You Go to School to Learn

Photo via Lisa Schamess

You Go To School To Learn
By Thomas Lux
From New & Selected Poems © Houghton Mifflin

You go to school to learn to
read and add, to someday
make some money. It—money—makes
sense: you need
a better tractor, an addition
to the gameroom, you prefer
to buy your beancurd by the barrel.
There's no other way to get the goods
you need. Besides, it keeps people busy
working—for it.
It's sensible and, therefore, you go
to school to learn (and the teacher,
having learned, gets paid to teach you) how
to get it. Fine. But:
you're taught away from poetry
or, say, dancing (That's nice, dear,
but there's no dough in it). No poem
ever bought a hamburger, or not too many. It's true,
and so, every morning—it's still dark!—
you see them, the children, like angels
being marched off to execution,
or banks. Their bodies luminous
in headlights. Going to school.

Comments

[Dave]

This reminds me of a quote by Helen Keller.

"One goes to college to learn, it seems, not to think."

[beginner's luck]

Hey! Thanks for using the "Cause and Effect Wall" from my daughter's school for such a good cause and to such excellent effect! If your readers do click on my flickr account, they'll see the close-up in which "I dropped my toy/It broke" is accompanied by a drawing of a child smiling even bigger after the bad luck. Because of the joy of learning, perhaps?