Learning untethered

From education to curiosity

So much about schooling is designed to constrain how we use our voice and mold our words. Too many children are stuck in a system that prioritizes education over curiosity. Can we reinvent learning as an inspiring dance between children and their companions? Today I connected with the spirit of the children who have come to teach us how to learn.

Learning untethered

Pencil. Notebook. Ruler. 
Peering from my lonely desk. 
Separate, yet immersed 
in this mindless marathon.

Trapped in a body-school.
A heart cemetery.
Screeching chalk. 
A list of names. 

My shoes, my uniform. 
Shirt tucked in; 
soul sucked out.

What happened to my trees, my rivers?  
… the snugglings of my mother?
… the whirling gusts in her stories?

Rules and scolding. 
Lines and grub. 
Boys and girls engraved 
with scars of conformity.

A box that brands me as schooled.
A repertoire that leaves out my eloquence.
My lion’s roar now whispers invented history.
My words ignored, my self unnamed. 

Notes and test results. 
A rigid body stuck, 
frozen in playlessness.

Who’s voice are you claustrophying?
Is it mine or is it ours? 

Although my wings are young
I've flown as far as you.
I recognize your sweeping spins.
Inspire me to re-glide the wind.

Hold me, guide us to explore
the surging-sacred within us.
To flap, lunge and twist;
to dance from ground through clouds. 

A body-mind of two. 
Feeling together. 
De-schooled.
Untethered.

Dance in the Sky, by Anastasia Kozorez