What a great man. Thanks for the info.
Barbara Whiteside showed me a poem written by a high school senior in Alton, Illinois, two weeks before he committed suicide:I have to admit, that was my experience with school. And this could have been me. I have never experienced anything like the soul-crushing effect of schooling since leaving.
He drew... the things inside that needed saying. Beautiful pictures he kept under his pillow. When he started school he brought them... To have along like a friend. It was funny about school, he sat at a square brown desk Like all the other square brown desks... and his room Was a square brown room like all the other rooms, tight And close and stiff.He hated to hold the pencil and chalk, his arms stiff His feet flat on the floor, stiff, the teacher watching And watching. She told him to wear a tie like All the other boys, he said he didn't like them. She said it didn't matter what he liked. After that the class drew.
He drew all yellow. It was the way he felt about Morning. The Teacher came and smiled, "What's this? Why don't you draw something like Ken's drawing?" After that his mother bought him a tie, and he always Drew airplanes and rocketships like everyone else. He was square inside and brown and his hands were stiff. The things inside that needed saying didn't need it Anymore, they had stopped pushing... crushed, stiff Like everything else.