Drifting Aimlessly

Lately I've been getting disillusioned with my teaching methods at the university. There's got to be a better way! In desperation I penned the following poem to recite aloud to the poetry group a few of my friends and I have put together. If any of my students are reading this then please be aware that I'm probably not writing about your class but one of the really low level classes I occasionally have that make me so frustrated.


Drifting Aimlessly
A sea of heads have remained mostly silent
Apart from the occasional bungled attempt to communicate
Left abandoned midway on the shoreline like aborted refuse
As whisperers swiftly return to the safer waters of Korean
We seem to be all caught swimming against a tide of indifference
Where it is regurgitating facts for exams that will decide career paths
Not risk taking, not divergent thinking, not speaking for the sheer pleasure
Of trying out a new conception of self in a foreign tongue

Yet another semester has almost drifted by
I feel weighed down, anaesthetized at the bottom of a vast, murky ocean
As I am compelled to follow the mechanical instructions
Of authors comfortably perched in air-conditioned offices high up on distant shores
The tentacles of these publishers reach into every crevice of my classroom
Bombarding us with glossy pictures of consumer knick-knacks, movies and pop idols
Alluring the gullible with bite-size morsels of infotainment
Little nuggets so easily snapped up and swallowed without chewing
Under-nourishing those who drift along soothed by the lull of old currents

Every one of those bobbing heads contains a rich inner life untapped
Years of precious memories and images gone to waste
Replaced by a regimen where every word and action is scripted
Total predictability - teachers as technicians - life as a bullet-pointed list
Everything mapped out to reassure and reduce the cognitive burden
Where dissonance and a multiplicity of views are ignored
My complicity in this plot makes me queasy and restless
And yet I succumb to it day after numbing day

In the mind’s eye
I, too, of course, toy with radical ideas
Where students gleefully dance and rejoice as they spurn classrooms for the real world
Rows of desks are ignited and the textbook-burning spree commences
But they take it too far, this recklessly won freedom they can’t handle
And before you know it
Gullible teachers are being paraded around villages with slogans slapped on foreheads
Chaos descends, the scent of blood fouls up the air
Civilization is crumbling along the seam-lines…

Strange, primeval fears such as these leave me stuck in the groove
So that I hesitate to hand over the reigns and let others do the real decision-making
Another chance for authentic, compelling life is thwarted
Dreams submerged once again
I steer my wearying course.