Here’s another one from The Clearing House, same issue, same page. Shows my deeply felt and negative reaction to the kind of mechanical empty testing of rote “learning” and why I hope we get rid of it. I’m a great champion of education, but real education, that’s what I want to see, what we need now. Is it obvious enough?

CTBS, WISC, WRAT, ETC.

They give me a pencil,
a standardized stencil,
eraser, scratch paper,
a desk, and a space.
They start me and stop
me. They study my face.
Begin at the top
and slowly I taper
my answers and knowledge
to little black bubbles
they tell me are doubles
of footprints to college.
I keep the paper clean
around the messages I write
to some far away machine
I have never seen
that stays up half the night
writing back in neat tight
rows about what it thinks it knows
about me, columns of bother.
We say little to each other.