The REAL Educated Ones

January 8, 2009 in Uncategorized
Tags: poetry

When did Education become a replica of

The already sick, twisted, mangled American culture?

When did it become about GPA’s and reports,

Degrees and qualifications?

When did it become about money, distinction, and prosperity?

Why is education refused to those who can’t afford it?

Those who can’t afford to put more money into a bloated system?

Those who work, those who live their lives, those are the educated ones,

Not the book readers, the paper writers,

The ones who solve math problems.

Because these people are the real problem solvers,

The ones who solve life’s problems.

Who is more educated? The Doctor who is twenty thousand in debt?

Or the single mother raising two kids, ain’t got no college degree but

Still in debt?

Tell me, who is the more educated one?

Yeah, those degree carryin’ fools may be smart,

But they ain’t the intelligent ones.

They the ones who need to be taught!

Not of chemistry, geometry, and other senseless subjects,

But of life, the real world.

See the real world ain’t gonna care if you got a PhD,

The real world ain’t gonna care about that shit ‘cause when you die,

We’ll be the smart ones.

We’ll be the ones who are wiser.

You can talk all day ‘bout how you built a computer,

But Old Man John can talk about how he built a house for his family

Out of scraps from the junkyard.

What?

What’s that you say?

Disagree with me all you want, I beg you.

But I’ll still tell you you wrong, son.

See, if you look at this world education is all whack,

Why don’t you just step and take a look back?

We look at schools as the source of all knowledge,

If you wanna know somethin’, you gotta go to college.

Wanna be successful in life? You gotta get a degree,

in chemistry, psychology or sociology.

We look at schooling as the only way to get ahead in life

But you gotta understand, education can get you places

It can get you a job, some money.

But money can’t buy happiness, and neither can education.

It’s knowledge, that gets you far. And what our schools give ain’t knowledge,

It’s data. Information. Shit that’s in books around the nation.

Knowledge isn’t somethin’ you can get from a book,

It’s something that comes from livin’ in this world,

Not somethin’ from a classroom. What’s that teach ya?

How to be dependent on the system? It’s independence that teaches ya somethin’!

I’m sorry if you don’t think this way,

See you’ve been taught that education is the solution.

I’ll tell you, I know their shit.

I can speak in fully correct grammatical english all day.

But why don’t I? Why is this poem full of “ain’t”s and “somethin’”s?

That’s cause you don’t expect that shit from me. You don’t expect this

All-A, white student to talk like this. But who’s to say this ain’t me?

That I’m not made of “ain’t”s and “somethin’”s?

You see, you’re wrong again. You think that ‘cause I am who I am

I have a responsibility to be somebody. I have the obligation to tell you this

In the only way you will listen. You ain’t gonna listen to me if I got my college degree

The same way you be listenin’ to me right now.

you’re critizing, critiquing, thinkin’ what I should say

But I’m tellin’ you today that life ain’t that way.

I can stand up here all I want and give you what you want to hear,

But what’s the fun in that? I give you what you don’t normally hear,

I’m gonna sit here and yell in yo ears

What you need to hear. I’ma tell you a radical idea in a revolutionary way,

Somethin’ you don’t normally hear today.

See, I can analyze literature, I can easily get my degree,

But what’s that gonna get me? A few dollars and a nice car?

I’ve told you before that don’t matter no more.

Wait, what’s that you say?

You gonna inherit the earth one day?

Nah man, you got it all wrong.

See, you may rule your world, but the real world belongs to us.

The smart ones.

The wise ones.

The real educated ones.