Schooldays

We live and die in schools

"Sit down now children, close the door
And leave your minds, moor your souls,
I give you numbers. Break and bend
Your hearts to my piping tune."

A disturbance from behind,
(They will talk of some frivolous distress
And they shall digress some trivial digression),
It is always there,
Perhaps for treatment, mild,
Born out of some envy
Of the wayward skies.

It is there now,
In a hundred darkened rooms.
A transparent blackness,
Some visibly invisible thing.
And now, a lamplight,
The hands of Athena?

Hands, unconstituted by rocks nor dirt,
The matter from which they came,
But the hands of Kalypso,
By her darkened heart did not wish to set you free.

But suffer on, linger furthermore,
A heavy head and heavy heart,
Weighed by your journey's harrowing roads.
"Speak more! Think more! Be more!"

Reviews

[Clockwork]

This piece reminds me of Pink Floyd's Another Brink in the Wall and Hard Times by Dickens. And I think that it is true that we live and die in schools. Good teachers and classroom environments can open our minds and our hearts. I think you do a good job of showing what a one sided classroom will do in the first stanza.. It limits a student to fact alone, and it does not allow for the exploration of the soul. That bit is the part that reminded me of Hard Times. Now the last of the last stanza shows what can be, and what we can strive for, and I think that is a good positive end to focus our thoughts. A thoughtful write indeed.

[Richard Man]

Let's be totally realistic education and schooling completely lost the plot once the skills of reading,writing and arithmetic, algebra and geometry were blanketed with a curriculum. Once we learned to walk and(god forbid: run and jump and climb) it would have been an abomination had we been restricted to a particular path, a man made path, a straight road with uniform tarmac leading from A to B with no trees, no caves, no woods, lakes, fields, hedges or ditches todiscover and play in. But this is what state or religious or colonial or imperial education has imposed on generation after generation of young creative minds. Education was funded to produce priests and bureaucrats and soldiers not individuals .

[Lonesome Traveler]

"Speak more! Think more! Be more!" was the gist of what I used to get on my school reports! Shame they couldn't sum in up as concisely and eloquently as you have.

[E.C.F. Doyle]

Why thank you squire.

[E.C.F. Doyle]

I love the way you get criticised at school for not whoring out your soul.

[Lonesome Traveler]

It's a miracle anyone leaves school with any creativity at all!
"And leave your minds, moor your souls" - really like this line, unfortunately it also rings true.

[E.C.F. Doyle]

Ha. The truth is one of the most unfortunate things about life.