A Few Failed Feelings

A Non-Standard Mind

The greatest lessons we learn will never come from your syllabus. But instead, we learn from the way you degrade us. Keep your head down, mouth shut and no opinions that are different from your own. I am where I am now all because I never spoke up and fought back. I never demanded to be treated equally. Everyday I regret not doing so. You have taught us that we will always be under someone else. That we will never be able to become the person every single one of us have the potential to be. Because we are not people of authority so we might as well not be people at all.

It's not like you care about us actually learning what you intentionally teach anyways. All you care about is what grade we make on the test so you can rub it in the face of states and countries who you think are under you because their students' GPA scores are lower than your own.

I am not prepared at life but instead I am afraid of it. Not that you tried to prepare us anyways. I wasn't taught how to get a job, but instead I was taught how to dissect a frog. I wasn't taught how to pay tax but I know loads about Shakespeare's classics. I was never taught how to vote because that time was devoted to defining isotopes. You are supposed to be bringing up the next generation of children yet instead you tear them down and have them either terrified of life or absolutely tired of living it.

I was determined to get straight A's even if that meant not speaking my mind. I regret it. But it's alright because I didn't agree with what you taught us. I don't believe that I will always be under someone else. I soon will be standing beside you and not behind or under you. I will actually be able to make a difference in the school system because I am no longer being told I can't.

Standardized teaching & test does not work for non-standard minds. And my mind is not standard, but above your shallow level of competition and obsession with wining.

                   ~an angry valedictorian