Same Old Education!

This beautiful poem comes to us from Nick Clarke-Gerrard who writes for the blog Carbon-Based Lifeform Blues. With his permission, we’ve reprinted this poem here.  Be sure to check out his blog.

You lined me up in the hall

Pushed my nose against the wall

An told me I was disruptive

You made me write out many lines

Stay after class, serve my time

And caned me into submission.

Submit to listen to boring shit

Pay attention! Don’t question it!

Learn it, repeat till it sticks

You don’t get to learn interesting stuff

You learn to pass tests and bluff

your way to qualifying.

Back then I was badly behaved, distracted

No attention paid.

Easily influenced and a bad one

Now, I think I would be diagnosed with ADHD

Something mentally wrong with me.

Give him a dose of drugs.

Drugs to anesthetize my sense

So, I will sit still and listen to the same old stench

That comes from another century.

Knock me out so I can learn

off by heart, facts are churned

to get me through the tests.

Why should I listen to all that maths,

taught the same way as when my grandad took tin baths

And think I will enjoy it

What about all this interesting technology

that’s available to me

Surely we could use that

Make it fill me with desire

to gather knowledge with a fire

give me a chance to open up

Give me a chance to create

dance and sample and relate

Learn things needed and I might like it

Don’t lock me in a dark room of old pye books

chalk and blackboard withered rooks

Then tell me to pay attention

Work under my own steam.

Why can’t I work as a team?

Outside the best work is done in teams.

Don’t copy that’s cheating,

and at the back no peeking.

For answers or collaboration

Teach us one thing, tell us another

Be individual, at work a brother.

Help each other, at school be selfish.

Start at the same time

work in the same line

Study this one way, this is the right path

Churning out this year’s batch.

the date that we hatch.

Like a factory assembly line

You’re not listening to Logarithms!

Cus I’m thinking of things with more rhythms.

You’ve got attention deficit disorder.

It’s not ADD

I’m thinking of something more interesting to me.

What are you talking about, the History of the Kings of England?

Don’t anesthetize my creativity

Stimulate, bring it out of me

Don’t knock me out, wake me up!