Friday, October 12, 2007

What is different anyway?

I wrote this poem in 5 mintues today; it was an assignment in humanities. My teacher said," Okay, you have 5 minutes to write something about this picture. Go." The picture was what a kindergarten Esher would draw (in this case a dream house) and what the teacher would think of it and grade it. What made sense and didn't to the TEACHER. That's how it is. A student may turn in a piece of art or something else that makes perfect sense to them, but maybe not to the teacher. The work is marked down, thus judging a child's paradigm and creativity and imagination. Anyway, half the class groaned and asked, "What? What do we do?" I go to HTHNC by the way. It's a public charter school funded by Bill Gates. We do things differently, and we add a techno twist to almost all our projects. It's like, from our elementary and middle schools, we were given so much structure in how to do things that we've forgotten how to be creative and how to use it when we're given the opportunity. Here's my poem:
What is different anyway?
"This doesn't make sense.
Everything is upside down and opposite.
That doesn't go that way, it's all wrong!"
Why can't we be different and not looked down upon?
Why do we want to fit in and be the same, when some of us are meant to stand out?
Everything changes at one point or another,
Nothing ever stays the same.
How can our work be ridiculed and criticized and judged when the definition of "correct" or "right" escapes us?
Last time I checked, creativity and imagination had no rules.
We always hear, "The sky is the limit" but when we reach that high, it hurts more to fall.

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