What is work without a goal? It is pointless. Ad infinitum, Absurdum. The educational path has superseded its necessity. It has become alienating. Deplorable sleep schedules, deteriorating mental health. This masked phenomenon is not new.

Teachers are not to blame, neither are students. Nor the school board, etc. To blame is the pervasive social fact, the improvement in technology, and–dare I say–the economic base, capitalism. I have, firsthand, witnessed the students struggle: baggy-eyed, unkempt, bereft of enthusiasm and creativity. I see students barely afloat, and further suffocating in the claustrophobic confines of the omnipotent “rubric.” The “rubric” that calls you stupid, but only indirectly, coated in verbiage like “not proficient” and “unredeemed.” A perplexing paradox: we are reduced to mechanical categorizations as machines become increasingly human. Maybe we will meet in the middle.