.

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.

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70 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.

      • Susan Jarvis Bryant

        Michael, thank you for your further thoughts. I believe God and science go hand in hand. When God is removed from science then children only get a vague picture of our purpose – half the story. Darwin didn’t believe in the God of the Bible – he called himself “the devil’s chaplain” and believed the baboon was our grandfather. This line of thought begs for a fair and balanced argument. I have many thoughts on this subject, but this isn’t about what I believe. It’s about giving our children an honest education, which means offering them both sides of an argument in the interest of broadening their curious minds and building a better future for all in the process by teaching our future generations HOW to think not WHAT to think. At present the majority of children are only fed the party line which they parrot because they know no different.

        The sad thing is the privilege of having the conversation we’re engaged in now will be dead in a couple of generations if our children aren’t told the truth. And that is my point. I’d like to leave it at that.

      • Brian Yapko

        Susan and Michael, I’ve followed this particular thread with great interest as I have a great deal of resentment against Karl Marx while at the same time a grudging respect for Darwin — particularly the astonishingly clever way he was able to use the varying traits of animals in the Galapagos Islands to formulate a concept of useful mutation and survival of the fittest.

        Michael, I am no scientist so I will defer to you on these points. But I was most interested in your mention of religious scientists, including Lindon Eaves who I did not know of before this. But then when talking about religious scientists relevant to this comment I was expecting to see the name of Gregor Mendel who built on the work of Darwin and derived the principles of genetic inheritance — even though he did not know the actual mechanism for the transmission from generation to generation. Though trained as a physicist, Mendel was a Catholic priest and friar (and an amateur gardener!) who remained devout througout his life. As I understand it from my course on Physical Anthropology back in the day, our modern understanding of evolution and the functioning of genetics would be unthinkable without Mendel’s work. Whether Jewish or Christian, I believe it is entirely possible to be both devoutly faithful and rigorously scientific.

      • Susan Jarvis Bryant

        Brian, I respect your views on Darwin and his research on the “varying traits of animals in the Galapagos Islands to formulate a concept of useful mutation and survival of the fittest”. My problem lies in putting humankind in the same category as animals. As far as God the Creator goes, Darwin said: “As soon as you realize that one species could evolve into another, the whole structure wobbles and collapses.” When he concluded that all living beings had a common ancestry, he went on to claim, “Science has nothing to do with Christ.” He’s right, of course, “survival of the fittest’ isn’t compatible with a Christ-centered view. In “The Descent of Man” he claims his work is to “consider the value of the differences between the so-called races of man”. If one believes in God, they don’t have the right to judge another based solely on race. I too believe it is entirely possible to be both devoutly faithful and rigorously scientific, which is why I don’t buy Darwin’s finds in their entirety. The species jump is a leap too far. The WEF darling and transhumanist, Yuval Noah Harari, is the latest to push Darwin’s unproven species-jump theories. I get a horrible sense of déjà vu.

        At the moment, we are lucky enough to be having this debate. The point of my poem is, all the time man decides who is of “value” then our children only get to hear the “valued” voice, and in Darwin’s world, God is silent.

  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
      • Susan Jarvis Bryant

        Joe, “Freud most certainly made some extremely important discoveries about the human mind and its workings” – I’m not arguing that. He also put sex (sexual desire and fulfillment) at the center of human existence – a birthright, if you will. He said: “Man’s discovery that sexual (genital) love afforded him the strongest experiences of satisfaction, in fact provided him with the prototype of all happiness in his life along the path of sexual relations and that he should make genital eroticism the central point in his life.” Really?!

        All I’m saying is, perhaps he had it wrong. Perhaps Viktor Frankl had it right. The point is no student is introduced to the works and finds of Frankl, so they can’t make a fair judgment. Freud’s finds featured highly during my English Literature degree. Everything was viewed through a sexual lens to the point that Mrs. Danvers of Du Maurier’s “Rebecca” was nothing more than a sex-starved closet lesbian. Thank goodness I was a mature student and didn’t believe what I read based on a childhood education that afforded more than one viewpoint … something denied by today’s education system.

        I have respect for Jung – but (again) this isn’t about my viewpoint, just the viewpoints forced on today’s students, and those of Marx, Darwin, and Freud are the three main figures.

      • Joseph S. Salemi

        Susan, you’re right — Freud definitely overemphasized the importance of sexuality in human thought and behavior, to the detriment of many other realities that are just as profound and significant. The same was true for Adler, who overemphasized the human will to power.

        But Freud was a major pioneer in the field of psychology, who broke ground for those who came after him. As C.G. Jung once said, before Freud the study of dreams was “an utterly Stygian darkness.” And his concepts of unconscious repression and Oedipal conflict were crucial discoveries.

        I agree that Freudian “theories” were popularized and bastardized and misused by those in the teaching professions, in exactly the way that you have described. The same thing happened in Hollywood, which produced an endless run of stupid and misdirected films that pushed a kind of silly, brain-dead Freudianism that was a travesty of the man’s work.

      • Brian Yapko

        Joe, it so happens that I have developed the profoundest respect and a certain affection for Carl Jung. His work was highly influential in the development of 12 Step Recovery programs. His views on the nature of spirituality and the basic human need to confront the Divine are deeply satisfying to one who may be interested in both science and faith. Unfortuately, Jung’s favorable views on spirituality and faith have not become the norm in the fields of psychology and psychiatry which, in the mainstreatm, have become rigorously atheistic. It surprises me not at all that psychologists and psychiatrists tend to be the most unhappy of people. A Psychology Today study found that 61% of therapists suffer from depression. Another study showed that psychologists have the highest rate of suicide among medical professionals. I think this is the result of what happens when one studiously — often zealously — divorces God and spirituality from mental health. Happiness dries up like a desert. Jung’s way was so much better.

      • Susan Jarvis Bryant

        Brian, thank you so much for your excellent comments on Jung. Your observations on spirituality highlight my point. Trying to understand and gain the most from our world in the absence of the spiritual side of the debate gives us only half the story. We need the whole story to benefit. Our education system is denying our children hope.

    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Brian, I thoroughly appreciate your ability to see exactly what I set out to do with these poems – you are spot on with your analysis.

      “Learning Curves” is indeed a “cautionary study on the impact of three massively influential thinkers who, it may be argued, caused more harm than good.” I think all three caused (and still cause more harm) than good, noted in the tone of my poem. That doesn’t mean to say I think Darwin and Freud are as bad as Marx and that doesn’t mean to say they didn’t have their hearts in the right place. I chose them because their philosophies are woven through every child’s education as if their finds were conclusive. They’re not. That’s my point. As you have noted (and I’m most grateful for your fine eye) I am not saying they should not be taught – that their works should be slung on the pyre and burned to ash. I’m saying that they should be studied with an open mind and read with challenging viewpoints put forward in order to reach a reasoned conclusion based on a fair perspective.

      Brian, as ever thank you very much for your appreciation and understanding of my work.

      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
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Cynthia, I’m always thrilled to hear you like some of my word combos… I strive for musicality, and I know you have a musical ear. Your wonderful comment has brought me joy – thank you!

      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
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Gigi, you make such a good point about not being aware. So many students are taken in and damaged mentally and physically by ideals being pushed that go unchallenged. I’m so glad to hear of teachers who know the importance of giving students the means to think for themselves. Thank you for being one of them.

      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
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Yael, thank you so much for adding to these interesting comments. It is so hard to believe how many people the evils of this forced indoctrination has affected, and how far back it goes. It seems more are waking up to what’s going on in our schools now. I hope this leads to massive a change that our children and the world benefit from.

      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
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Julian, your “If you can’t teach ’em, indoctrinate ’em” observation sums up the dire situation with the education system perfectly. Every year that passes gets worse because, as you quite rightly point out, many of the teachers themselves have gone through a system of daily indoctrination. We’re now hearing whispers of change that I hope develop into cries from the rooftops heard by all those who are willing and able to do something about it. Julian, thank you very much indeed!

      Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      James, what more encouragement could a poet ask for. I am smiling. Thank you most kindly!

      Reply
  14. Jeff Eardley

    Susan, you have done it again. I was brought up to be C of E with no real explanation of where we came from. (Behind a gooseberry bush my mother told me!!!) so we had to work it out for ourselves as we got older. Our children are currently kissing their innocence goodbye as their personalities are being hoovered out of them by social media and I wonder what adulthood will be like for them. There are so many good lines to ponder in your work today. You are a poetic inspiration to all of us. Thank you.

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Jeff, I just love your comment. Your gooseberry-bush nod reminds of my grandmother’s advice on sex. She told me the greatest fun she had with my grandfather was in discovering everything they didn’t know… together. Her words hold far more weight in today’s world, where children are pushed to choose their pronouns and gender before they know how babies are made. She would be appalled to see the warped world her great-granddaughter, born 100 years after her, inhabits. Jeff, thank you very much indeed.

      Reply
  15. Brian Yapko

    Susan, one quote from Ben Shapiro’s book The Right Side of History has leapt out at me as highly relevant to your work and this discussion: “Opposite to God is Atheism in profession & Idolatry in practice. Atheism is so senseless & odious to mankind that it never had many professors.” That is Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1726) — one of many scientists who never felt the need to obliterate faith. I’ll copy Shapiro’s attribution: “Isaac Newton, Keynes Ms. 7, King’s College, Cambridge UK, http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts.normalized/THEm00007
    Susan, I’ve been wanting to have this discussion of faith versus science for a very long time. Glad to have your poetry as a springboard!

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Brian, thank you very much for this. I’m a huge fan of Newton – thank you for the link. I look forward reading Ben Shapiro’s attribution.

      Reply
    • Mike Bryant

      Hey Brian,
      Your link is not working. But I think you know that I consider Newton THE scientist by which all others should be judged.
      I have visited the site, though, and it is a cornucopia of Newton’s work.
      Newton famously said that he saw much because he stood on the shoulders of giants. I have no doubt that Newton considered God to be first in that line.
      So, I agree that faith and science are not mutually exclusive, in fact, the greatest scientists do, and did, have faith in God.

      Reply
  16. Michael Vanyukov

    Brian and Susan, I am writing this with hesitancy: this is not a scientific forum, and I am risking to invite displeasure when I truly cherish your opinions and the platform. Nonetheless, I feel that it would be negligent of me if I did not try to correct what I view as a misperception when it is in my professional field, where Darwin is concerned, and touches upon my very personal experience with Marxism and Marx. It would require an essay to show the magnitude of the difference between the two, with Darwin’s having no other goal but scientific inquiry, and Marx, the violent destruction of the society under the falsehood of common good. It is, however, indeed cherry-picking when Darwin is quoted out of context, let alone apocryphally: it is unclear what is meant by “As soon as you realize that one species could evolve into another, the whole structure wobbles and collapses,” and there is no known source of this quote except for a 2009 piece in Scientific American, with no reference. When Darwin wrote about “devil’s chaplain,” he did not refer to himself. The full quote from the letter you quoted, still out of context, is, “What a book a devil’s chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horridly cruel works of nature!” Nature is indeed cruel, and people are even more so, and it takes effort to reconcile that obvious fact with the concept of the compassionate omniscient L-rd. In fact, as I see it, it is exactly evolution as a divine tool that allows for that – just as the divine physical laws explain collisions of galaxies. Morality is the only thing that distinguishes humans from all other animals, and it needs to be inculcated in us, created in the image of G-d, i.e., with free will, which is why moral laws were given to us by G-d Himself in a written form rather than built in like the instincts. There is nothing in Darwin’s writings that would suggest humans’ descent from baboons, nor any scientist thinks that. Nor did Darwin judge anybody on race, and it is exactly in “The Descent of Man” where he rejects the concept that the different “so-called” (!) races represent different species, establishing the gradual transitions between them. In other words, he did “consider the value of the differences between the so-called races of man” and found it to be low. That was at the time when the popular opinion did not hold certain races as human. And that is taking into consideration that it would be unreasonable to hold Darwin to contemporary standards, which are themselves still far from being perfect, or to think that his writings have been the last word in the evolutionary theory, much as he was wonderfully able to do with his limited knowledge and resources.

    Which takes me to Mendel, the founder of my own field of genetics. He did not really have much to do with evolution, and he started his experiments before “On the Origin of Species” was published, although he published them several years after that. His experiments and discoveries pertained to statistical regularities of breeding and did not need evolutionary input. Darwin, however, would definitely benefit from Mendel’s works if he knew them: he could understand, with Mendel’s particulate inheritance, how a newly obtained beneficial change could remain in the offspring rather than being hopelessly diluted in blending, and would have no need to accept Lamarckian inheritance nor invent his pangenesis hypothesis he himself did not like. Unfortunately, Mendel’s work remained unknown long after Darwin died.

    To sum, Darwin’s works have resulted in numerous discoveries that were guided by evolutionary theory. Today’s biology would be impossible without that. Marx’s legacy is human catastrophes and over 100 mln people dead. I would be happy to continue this discussion via email, [email protected].

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Michael thank you. I have read your comment with interest. I’m inspired to read further.

      Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Thank you very much for this knowledgable analysis, Michael. Grateful for the professional perspective on Darwin and Mendel by someone who values both science and faith. I’m especially glad to be disabused of the notion that Mendel somehow built on Darwin’s work. As an undergrad, I was taught the history of science in such a linear way (A led to B led to C) that I didn’t recognize the actual nonlinear circumstances of how certain discoveries come about. You taught me something.

      Reply
  17. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    I feel it necessary to point out that “Learning Curves” isn’t a jab at Darwin himself. It is a torch aimed at an education system that’s lost its way. Darwin’s “soupy gloop” isn’t the villain; it’s the teachers “preaching from thrones of bones” twisting his ideas into a soulless script that draws the poem’s ire and fire. The indictment lands on a system that peddles only half the story – evolution, Marx’s anthems, and Freud’s lusty mazes without teaching kids HOW to move forward with this information by comparing, questioning, and connecting to form an independent opinion.

    I could have chosen from a plethora of philosophers and scientists. I chose these three because their finds are threaded through every modern education. It’s not a competition as to who is the best and worst of the chosen three and my personal opinion on their finds is of little relevance to the poem’s message. Look at the poem’s heart: “Yet still she knows the glory of / Her independent mind.” – therein lies my point. The narrator is NOT rejecting the “zap” of Marx, Darwin, and Freud – she’s thriving despite a system that spins heads without grounding souls. I paired it with “Please Sir” to further my point, which is, give a child all the angles – teach them “how” but never “what” to think.

    The crime isn’t evolution – it’s an education system that churns out parrots, not thinkers. A real education would offer kids the tools to sift Darwin, Marx, Freud AND faith – allowing them to find the truth, not just swallow a half story. The poem is trusting the student’s mind over the system’s dogma. Darwin is just a guest star – the villain is the lesson plan.

    Reply
    • Mike Bryant

      I think it’s clear what the poems are about… if it wasn’t… you have made it crystal clear now, Susan! We’ve talked about this many times. You know, Marx was a big fan of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species—he thought it backed up his own materialist views. In 1873, Marx even mailed Darwin a signed copy of Das Kapital with a personal note. Darwin, though, didn’t really engage with Marx’s ideas and politely turned down an offer to have the book dedicated to him. The two never met, and Darwin’s response was basically, “Thanks, but this isn’t really my thing”.
      So, I guess it’s ok for Marx to make that connection, but I guess we shouldn’t?

      Reply
      • Michael Vanyukov

        Mike, as you yourself note, the “connection” between Marx and Darwin was one-sided. As I’ve mentioned, any human mental or spiritual achievement can be abused, and both science and religion have been. I don’t think we can truly call such abuse a “connection”, when a villain find something useful in the works of a scientific hero, especially when the latter declines that connection with the former. Otherwise, we, for example, would have to accuse Jesus of the crimes of the Church against the Jews.

      • Mike Bryant

        Michael, actually Jesus is being and has been blamed for plenty, but isn’t it a stretch to compare your scientific hero to Jesus? Instead it might make more sense to compare the innumerate mind of Darwin, the careful observer, to Newton, the inventor of calculus.

        Darwin wasn’t some towering genius—he was a plodder with a good hunch. He didn’t invent evolution; others, like his grandfather Erasmus and Lamarck, were already tossing the idea around. His big thing—natural selection—came from observing birds and barnacles, not some brilliant eureka moment. He couldn’t do math, flunked out of medical school, and only stumbled into science after theology didn’t stick. His Origin of Species is a slog—rambling and speculative, leaning hard on Lyell’s geology to sound plausible. And look at his theories now: natural selection’s still a player, but it’s been patched up with genetics, epigenetics, and drift—stuff he never dreamed of. He didn’t know about DNA or Mendel’s peas, so his mechanism was half-baked. Modern evolution’s a team effort; Darwin just got the ball rolling with a decent guess. Bright? Maybe not. Persistent? Sure.
        He was a hero, though… to Marx, Hitler and, more recently, Yuval Harari.

    • Brian Yapko

      Agreed, Susan. The villain is the lesson plan. But not ONLY the lesson plan. There is an overwhelming trend in Academia to support only leftist causes and to damage religion and conservatism wherever possible. This has been ripening for decades and has finally exploded out into the open with the Hamas occupations and riots supported by useful-idiot students who know nothing of the actual history. In fact, I would say that this has been a major development in education in the last few decades — the creation of useful idiots to support leftist causes — including Marxism, atheism, DEI, CRC, antisemitism and now Trump Derangement Syndrome and Musk Derangement Syndrome. But I came across some good news yesterday: the University of California system is finally doing away with DEI ideological purity tests for its professors.

      https://www.city-journal.org/article/a-death-knell-for-diversity-statements?skip=1

      It’s a start.

      Reply
  18. James Sale

    Wonderful poetry Susan and I particularly like those last lines: “But Truth will never be destroyed
    __Although it’s left for dead.” So full of hope. And I am reminded of GK Chesterton’s profound observation that Christianity can never die because we worship a God who knows the way out of the grave. Great stuff.

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Thank you for this amazing Chesterton quote, James. The interest you piqued in it made me look up the original which is as follows; “Christendom has had a series of revolutions and in each one of them Christianity has died. Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a god who knew the way out of the grave.”

      This gives me great hope.

      Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      James, thank you so very much for your generous comment, and like Brian, I just love that Chesterton quote. I’m beginning to fall in love with Chesterton… how his magnificence passed under my radar for so many years, I do not know!

      Reply
      • James Sale

        Well thanks again for the poem Susan. And on the GKC question (doesn’t Brian dig?), in my opinion he is the greatest prose writer of the C20th – he is pretty boundless – there is a veritable ocean of him available. As the brilliant American critic Michael D Hurley put it: “His summative sentences represent some of the finest prose he ever wrote, which is to say they represent some of the finest prose in the English language.” (But just to be clear: GKC is a fine poet too, but not the greatest poet of the C20th – that honour I certainly think belongs to WB Yeats.)

      • Brian Yapko

        Susan, I had to go back and read this poem which is an SCP treasure. One of many wonderful things about Chesterton is that he was a strong influence on C.S. Lewis — someone whose work has also influenced your own writing. I’ve detected Screwtape’s smug, venal little hands operating in some of your satiric poetry. It’s good to see how poetic lineage works sometimes!

  19. Michael Vanyukov

    Dear Mike (Bryant), I surely did not “compare” Darwin and Jesus. That was an illustration of how illogical it would be to assign to Darwin the fault of his work having been abused by a villain – I assumed that blaming Jesus for a Jewish pogrom would be wrong.

    Inasmuch as Darwin’s work is a foundation of modern biology and is still being used in research, my own humbly included, I don’t think that your characterization is correct. In effect, he founded entire fields of science rather than being merely a secondary successor of literally millennia of evolutionary thought. I did mention what he did not know about, which is obviously not his fault as well, certainly not any grounds to dismiss him as some sort of a mumbling passer-by in science, and makes his contribution all the more remarkable. I’ve also noted that nobody thinks of his work as the last word in evolution. He has indeed been dismissed, however, along with genetics that, as you say, “patched” his stuff up – by Soviet Marxists, for instance, who found Lamarckism much more to their totalitarian taste. I don’t know in which field of biology you work, but no geneticist would think of discussing Darwin in those terms. By the logic you used, Mendel, not only Darwin, could be readily and as illogically accused of the Holocaust.

    Reply
    • Mike Bryant

      Michael, I appreciate your passion for Darwin, but I think you’re giving him a bit too much credit while sidestepping the core of my point. I’m not dismissing Darwin’s role in biology outright—I said he got the ball rolling, and I stand by that. But let’s not pretend he was some lone pioneer carving out entire fields from scratch. Evolutionary thought was already in the air, as I mentioned with Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, and even earlier thinkers like Anaximander in ancient Greece speculated about life evolving from simpler forms. Darwin’s contribution was natural selection, sure, but it wasn’t the flawless cornerstone you’re making it out to be. His work was a starting point, not a foundation etched in stone. Modern biology leans on genetics—thanks to Mendel, who you admit Darwin didn’t even know about—and a slew of other mechanisms Darwin couldn’t have imagined, like genetic drift and epigenetics. If anything, his ideas were a rough draft, heavily revised by others. Calling him the “founder” of entire fields feels like a stretch when so much of what we know now came from later scientists filling in the massive gaps he left.

      You say no geneticist would discuss Darwin in my terms, but I’m not a geneticist—I’m looking at him as a historical figure, not a sacred cow. His limitations aren’t just a product of his time; they’re a product of his own abilities. He couldn’t handle the math, which is why he leaned so heavily on qualitative observations and speculative arguments. Newton, who I brought up earlier, didn’t just observe gravity—he gave us the equations to predict it. Darwin’s “plodding” nature, as I put it, isn’t an insult; it’s a fact. He was a diligent observer, but diligence isn’t the same as brilliance. His own writings, like On the Origin of Species, are a tough read—rambling and often more suggestive than definitive. Even his contemporaries, like Thomas Huxley, had to do a lot of heavy lifting to make his ideas palatable to the scientific community.

      As for the Soviet Marxists dismissing Darwin in favor of Lamarckism, that actually supports my broader point: Darwin’s work was easily misused or sidelined because it wasn’t as robust as you claim. If it were truly foundational in the way you describe, it wouldn’t have been so easily cast aside by ideologues. And speaking of misuse, I never said Darwin was directly responsible for the actions of Marx, Hitler, or Harari—I said he was a hero to them. That’s a historical fact. Marx saw in Darwin a materialist framework to prop up his theories, as I noted with the Das Kapital dedication. Hitler’s regime twisted natural selection into eugenics, and Harari uses Darwin to push his own transhumanist ideas. Darwin didn’t intend this, but his ideas were vague enough to be co-opted in ways that, say, Newton’s laws of motion never were. That’s not a random comparison—it’s about the clarity and precision of the work.

      You keep framing this as me blaming Darwin for others’ actions, but that’s not what I’m doing. I’m pointing out that his legacy is complicated, and not just because of his science, but because of how his ideas were received and applied. You brought up Mendel and the Holocaust as a counterpoint, but that misses the mark. Mendel’s work on pea plants was so specific and mathematical that it didn’t lend itself to ideological abuse in the same way Darwin’s broader, more philosophical claims did. No one’s writing manifestos based on dominant and recessive traits.

      I get that you’re protective of Darwin because of your field, but I’m not attacking him—I’m putting him in perspective. He was a man of his time, with real contributions but also real flaws. We don’t have to deify him to acknowledge his impact, and we don’t have to ignore how his work has been used, for better or worse, by others. That’s the connection I’m drawing to Marx and others, whether Darwin liked it or not.

      Reply
      • Michael Vanyukov

        I have no passion, Mike, for any historical figure at all, let alone deifying it, and I deal with scientific facts as well as history of my field of science – not with straw men of “lone pioneer,” “flawless cornerstone,” or what Darwin could or could not imagine. That is why I started this discussion, so far removed from the wonderful poetry of Susan. It remains not a scientific one, as both its participants and some of the names mentioned, may not necessarily have the necessary expertise for an informed judgment or be used, like that Harari guy, to infer for Darwin guilt by association. That is what you keep doing by those Hitler/Marx references. It is immaterial what abilities Darwin did _not_ have – what matters is what he did have. Being no geneticist or, as I suspect, generally a biologist, you apparently are not quite aware of what really “modern biology leans on” or of behavior genetics, evolutionary psychology, evolutionary medicine, bioinformatics, evolutionary computing, etc., all of which “lean on,” or rather originate from, Darwin.

        Nor are you apparently aware of how exactly “easy” it was in the Soviet Union to deal, or just do away, with anything – genetics, cybernetics, or relativity theory, – regardless of how “robust” it was. It is quite astonishing that one can think that “Mendel’s work on pea plants was so specific and mathematical that it didn’t lend itself to ideological abuse,” considering the origins and implementation of eugenics, both in Germany and the Soviet Union, which had much more to do with genetics and hence Mendel than with natural selection – exactly, as you put it, with “writing manifestos based on dominant and recessive traits.” Mendel’s “specific and mathematical” work was both most horribly abused and destroyed in the communist world, outlawed from 1948 to 1964, along with “specific and mathematical” people who were made into unpersons, lost their lives’ work, and died in Stalin’s prisons. Darwinism is still mistreated in today’s fascist Russia in their attempts to revive Lysenkoism as a chauvinist domestic alternative to ‘Western’ science, today’s successor to the ‘bourgeois’ science of the Stalinist years.

        I am not “protective” of Darwin: he does not need my protection. Since it is indeed my field, however, I am trying to disabuse whoever reads this of the misconception of incompatibility of evolution and creation. Theodosius Dobzhansky, with whose paper I linked above, still did it much better than I can. It’s your right to draw any connections you’d like, but the one you are drawing here is as tenuous as to be negligible.

      • Mike Bryant

        Michael, I’ve enjoyed this back-and-forth—it’s been a spirited dive into ideas that matter deeply to both of us. I’ll admit, your expertise in biology shines through, and it’s given me plenty to chew on. Darwin’s impact on your field is undeniable, and I respect how you’ve championed his legacy. I think we can both agree he sparked something big, even if we see his role through different lenses.

        Susan’s poem, though—“Learning Curves”—isn’t really about pinning medals or blame on Darwin, Marx, or Freud. It’s a cry against a system that cherry-picks ideas and hands them to kids as gospel, minus the tools to question or explore. You nailed it in your first comment: it’s “hard to kill the spark of truth,” and that’s the thread we’re all pulling here. You, me, Susan—we’re on the same page about wanting kids to get the full picture, faith and science included, so they can think for themselves. That’s the win.

        So, let’s call this a handshake across the table. You’ve got your Darwin, I’ve got my Newton, and Susan’s got her poetic torch lighting the way. We’re all after truth, just swinging at it from different angles. Here’s to hoping the next generation gets a fair shot at finding it—maybe with a little less dogma and a lot more curiosity. Thanks for the discussion, Michael—it’s been a good one.

    • Brian Yapko

      Michael, I think you’re taking a very nuanced position which raises a whole new (and complex) discussion regarding scientific ethics and responsibility for the consequences of certain discoveries. I don’t think its any fairer to blame Darwin for the Holocaust than it is to blame Einstein’s discovery of E=mc2 for the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

      Reply
  20. Michael Vanyukov

    Mike, I am happy you’ve got some food for thought. Thank you for entertaining what may be some new ideas and for the discussion as well. Do check out, at your leisure, in addition to “Origin of Species,” Darwin’s “The Descent of Man,” a much less known but no less important and very interesting book, in which he presaged what has much later become sociobiology/evolutionary psychology. And you are right about us all being on the same page about kids.

    Reply
  21. Evan Mantyk

    Thank you for this extraordinary poem, Susan! There are many problems with Darwin’s theory of evolution that show it is false, but you cut to the most important point, which is believe what you want but don’t shove your opinion down my throat or any children’s!

    Anyway, I think I’ve recommended this documentary before, but I’ll recommend it again: Ben Stein’s Expelled:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5EPymcWp-g

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Thank you very much for this, Evan. I have seen this eye-opening documentary and thoroughly recommend it to all.

      Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      I’ve watched this, Evan, and it’s excellent. Thank you for the recommendation. I personally subscribe to the idea that evolution is one of the tools used by our Creator to allow for both diversity and the perfecting of certain traits. I would never confuse the tool with He who wields it.

      Reply
    • Mike Bryant

      Evan, I watched this documentary, at your suggestion, a few years ago. Ben Stein asked and answered all the questions.

      No wonder the establishment thought they could get away with the Global Warming Scam after convincing everyone that complexity just “HAPPENS.”

      I thoroughly recommend the movie and… it’s free!

      Reply
  22. Dan Tuton

    Susan, for their difference in complexity of structure, these are two masterfully crafted poems! I especially appreciate the alliteration in the first–a whetted critique that glides smoothly and swiftly to its target. My favorite line: “Lost to lessons laced with lust / In labyrinths of sleaze.”

    Reply

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