Schools Killing Students
The poem posted below is a chilling account of how pressure to perform at schools is killing students. That also speaks volume about how schools are responsible for suicide of students, who do not follow the beaten track. Schools produce asses, not conscious individuals. It’s correct to say that they murder creativity, wipe out all good possibilities. The schools worldwide are playing havoc with lives of students thinking differently.
We only know pass and fail, we cannot see beyond grades and the life of students gets stuck between first and third division. That’s the only achievement of studying at school. We decide the stature and class of a student right at school in a most barbaric manner. The sensitive minds get trapped in inhuman categories, which chase them throughout their lives. Were the schools brought in existence to attain such ends?
Some years back schools in India refused to give admission to their own students in higher classes, taking into account their poor performance in previous classes. Poor parents and students were left with no other chances but to get admission in other schools, which was quite a humiliating experience. Thanks to intervention of Court, the trend to refuse admission got curbed. The example is enough to suggest that education system in India is controlled by retarded minds, which have little respect for the dignity of students. They also do not know that students are our future and it’s an unpardonable offence to make students victim of terrible guilt complexes, which remain with them for rest of their lives.
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He hated to hold the pencil and chalk, with his arm stiff and his feet flat on the floor, Stiff.
With the teacher watching and watching. The teacher came and spoke to him.
She told him to wear a tie like all the other boys. He said he didn’t like them.
She said it didn’t matter. After that they drew.
And he drew all yellow and it was the way he felt about morning. And it was beautiful.
The teacher came and smiled at him.
“What’s this?” she said. “Why don’t you draw something like Ken’s drawing? Isn’t it lovely?”
After that his mother bought him a tie. And he started drawing airplanes and rocket ships like everyone else.
And he threw the old picture away.
He lay alone looking at the sky, it was big and blue and all of everything.
But he wasn’t anymore. He was square inside and brown
And his hands were stiff. And he was like everyone else.
And the things inside him that needed saying didn’t anymore.
It had stopped pushing. It was crushed. Stiff. Like everything else.
(The poem written by a 14 year old boy, who committed suicide two weeks later after presenting the poem to his English teacher)
Full poem can be read here: Poem
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Credit:
Ken Robinson
Soulseeds For Poem
Pics credit:
Pic One
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