Welcome to High School

Sun, 01/24/2016 - 17:16 -- amelskt

It’s 7 am and you are already here.

Nice and early,  we have no time to waste.

You will rise before the sun does, because nothing about the process is natural, but it is “necessary.”

 

Please drop your social life at the door and pick up your honors classes, we expect nothing less than perfection.

 

Get used to sitting. Sitting and working. Working as in writing. And writing. And writing. And writing. Writing for hours at a time until heading home to work some more.

And, the amount of satisfaction that comes out of your pen tracing letters across your paper all day… is minute. Nonexistent.

Because, can we really call it writing when it isn’t our own words?

Yes the verb is there, but this process can be better described as regurgitation.

Your paper is merely a bucket provided for you to regurgitate the pages of your textbook on.

Writing has become a formula.

Thesis, body paragraph, point proof and process, conclusion.

Creativity is not encouraged here.

Put on your uniform.

Draw your line.

Straight.

Exact.

Perfect.

Don’t differ from your neighbor.

Stick to the formula.

1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4.

Goose step, goose step, salute.

 

We are treated like computers expected to listen to the data, file away, and bring it back up when handed a test.

Shhhhh!

Please.

Don’t speak.

Just fill in the bubbles, that’s all we need to know.

 

2.0

3.0

4.0

A number pasted across your forehead will represent you.

A number pasted across your forehead will define you.

You are worth the quantity of your percentage, not the quality of your character, because that’s what really matters! Right?

 

Einstein once said, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

Then why do we quantify student’s intelligence, whether they be left-brain, right-brain, future mechanic, artist, writer, actor, engineer, mathematician, environmentalist, politician, by ONE standard measurement. One standard practice. One standard test.

 

This poem is a message to common core.

A message to ACT, SAT, PARCC, and GPA’s

This poem is a message for every student who has felt degraded by a number.

Every student that has been called stupid because they didn't fit the A, B, C, or D mold.

 

I’m sorry that assembly lines are so easy.

I'm sorry that School is a factory.

We’re all stars, circles, and triangles on an assembly line being prepacked into square boxes.

Shaving off corners of creativity to make us fit.

 

I’m tired of school interrupting my education.

Because, memorization is not learning.

Regurgitation is not test.

Students are not machines.

Is the benefit of learning not worth the cost of time?

Welcome to High School.

 

This poem is about: 
My country

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