by Rebecca Harrison
The translucent vial of pencils waiting to be sharpened waiting to be pounded down onto the graffiti scrawled desks, sitting there scrawling as the clock ticks slower and slower, the teacher gets up to his podium, the self righteous condescending arrogance showers through like a heavy scent. A quiet student in the back gets the courage to ask a question, she gently taps her opinion into the teacher’s brain, and the teacher responds with his condescending tone that could not be misinterpreted by any means. The student cowers and goes back to her desk and scrawls something else on the desk in big letters SCREW YOU. He sends her to the office where she talks and spurts lies like water seeping from a river. Lies bullshit just to make the teachers not suspend someone for having a point of view they walk around like robots some sort of something inside them but no ways to really understand it. Everyone says get a good education go to school it’s for your own benefit, but how is it beneficial when you don’t have a say. When you sit through their mindless searching for answers and get back harsh tones and puppet strings. Tattoos are like vandalizing your body, but school is like vandalizing your education and your voice. You raise your hand they say nice job but it doesn’t mean anything, when they shout at you for expressing an opinion you’re supposedly not allowed to have. They control the very whim of your protruding mind, and there’s no way you can control it. The mediocrity spreads like a virus and students only get sicker and sicker. From the outside a nice big school surrounded by “loving” people sure on the surface it seems nice but deep inside the chambers the virus spreads. The girl fed up with everything goes to her counselor but the second she turns to see the counselor she walks away there’s no point all you do is look into the glassy dull eyes of the zombie like people who are supposed to help you and lead you on your way to success when they make you take test after test and put you and your puppet strings back in the shed if you're not beyond average. No way of escaping until your 4th year, they just enforce the stress of it all and lock away your voice so your say will not affect the school and their profit in any way. The girl walks down the hill she wants to scream but she has no voice. What is the point of trying to get a good education and to learn deeply to express your opinions and to experience passion, it’s like a never ending tunnel dark and musty with no fresh air to breath. The disgusting fact is that this is the only way to succeed, to drown out hope and all your ideals what kind of world are we living in. a mesh of pop culture tests and robotic phony arrogance is to be the new trend that never seems to die.