They closed our eyes,
with the fluorescent lights looking on,
and helping to stuff things into the cracks of our minds.
Filling up the spaces,
where imagination used to dwell,
in quiet villages of thought, all colors and shapes,
we hadn't thought of yet.
There were no more rolling hills and streams of ideas,
only strait backed rows of facts,
that expanded day by day,
stabbing the mind with iron fence posts,
pounded in by the hammer,
of crowded words on glossy pages.
Imagination shattered, and faded,
with each stroke.
They told us they opened our eyes,
but they closed them,
as tightly as their own.
This is a reflection on how often creative thinking and imagination are ignored, and even discouraged in the educational system. I'm not bashing teachers (I plan to be one), but the institutions that think the only way to teach is to teach to a test, not to a child with the purpose of giving them knowledge. The best teachers are the ones that try and expand their student's minds, but they loose their effectiveness if they have to stuff a child's brain into a rigid program just to get a good standardized test score. Test scores should never be the sole measure of a child's intelligence or ability.