Educational Slavery
They called it knowledge—
but it came in cages,
neatly bound in books
with no windows to the sky.
We were fed with answers,
but starved of questions,
trained to remember
but never to awaken.
They taught us numbers,
but never how to count
what truly matters.
They gave us alphabets,
but stripped the poetry from our speech.
We learned the names of kings—
but not the dignity of sweeping floors.
Degrees became our chains,
and titles, our silent prisons.
They said,
"Memorize, conform, compete."
But never,
"Feel, connect, or create."
We mastered equations,
yet forgot how to plant seeds.
We read about stars,
but forgot how to dream.
They built minds to serve machines,
but not hearts to serve mankind.
Education became the altar
where imagination was sacrificed
to serve the economy,
where children were factory-pressed
into future clerks of a broken world.
They never taught us
how to cook with love,
how to sit in silence,
how to see a flower
and be transformed.
We learned history—but never healing.
We studied wars—but never peace.
And still we walk,
carrying borrowed truths
like rusted armor,
never questioning the battlefield
we were born into.
But the Earth remembers
a different schooling:
fire forges character,
soil teaches patience,
water writes wisdom
on the bones of stone.
We must return—
to the education of the heart,
where learning means becoming,
where wisdom is grown,
not bought.
Until then,
we are merely literate slaves,
writing essays on freedom
while forgetting how to live it.
Copyright ©
Chanda Katonga
|