Proper Place

This is where she learned to hide fairies under her pillow, at least for a little while. These are the piles of bricks that held a new knowledge, rather, a new way to see the world stripped of its color and magic, replaced by distrust and competition and the overarching sentiment of individuality. These are the fumes of antiseptic halls, where creativity is buried beneath layers of fuzzy facts. These are the mandatory rooms of societal instruction. Clear. Purposeful. Unyielding in dominance. The rainbow end here. The leprechauns are bludgeoned by bureaucrats and textbooks of misinformation. Lies they told her. Lies and more lies. Taught by those who lacked the curiosity to move beyond the glass doors. White men with their tests and bubbles. The deadening lines of little desks. Hard plastic chairs.
The windows call her attention. She watches the little songbirds that find freedom on the branches of a maple tree. The drawings are in her lunchbox. The dreams, stashed in her pockets, but it will not go on much longer. She is too young, too supple. This is the base of an army, the training ground of a square group that will work in offices, that will obey traffic lights, that will stay within the thick black lines of the coloring book.
“Here, you will learn to hold a pencil. You will learn to read. You will learn that Christopher Columbus discovered America. You will learn that this country is the greatest country on earth.”
Can this be called learning? Is this not simply the washing of a belief onto the putty minds of the young? This is indoctrination. This is training. These are the soon-to-be bureaucrats, the soccer moms, the office workers, the bulk of the voting public, the sleeping machines consumed with the illusion of choice and individuality. They will be the little dominated pegs in a chaotic world that is handed to them through a serialized tube of color and lights and fast-changing images.
This is a world they do not know, cannot understand, yet they will proclaim truth with certainty. This is the training ground for the ignorant army of America, for any country that requires servants, subjects, and rulers.
They take her rainbows and they instill a new self-regulating machine. This is the institution in its most gray form. Lifeless, a machinery that trains the next generation to replace the dead with stunning accuracy. These are the machines of tomorrow. With little pig-tails and white dresses and ruffled socks. These are the square-thinking machines of tomorrow, the pegs that will do as told. They will think as instructed by code words and marketing executives. They will move on cue, masses of them will bow when told, shout when the lights blink. This place is the training ground for the white-washed army. This place is the final doorway into the world of the symbol. This is the place where the locks are set in place, never to be released again until the moment of death.