Grade 12 YRDSB student Angel Xing created an original spoken word piece for our Town Hall event last October to encapsulate her personal feelings about the cuts to education. She has since performed and shared it numerous times, to great popular success.
Watch her perform her piece here (begin at minute 23): https://www.rogerstv.com/show?lid=12&rid=79&sid=8017&gid=325774
If you cut us do we not bleed?
By Angel Xing
When knife is pressed against tomato skin
It splits and the flesh ruptures
Orange liquid stains steel
And the tomato is no longer whole
When scissors close in on paper
Clean lines separate white pulp
Fine fibres disappear into the air
And the paper is no longer whole
When blade chips away at bark
Each strike brings closer to the core
Splinters fly, dust arise, sap slows
And the tree is no longer whole
When government cuts money spent on education
Classes seat to the fire-hazard max
Educators replaced by e-learning
Creative hands stilled and chained
Standardized testing regress to the mean
Special needs are sought in vain
Extracurriculars, extra particulars
And the students are no longer whole
If you cut us do we not bleed!
Your future generation
Your prospect of salvation
Your very own children
With every dollar you take another dream
A penny for your thoughts - you have stolen what it means
To think, to live, to be.
I think therefore I am yet
Taking away our individuality
Taking away our thinking
Taking away our identity
How can we be?
Tell me is my voice too loud
Is it not something to be proud that I have learned
To speak for myself
Or is that why you are stopping it now
A nuisance
Imprudent
Another wrench in your faulty system
Tell me is my voice too loud
Angry and pained, each word strained
For it is not the first time
Nor the last
That you force our indignance before hearing our pleas
Tell me is my voice too loud
A grating sound piercing the beautiful silence:
Children should be seen and not heard
Compliant and quiet, empty husks for your indoctrination
For your prescription
For your fear of subversion
I am not here to plead
I am not here to entreat
I am here as a messenger of your very own future:
Do not expect a prospective path when you’ve burned the roads
Scorched by greed and incompetence, ash the sole remains.
You reap what you sow and if you sow nothing
Do not be surprised when you are left empty handed during a famine
Fields barren, sterile coal replaced fertile seeds.
You forget one key thing:
We are your future generation
Your prospect of salvation
Your very own children
If you cut us, do we not bleed?