NCLB
The Mind Mill
Free minds are trees
Rooted in earth
Branches swaying to the sun
Authority carries a chain saw drunk on its own vapors.
Where victims seldom heard screaming are
Cut to the base
Stripped of bark
Milled to manageable widths and lengths
Stacked neatly into rows:
Material for a better McMerica.
School pretends to build trees from pieces of wood.
Shawn Hamilton, Arcata, 1984
We Don’t Need No Education (We don’y need no thopught control)
When we grew up and went to school, there were certain teachers who would hurt the children anyway they could
by pouring their derision upon anything we did
exposing every weakness however carefully hidden by the kids.
But in the town it was well known that when they got home at night
their fat and psychopathic wives
Would thrash them within inches of their lives!
ooooooooooooo, oooooooo, ooooooooooo, ooooooooo, ooooooooo, ooooooooo,oooo.
We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teacher! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it’s just another brick in the wall.
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.
(A bunch of kids singing) We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teacher! Leave us kids alone!
All in all it’s just another brick in the wall.
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.
Spoken:
“Wrong, Guess again!
Wrong, Guess again!
If you don’t eat yer meat, you can’t have any pudding.
How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat yer meat?
You! Yes, you behind the bikesheds, stand still laddie!”
[Sound of many TV's coming on, all on different channels]
“The Bulls are already out there”
Pink: “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrgh!”
“This Roman Meal bakery thought you’d like to know.”
I don’t need no arms around me
And I dont need no drugs to calm me.
I have seen the writing on the wall.
Don’t think I need anything at all.
No! Don’t think I’ll need anything at all.
All in all it was all just bricks in the wall.
All in all you were all just bricks in the wall.
…Plato said that true knowledge could never be written down. All I did in “skool” was write down useless factoids by fat, alcoholic “educators.” Hey!! Let’s do a “pop quiz” and fake out the little fuckers. I spent a lot of time in Detention…I just wouldn’t co-operate. The entire K-12 bullshit experience threw me into a massive psychosis…from which I am still trying to re-cover. Burn down the schools and set the kids free.
Fuck school. Dropping out of high school was one of the smartest things I’ve done in my life. Getting my BS was tolerable mainly because the chicks were hotter and more plentiful, and it was mostly one long party, but really it was glorified high school. I think there are some cool grad programs now; my MA in edtech from SDSU was a very good experience. I also think MOOCs have a lot to offer education.
Here’s an interesting presentation that I think touches on some of the same themes as your poem. (If video doesn’t appear below, find it at http://www.ted.com/talks/view/lang/en//id/66.)
“The Art of Nothingness” taught by the Dalai Lama?
This is a whale of a comment.
Thanks for reposting your poem, Shawn. I think it’s an excellent poem and far more expressive than Pink Floyd’s lyrics.
I also think that repressive systems get exponentially more repressive just before they collapse. The educational system is like an anus, and students turds. Now, turds, being turds, simply want to go out and enjoy the world; they want movement. But the modern, industrial anus sphincter (even sounds Nazi), wants nothing more than to control turd movement. Under natural, pre-industrial, harmonious circumstances, anus and turd coexist well and are indeed complementary. But when, for whatever reason, the anus tries to interrupt the normal life cycle of the turd, tension mounts, the anus flexes shut, and the turd is repressed from realizing its full turdness. It’s basically imprisoned, being viewed by the anus as unfit to grace the world with its presence.
But here’s the thing. As the turd starts realizing that it must see the world and simply follows its natural inclination to move, the anus will often double, triple, quadruple its anti-turdity efforts, and the force it must exert rises exponentially over time.
But eventually the turd wins. The turd always wins. And the anus is most repressive in the moment just before it loses control.
We are all turds, and we will prevail over the assholes of the world.
That was beautiful, Dan!
Continuing on your theme, I was just watching a program called “Apocalypse 2012: The World After Time Ends,” and this guy was commenting on our very narrow perspective, governed largely by intellect. As he was talking about religion, he mentioned “seeing through a pin prick” and elaborated by referring to what he called the “sphincter of the sacred.”
“…free your mind…and your butt will follow.”