School is for learning, right?

Education is meant to be an enlightening experience,

fill the pores of humanity with a vast expanse 

of colors, the colors of Knowledge

So I sit in a desk for 8 hours, 5 days a week

8 hours of learning?

Maybe at another high school.

At my school,

I sit through 8 hours of lifeless droning

8 hours of painfully staring at the red numbers on the wall,

that digital clock, those lazer red numbers,

drilled into my head,

numbers numbers, 7 and a half more hours.

I sit for 8 hours to listen to a bunch of adults talk,

adults who have lost all passion for education,

adults who count the seconds just the same as I do,

adults who pound phrases into my mind,

just so I can get an A on a test.

Just one A on one test, as I have done a thousand times before

Follow the formula;

watch the teacher drone,

write what the teacher writes,

cram the night before the test.

The formula brings one small achievement: An A on the test.

And then I reach the end of the year, 

I haven't learned a thing

Except for how to bullshit my way through essays on topics I know nothing about.

I have straight A's,

yet I have spent the year wishing I were somewhere else.

Somewhere the adults who teach are not just adults,

but teachers.

Teachers who have a fire in their hearts

A fire that burns passion for learning,

a passion that spreads from one to the next

So that a teacher may stand in front of me 

For 90 minutes

And simply speak with words that capture my attention,

Words that light a fire in MY heart,

so that I may feel the passion for learning as well,

so that I may leave the classroom with a mind that feels

90 minutes heavier.

90 minutes of learned wisdom weighing it down.

Take me to a place 

where my teachers don't stand in front of me

spewing words they've memorized 

that lack emotion,

lack passion.

Take me to a place 

where I may feel the passion for learning,

where I may go home after 8 hours

feeling as though my day has been drenched 

in the essence of education,

meaningful for once,

lighting a fire in my heart

and a fire in my brain.