By the Idler-in-Chief
At the Nyagenke Group of DEB Primary Schools, academic creativity has reached a level only the angels can interpret.
The other day, a pupil was asked to “write a poem in five lines.”
The young scholar, driven by Nyagenke literalism, believed that he obeyed the instruction faithfully.
He wrote POEM in big, bold, and unapologetically honest, occupying five lines.
The teacher, however, was less impressed.
With the fury of a betrayed artist, he circled the masterpiece in red ink, scrawled “0/5” and then added those dreaded words: Bring your parents tomorrow.
Now, I do not know what sin the child committed.
To my Nyagenkean eyes, that was a poem of rare modernist courage; minimalist, abstract, and provocatively existential.
The boy had done what poets spend a lifetime attempting: he reduced life to four letters of perfect confusion.
But our teachers at Nyagenke DEB are still trapped in the colonial syllabus where poems must rhyme like a nursery chant and talk about rivers and butterflies.
The idea that art can be conceptual has not reached their staffroom.
The poor child, therefore, stands accused of intellectual honesty, the gravest of crimes in our education system.
When I visited the school to investigate (in my capacity as an unappointed education correspondent of Idlers’ Corner), I found the teacher holding court before a trembling parent.
“Your son has refused to write a poem,” he announced.
The parent, a humble boda boda rider, scratched his head and asked, “Sir, what is a poem?”
At that point, the teacher’s pen nearly fainted.
You see, in Nyagenke, we take education seriously, and sometimes too seriously.
We force children to memorise the parts of a flower but not the joy of smelling one.
We teach them to write essays about “my best friend” when they are not allowed to talk during class.
And when one of them dares to think differently, we summon the parents as if the child has joined a rebel movement.
Perhaps it is time we stopped confusing obedience with intelligence.
That boy, in my humble judgment, was a prophet of brevity.
Imagine if government officers adopted his approach; writing “REPORT” instead of 300 pages of nothingness.
Imagine if politicians followed suit and wrote “LIES” in capital letters during campaigns.
The world would be clearer, and the taxpayers happier.
But alas, at Nyagenke DEB, innovation is a punishable offence.
I hear the boy’s father has now been instructed to buy a 200-page exercise book “for writing proper poems.”
I can only hope he buys two; one for his son, and one for his teacher, so that both may learn that sometimes wisdom gets scarce.
As for me, I’m awarding the emerging poet from Nyagenke full marks; five out of five for courage, creativity, and economy of ink.
After all, in a world drowning in too many words, it takes a genius to say everything in just four letters.
-babahezel@gmail.com