This is how Children Learn Now

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

This is how Children Learn Now

Television news: each student in a Catholic school

 will be issued an IPad

“This is how children learn now,” he enthused,
A young man only now in his first long pants,
And a clean shirt without advertisements,
His boyhood goatee newly shaved away,
His diploma fresh from a vending machine,
In knowledge omniscient at twenty-two,
Displaying to the television audience
A shiny plastic box, wampum for trade,
Little lights and noises squeaking from a screen
In exchange for the island of one’s soul.

His pupils will not want paper or pens

For coloring their happy fantasies
At the kitchen table on rainy days.
They will never listen for Robin Hood’s call
To run barefoot in green-roofed Sherwood Forest,
Or listen for sleigh bells on Christmas eve,
Or look for fairies on a frosty night,
In wild sweeps dancing on the moonlit lawn.
For them there will be no childhood campfires,
No laughing summer nights counting the stars.

Children must genuflect to their shiny boxes,

And never lift their eyes to the sweet sunrise,
Sing to the skies, marvel at a burning bush,
Weep with Mary at the foot of the Cross,
Learn their catechism, giggle in choir,
Or form their letters with a wooden pencil.
Their hands will never touch flowers, flutes, or frogs,
Their lips will never kiss puppies or moms,
Their noses will never wrinkle at lemons,
Because a shiny box will be their world.

Huddled among earphones and telescreens,

Subservient, silenced, subdued, suppressed,
Disappearing into a creeping mist -
“This is how children learn now,” the serpent hissed.

 

6 September 2013