe.

You're in the position to tell me to shut up,

But I'm in the position to tell you how worksheets and power points don't burn the material into my brain.

That books and lectures about how we'll need this in college never made me want to learn anything.

I am more than the hundreds of B- assignments and wrong answers.

More than the below average test scores and the clouds around my head.

I will not let this education define who I will become or who I am.