To the Children I Failed

 I was fighting the good fight,
Holding lines I thought were true.
Battles for freedom, for reason, for right
And all the while,
behind me you were falling.

I didn’t see it.
The slow rot behind the shine.
The halls once filled with wonder
turned into factories of forgetfulness.
The sparkle in your eye dimmed
by screens, by noise,
by systems built to mute you.

And I
I who could have spoken,
who could have warned,
who might have stood
was too busy being “reasonable.”

I believed someone else was watching.
I thought the schools were sacred.
I thought there were still teachers
like the ones who lit fires in me.
But they were gone.
Replaced by policy,
by fear,
by programming.

They taught you to doubt your own eyes.
To read the lines but never the spaces.
To follow, not to know.
And worse
they called it “progress.”

Now I live with this guilt:
That I let your minds be rewritten
while I marched in other wars.
And with the wheel of time turning,
I feel the echo coming
another life, another desk,
a name on a roster I didn’t choose.

That may be my karma.
But this—this is my cry:

Don’t trust the calm explanations.
Don’t believe the smile of the system.
Don’t send your children into the fire
without first knowing who lit it.

Tear it down if you must.
Rebuild it with hands that remember
what childhood is for:
wonder, truth, creation, joy.

Now I live with the guilt and regret
I owed them this and more.

Perhaps you owe them too.

To the children I failed:
I see you now.
And I will not go quiet again.

—

Related Reading

Related Reading

• What Is Ethics—Really?
• First Principles of Education
• Honor and Responsibility