[Sixth Grade, 1969-1970]
You marked my fictive efforts as "Poor taste,"
and graded each assingment as a waste.
The pastel scenes in my imagination
were bleached by your acidic conformation.
In that era of our land's history,
small towns demanded strict conformity;
and you devoted all your perfidy
to throttling what seemed like subversity.
Correct in one detail: you saw that prose
was not the form, the structure, or the pose
my words would seek to take in future time;
but poetry---the measured line and rhyme---
was quite beyond the knowledge and the reach
of that curriculum you tried to teach.
Starward
Author's Notes/Comments:
During my sixth grade year, our school participated in an experiment called "team teaching" in the fifth and sixth grades. Single-teacher classes were abolished. The "A-F" grade system was suspended for a binary system of "correct or incorrect." Accelerated students were thwarted or sabatoged in their areas of greatest achievement in order to avoid discouraging less gifted students. My sixth grade year and my sophomore year in high school were horrifying---both academically and socially; and in both areas, I was told that I "did not fit in."
The two instructors designated in the title were the primary causes of my sixth grade experience. Had I heeded their written remarks on the "stories" I wrote to their assignment, I would not be posting here on postpoems.
