.

Learning Curves

In classrooms smeared with monkey poop
__Where questions meet deceit,
She heard she came from soupy gloop—
__A slab of soulless meat.
Her teachers preached from thrones of bones—
__They dragged brains to the brink
Of simian survival zones
__That missed a vital link.

Professors of the hammer tore
__The wings from seraphim.
They tethered lore that soared before
__They sang their godless hymn—
A song for workers of the world—
__An anthem to unite
With reddest reveries unfurled
__On scything tongues of might.

In lecture halls where highbrows pry
__The psyche clean apart,
She kissed her innocence goodbye.
__She mourned her childish heart—
Lost to lessons laced with lust
__In labyrinths of sleaze
Where daughters’ love for dads is dust
__That peppers salty seas.

Yet still she knows the glory of
__Her independent mind
Abuzz with thoughts that bounce above
__Each grim and flimsy find.
A zap of Darwin, Marx and Freud
__May spin a student’s head—
But Truth will never be destroyed
__Although it’s left for dead.

.

.

Please Sir…

Show me why.
Help me fly.
I want to soar
not sink.

Teach me now.
Teach me how
But never what
to think.

.

.

Susan Jarvis Bryant is a poet originally from the U.K., now living on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

NOTE TO READERS: If you enjoyed this poem or other content, please consider making a donation to the Society of Classical Poets.

The Society of Classical Poets does not endorse any views expressed in individual poems or commentary.

23 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    “Learning Curves” is replete with arrows slung at deserving targets where the false prophets and teachers of education hide behind tattered infernal robes of academia twisting truth and savaging the minds of the students. “Please Sir…” is the cherry on top that brings home to us the value of having an independent mind. Great lessons for inquiring minds!

    Reply
    • Edward Hayes

      Mr. Peterson, This poem is full of poetic ten-strikes. In form every verse has the same long/short line pattern and positional line meter. Rhymes inside lines (verse 3, line 5) nostretched rhymes. each verse says something new , broadening her verbal attack and the ideological/religious attack saved to the last two lines–which complete the foregoing attacks.
      This is a professional job. Her ability to put an idea into a rhyming verse, the breadth of her vocabulary — they are beyond amateur. I hope you can forward this whole-hearted appreciation from an unknown.

      Reply
      • Susan Jarvis Bryant

        Edward, thank you very much indeed for reading my poem and for your most encouraging observations. They’re very much appreciated.

    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Thank you very much for your keen eye, Roy. Those “false prophets and teachers of education [who] hide behind tattered infernal robes of academia twisting truth and savaging the minds of the students” (beautifully put) have an awful lot to answer for.

      Reply
  2. Jeff Kemper

    These two gems are beautifully rendered! I like the optimism in the last lines of Learning Curves: “But Truth will never be destroyed / Although it’s left for dead.” Indeed, the Truth (appropriately capitalized) is unaffected by anything other than the truth. Reminds me of Ben Shapiro’s mantra, “Facts don’t care about your feelings.” Darwin, Marx, and Freud, a few of the multitude of high priests of man-is-god, now know the Truth!

    I work a lot with kids, whose vocabularies are far limited from mine when I was their age. Their reading and math skills are terrifyingly close to nil. I hope 2024 will have been the bottom of the curve!

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Jeff, I thoroughly appreciate your fine eye and wise words. The Truth reveals itself in the end… and what a shock that moment holds. I believe we’re seeing a lot of the cold, hard truth emerging at present and one of those truths is the damage we have done and are still doing to our children both mentally and physically. This wickedness needs to be highlighted and stopped. Jeff, thank you!

      Reply
  3. Frank Rable

    First thing I read in the morning. What gets my attention? Monkey poop. but there’s a purpose. Reading on: a product of soupy gloop (good description!) as taught from the academic pulpit – Darwinism- no God need apply.

    My favorite (couplet?): “Professors from the hammer tore / the wings from seraphim.” A powerful image about people who think of belief in a higher power as an opiate of the masses. Ironic, because atheism, as opposed to agnosticism, is also a leap of faith.

    “Lessons laced with lust” Love the alliteration!

    Thank you most of all for the fourth stanza which confirms and summarizes what has gone before. Although the reader should see and understand your message, it’s just a kindness to let them know by reinforcing your point. Some of us are abuzz quite a lot.

    A good read, and a worthy message.

    Please Sir…. Yes, a few words saying so much. Teach me to think but not what to think. What a rare thing that must be. Asking for that gift is a good start.

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Frank, thank you for your close reading of my poems. I’m especially glad you mentioned the second poem. I wanted a simple request from a childlike perspective… a plea for the Truth that sets one free. There’s all too little of it, especially in many classrooms.

      Reply
  4. Mark Stellinga

    “labyrinths of sleaze” nails it, Susan, and I’ve got the ‘anything for a better grade’ college-kid-friends to prove it. As usual, your meter and rhyme are impeccable, and your purpose concisely conveyed. An exhilarating way to start the week – bless your heart. 🙂

    Reply
  5. Warren Bonham

    Amazing alliteration as always (that’s the best I can do). I was very glad you ended Learning Curves optimistically – capital T Truth cannot be destroyed although the devil never tires of trying.

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Warren, thank you for your lovely comment. I was very keen to get my capital T Truth out there… I’m sure children feel it stirring within… if only it was encouraged it to see light in the dark confines of today’s education system. I have hope.

      Reply
  6. Michael Vanyukov

    This is a mighty attack on the soulless edumication, turning children into primitive machines, except that it’s thankfully hard to kill the spark of truth. I do regret, however, that Darwin’s (or even Freud’s) name is mentioned on the same breath with Marx. Marx was a bearer of evil that still flourishing. Darwin was a scientist whose contribution has been abused and adulterated by the soulless educators, as many scientific and religious truths have been. I’ll just give a couple of quotes from “The Descent of Man” of his that would definitely offend today’s neo-Marxians of schools, universities, and progressive public. “To do good in return for evil, to love your enemy, is a height of morality to which it may be doubted whether the social instincts would, by themselves, have ever led us. It is necessary that these instincts, together with sympathy, should have been highly cultivated and extended by the aid of reason, instruction, and the love or fear of God, before any such golden rule would ever be thought of and obeyed.” “…if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil. We must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind…” Darwin’s dream was extending humans’ “social instincts and sympathies” to “all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him,” and then to “the men of all nations and races.” Darwin was ahead of his time.

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Michael, thank you for your passionate and insightful comment. It is indeed “hard to kill the spark of truth” which I hope my poem conveys.

      In the brevity of my poem, I have tried to capture the essence of the problem with the education system, and that is the children being fed a myopic picture of the world. C.S Lewis wrote, “ I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” The cherry-picked teachings of Darwin, Freud, and Marx (the loudest voices in our education system) aren’t guided by the light of the sun. They’ve wittingly or unwittingly killed God.

      I believe in listening to everyone and drawing my own conclusion, which includes philosophies some find too distasteful to entertain. I find the controversial figure Nietzsche to be most insightful in this observation that is always quoted out of context: “Do we not hear the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God’s decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead and we have killed him. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, the murderers of all murders, comfort ourselves?… Who will wipe the blood off us?”

      Whether we believe in God or not. Whether we come from an atheist, agnostic, or faith-based perspective – we owe it to our children to offer all views not just one.

      Every philosopher out there has had their works picked over and shaped and molded to suit an ideology by our propagandist education system – one that has killed God. This is my point. Marx’s economic revolution dismissed God as a ruler. Darwin dismissed God as a Creator. Freud dismissed God as a lawgiver. And their works have been pushed to the extent that man is now God. Who is the worst of the three or best of the three is not my concern. Teaching cherry-picked versions of these philosophies alone is my concern and I’ve expressed it poetically hoping others will hear my plea. As far as our education system is concerned, God is indeed dead.

      Reply
      • Michael Vanyukov

        Thank you, Sysan, for your no less passionate and thoughtful reply. Not to belabor, however, I don’t think I cherry-pick much for Darwin’s quoting the Bible, as a fellow biologist. He certainly did not dismiss G-d – at worst, he was an agnostic. Evolution is in no contradiction to religion as was well explained by Theodosius Dobzhansky, who was not only a leading evolutionist but a deeply believing Orthodox Christian (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/10/2/text_pop/l_102_01.html). Similarly, Teilhard de Chardin had no problem being a Jesuit and a famous Darwinist (despite the Church’s prohibitions, reminding of Galileo). Closer to my field, a famous geneticist and, of course, an evolutionist, Lindon Eaves, was an Anglican/Episcopalian priest. While nowhere close to those titans, neither do I as a Jew find anything contradictory between religion and the science that the evolutionary theory is, unless one attempts to replace one with the other, a futile exercise. Or so I think. Again, science can be abused as much as anything, and religion is no exception to that.

  7. Brian Yapko

    Susan, this is a perfect pairing of a meaty poem with a brief but potent digestive. “Please, Sir” is a pithy statement of the proper relation between the teacher and the student, or the master and the protégé. Show. Help. Teach. To teach a student how to think for himself or herself is the ultimate goal of good teaching. But to abuse teaching as a mechanism for indoctrination is anathema. You distinguish these two goals with great economy and common sense. Unfortunately, indoctrination is now common now throughout the West and those who resist are treated as if they have a loathsome disease. In four short lines you remind me how and why to despise ideologues.

    As for the main course… “Learning Curves” is an astonishingly literate (while variously salty, sardonic and saucy) cautionary study on the impact of three massively influential thinkers who, it may be argued, caused more harm than good. When it comes to choosing figures for their consequentiality I heartily concur with your selection. That being said, I can actually find good things to say about Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud but I have not one word of respect or gratitude for Karl Marx, who has probably done more to damage Western Civilization than any non-belligerent in the last 500 years. But with that said, Darwin’s followers did a good job of dismantling faith in God and religiosity, Freud did a good job of eliminating the soul and Marx did a good job of fomenting division in the service of economic envy.

    However, your poem here does not seem intended to offer a verdict on these figures’ social or historical worth. Rather, your focus appears to be on what it means to actually study their work from an academic standpoint. There is no real harm in the introduction to them. It is when one fails to question the validity and proper scope of their work that the trouble begins. Keeping them “right-sized.” On the evolution front, the teacher teaches “from bags of bones” and misses that vital link of what it all actually means although she actually “preaches” it like a minister of atheism. Yes, you indict Darwin to some degree. But it is the teacher who is really blasted for failing to allow for critical thinking and for failing to acknowledge (let alone explore) the intangibles that come with respecting human beings as spiritual beings as well as “slabs of soulless meat.”

    A proper comment would go through your discussion of Marx and Freud as well, but a careful reader should be able to recognize your critique both of the figure and the manner in which the figure’s work is taught. Marx is taught by a professor who “tears the wings from seraphim” (I love the image and language here.) In lecture halls the highbrows pry the psyche clean apart (also brilliant use of imagery and language.) And — brief digression — when you refer to the division of the psyche, I believe you are offering an oblique reference to the ego, superego and id that Freud proposed.

    The poem could have kept going with additional figures, but in a case like this – where you are indicting the education system more than the subject of specific lectures – less is more. Plus there is a pleasing symmetry to your unholy trinity as contrasted to what soulful education might have looked like with true respect for the spiritual realm.

    It is your closing stanza which brings everything home – actually for both poems. It is incumbent upon the student to approach all things with a critical eye and the avoidance of indoctrination. To learn critical thinking and then to not only practice it but acquire boundaries which protect a person from becoming easily influenced by professorial or peer pressure – these are skills of paramount importance. Unfortunately, in this day and age students are taught ideology and conformity rather than critical thinking and integrity of thought. And they seem terrified of not “following the herd.” Great dereliction of duty by much of academia has had disastrous consequences on our young people and its effects will be felt for many years to come. Your poetry bravely shows us the disease and the cure. I hope people have the smarts and the confidence to follow in the footsteps of one who “knows the glory of an independent mind” and who knows how to think past the ideologies (often bankrupt) foisted upon her.

    Thank you, Susan, for wonderful poetry which offers deep insights into an enormously consequential problem.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Brian, I too think that Sigmund Freud made some extremely important discoveries about the human mind and its workings. His limitations were his unreflective Enlightenment attitudes, and his hostility to all religion, including his inherited Jewish faith.

      The psychologist who began with Freud, but who broke free from Freud’s parochialism, was Carl Gustav Jung. It was Jung who turned psychology into a towering world-class science.

      Reply
  8. Cynthia Erlandson

    So many great phrases, Susan: “A slab of soulless meat”; “They missed a vital link”; “that peppers salty seas”; and “Truth will never be destroyed / Although it’s left for dead/” — among others.

    Reply
  9. Gigi Ryan

    Dear Susan,
    You have well described my high school and college experience. I was completely unaware. In hindsight I see the hand of God protecting me from falling into atheism during those years.
    “Please Sir” is a good reminder to me even now as I continue to educate children.
    Gigi

    Reply
  10. C.B. Anderson

    Here’s something I read a long time ago:

    “God is dead” — Nietsche

    “Nietsche is dead.” — God

    Reply
  11. Yael

    Good job Susan! You managed to describe my public school education experience in 2 lovely poems, which indite as much as they indict the evils of forced indoctrination. I always look forward to reading your poems, thank you.

    Reply
  12. Julian D. Woodruff

    If you can’t teach ’em, indoctrinate ’em. Most of the time this is the case, with the majority of teachers themselves indoctrinated, and viewing students as mere receptacles, and far too many students so poorly equipped with basic skills that reading and sifting to examine their “feed” critically is impossible.
    Susan, again you’ve hit on a gaping wound in societies throughout the West, certainly in the U.S. as much as most places.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.