• 4/29/09 – Buoyant Belligerence (An Ode to Per. 1 English Repeaters),
    With a quote from Anthony Febo's “Its Madness”

    Bubbling with false excitement,
    she traipses around the class,
    handing out worksheets
    while collecting the ones she gave us,
    as we pass through the gates of hell.

    English class,
    the supposed culmination,
    of four years of diligence
    amounting to this,
    the answering of questions,
    a third-grader should be able to,
    but 4 twelfth graders cannot.

    A wise man I know,
    once commented on this,
    this travesty we call education,
    he said, and I quote,
    “and No Child Left Behind,
    means that kid, reaches eighth grade,
    is supposed to be in ninth grade,
    acts like he in seventh grade,
    but reads like he's in sixth.”
    (Anthony Febo's “It's Madness”)

    I ask her,
    “Is this the education,
    for which my parents are paying for?”
    and she replies, smiling gaily,
    “We're just trying to move you along.”

    Move us along?!?!?
    Move along?!?!?
    Along to where?
    Somewhere where,
    what we were supposed to learn,
    will be used?

    And then we are blamed,
    for our ignorance,
    as if it was our fault,
    we weren't taught,
    that which we needed to know.

    But the truth is,
    that we are the forgotten,
    the forsaken,
    the unnecessary strain on a system,
    that is breaking,
    slowly,
    under the weight of the native necessity.

    So we eke out an existence,
    in a system that leaves us in the dust,
    in hopes that one day, we will rise above its influence,
    and will show the world that we can change it.