Dust floats in space
as students drift towards sleep
and the instructor, inure to what's happening,
rambles on about a pet research theme –

"Now lets examine this sentence structure
and analyze the grammatical case
you'll notice it is post-positional
but look where the verb is placed. . ."

Eyelids heavy from grammatical stupor
my pencil records
Perfect Wisdom
with imperfect delivery.

So much to memorize
that's trivial!

So much that should be taught
bypassed entirely.

Hear the author read this poem.
[***K /.WMA file]

Copyright (c) 1996, 2007 by T Newfields. All rights reserved.
www.tnewfields.info/CrassroomVoices/crass.htm
- 71 -

Melissa:	Too many classrooms are this way.
Satoru:	Particularly at universities, we have professors whose real forte is writing papers – not teaching.
Tim:	Actually, at all levels good teachers are a rarity.
Liao:	There's something unpredictable about good teachers. The educational system is basically designed to make McDonalds-hamburger-cook-instructors, not gourmets.