Monday, July 24, 2023

AN OPEN LETTER EXPLAINING ELEMENTS OF OUR NEW, IMPROVED, AND DECIDEDLY UNWOKE CURRICULUM

by Dick Westheimer




Dear Parent,
 
We believe in children. We believe 
in padded playgrounds and unscuffed knees 
and helmets and a bubble wrapped curriculum 
lined with velvet and free from troubled ideas.
 
We believe our teachers should teach
like painting and planting for their personal benefit,
that residents of Auschwitz knew the trick of how 
to lose weight and look so fit, that members 
of the Five Tribes, removed for their own good, 
 
We believe those seeking refuge (whose boats 
overturn) might learn to swim, that those 
with black-lung get to sit in front of their TVs
in their BarcaLoungers with their very own 
government issued oxygen tanks, that Catholic 
boys get personal tutoring in anatomy from 
respected men in their white collared shirts, 
that trafficked girls get to travel the world 
and meet new friends.
 
We believe children should learn nothing
about those pre-teens head-bent in sweatshops
sewing their shoes, or two-year-olds toddling 
in electronics junk yards recycling their PCs
or tweens armed and taught to harm their kin. 
 
We do this for you, dear parent 
because, we are committed to protect 
you from Judgement Day when 
Johnny or Susie asks what 
you could have done and why, 
dear parent, you didn’t. 


Dick Westheimer lives in rural southwest Ohio. He is a Rattle Poetry Prize finalist. His poems have recently appeared in Whale Road Review, Innisfree Journal, Gyroscope Review, Banyan Review, Rattle, Ritual Well, One Art, and Cutthroat. His chapbook A Sword in Both Hands: Poems Responding to Russia’s War on Ukraine is published by SheilaNaGig.