Education Shmedumacation

By Huong Le and Lilly Penick

I’m so glad I live in America where I have a “free” education,

Although I’m sure that’s all I have to be grateful for when it comes to this system.

As a topic majorly discussed by the politicians of our great country, the land of the free,

Education is clearly a priority in our nation and nations elsewhere as well.

And because this subject is valued so highly by our society

I stand here today to tell you how much it sucks.

Oh, excuse my language, I mean, how much it displeases me to my core, my common core.

Now I ain’t saying we shouldn’t be edumacated

But I’m not sure I want to be educated under these corrupt conditions.

Somewhere between coming out of my mother’s birth canal and learning how to ride a bike,

My life was signed away to thirteen years of required education.

Required education full of standardized testing, useless lessons, and careless staff.

You would think that shoving information in your brain for

Nine months a year for thirteen years straight would be pretty useful —

I still don’t know how to do my taxes or how insurance works.

But that doesn’t really matter, right?

At least I know that the product rule for derivatives is vu’ + uv’

And that the Enlightenment philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau was a gigolo.

Despite learning these obscure facts,

Teachers still have limited freedom to teach in their desired manner.

They are bound by quarterly evaluations and Marzano’s models,

A process full of half-assed rubrics and mandatory lesson goals.

“What are you learning in class today?”

Oh, you know, just the basics of SS.912.A.2.1.

As the school year progresses, my motivation eerily resembles a negative exponential function.

I have been self-diagnosed with early onset senioritis with a cure that has yet to be discovered.

Administrators are too busy cracking down on tank tops and spaghetti straps to care,

Pursuit for academic success is going ignored everyday, but that doesn’t really matter, right?

I have watched substitute teachers come and go each year I’m in school

And I have yet to come across one that truly cherishes my education.

Temporary or not, I at least deserve a substitute that has had a proper background check.

Substance abuse, racial discrimination, you name it. I’ve had a sub that’s done it.

As students, we are told relentlessly how we should learn to take an initiative

And yet it seems near impossible to get any project approved,

Because apparently it’s too hard to hand us all the papers we need at once.

Yes, please, give me each paper of this 107-page document individually for the next two weeks.

Oh, I was supposed to sign on these pages I’ve never received?

Sorry, the bureaucracy of this school seems primarily communistic.

This barbaric system doesn’t just stop at the high school level.

You want to apply to a college you have a 4% chance of getting into?

That’ll be four meals, a diamond encrusted sock, and an eye.

And if someone accidentally hit the accept button on your application,

Tuition will cost you your dead grandmother’s far left gold molar.

It is now 12:52, the night before this poem is due,

And I have the urge to stab myself in the pancreas with a wooden spork.

My brain has been effectively pulverized into something reminiscent of mashed potatoes.

Mashed potatoes flaked with pleiotropic qualities, integrals, and a really hot John D. Rockefeller.

Hot-because-it’s-now-1AM not hot-because-I-want-to-bear-your-children.

So as you can see, there are just a few teeny weeny, itsy bitsy, miniscule flaws

Regarding the current state of our public educational system.

But because I am just a marionette in this terribly organized, mediocre, backyard carnival show,

What I say about the system that’s supposed to work for me doesn’t really matter, right?