Kitty recovers, and so do I. It’s the last week of school, a time of dizzy rush underscored by reflection. I think about endangered creatures. One among these is the flightless parrot of New Zealand, the kākāpō. Who, according to Māori legend, is a protector of the land. And I am thinking about the children.
A system built for speed cannot see the slow one, who never flew. Who, when hunted, knew to freeze. I think of her, now camouflaged in shadow—an endangered hush—now subjected to another survey. Intended to express how well we care.
But a check mark is not shelter and a rubric offers no refuge. How many shine like saints in the chill grasp of their handlers, being measured for extinction while staying faithful to their flightlessness?
I’ve learned not to trust anyone with a grand plan because I once had one, too. Now I only want to shelter who still lives. To protect a child’s right to become what they will, even if that becoming looks like myth, even if they call it pest.
I don’t know what school is, only what it is not. One metric involves how well a person can pretend to be a person deserving of award. But that is not the work.
The work is learning how to become, and some of the brightest know better than to obey.
Do it. Don’t ask. Shut up. Or we’ll fail you and humiliate your mother.
And in other news: Kids Fail Critical Thinking Tests.
Marcos liked to talk to old people. Liked to hear their lives. He couldn’t focus on any task that felt designed to domesticate his wonder. The first act of a critical mind is refusal.
Consider the ones who vanish as portraits in negative space: Now you see me. Now I disappear.
Now I am a vase, now I am two people kissing. Now neither. Now both.
You thought your five-minute survey could find me? Think again.
Ask me who I am before I speak.
Ask as if you believe I might not answer.
Ask as if you know the form of your asking matters as well as your question.
There is much I have not said. Not yet––and no, I do not plan to fly.
I live close to the earth, as I am, in these shadows, or I die.
This makes me cry. It is so sad what we do to those who can’t, who won’t fit into the system designed to make square pegs for square holes of them. Breaking. Aching. Wondering how to invent a better way. Oh. It’s already been discovered. Love.
Love indeed. I love the way that a much vaster proportion of the young ones I meet today, as compared to 10-15 years ago, are motivated purely by love, and who are suspicious of attempts to separate them from this, in the name of individual ambition. Bow to you, sister. : )
A lot of profound thoughts in your writing.
Thank you, friend.
Cheers to the millions who endure this start to their life and then succeed by carving their own path with machetes and mowers.
Cheering with you, Jeff : )
Some of the brightest know better than to obey…brilliant.
Thank you for your excellent company, Bill : )
“A system built for speed cannot see the slow one, who never flew.” Yes, Stacey!❤️Thank you for your interesting perspective and how to look at what we see.
Thank you for this timely note, Carolyn! I was working on a piece related to these themes and needed to be reminded back to that line : ) Hugs to you.