Education Reform

 

 

“The more things change

The more they remain the same”,

I have come to understand

This is more than a refrain.

 

This brings to my mind

Another I learned in school,

You’re on the ball if you guessed

“A promise is comfort to a fool”.

 

This is not your unique fool

Oh no, not at all!

This is your typical disadvantaged fool

And that is my call.

 

This is not the type of fool

That has no sense

But the poor and the vulnerable

And I mean no offense.

 

Now here is a question:

Whom does reform target?

Certainly not the most vulnerable

I would dare to bet.

 

 

But somewhere in reform

There is a rhetorical promise:

A promise to put the most challenged

At the top of the list.

 

The typical slow learner

Of poor socio-economic background

Who, like his parents and grandparents

Is destined to be kept down.

 

The have-little

Or, virtually nothing at all,

The already too deprived and depressed

To even fall.

 

The already at the bottom

Where a fall is no possibility,

The already scorned by most people

The outback of society.

 

Whom does reform target?

I dare say the middle and upper

And any promise to the lower end

Is idle chatter.

 

 

We still throw out the corn

To fowls in the proverbial yard

Where the strong ones gobble it up

And the weak ones starve.

 

Education reform?

Tell me, what form will it take?

Unless it targets the most vulnerable,

No reform, same state.

 

Stewart Russell © November 3, 2021