In the audit echo chambers where learning is weighed

and parsed into digestible metrics, I can hear

the grinding as the child becomes data point,

becomes analysis unit, becomes the smooth stone

worn by curricular rivers flowing in one

direction—no eddies of dissent, no tributaries

of wonder branching into unmapped territories

dangerous where questions spawn more questions,

where difference isn’t deviation but the breathing

texture of thought itself now flattened under

the rollers of compliance, under the terror of

outcomes and benchmarks,from the predictive

algorithms that mistake pattern for wisdom,

replication for knowing, manufactured consensus

for truth—while somewhere in the boondocs

the unrepeatable beautiful self, that stubborn

artistic splash of autonomy, withers into simulacrum,

into the plastic faded replica of what once was a

living, breathing spring garden filled with

the vibrant colours of Monet’s art.

 

Now, there is scaffolded white-washed sameness,

a production of interchangeable minds marching

like the Borg in formation toward predetermined destinations,

and the wildly unpredictable flourishing of human

becoming, messy and multiple, resistant to the template,

to the rubric’s tickable boxes, to the traffic light’s

red-amber-green reduction of thought to automation,

of pedagogy to management, of persons to sellable products,

is carved and carved and carved into regulatory straight lines

until what remains is a skipping song without a voice,

is performance without presence, is the lifeless soul of

learning emptied of its dangerous, generative essence.

 

21/11/2025