I arrived at Ada Jr. High School fifteen minutes early. I expected congested traffic, and I wasn’t exactly sure where to go. Surprisingly the parking lot and halls were relatively clear. I walked past the football team, heard the whistle shrilling, the coach exhorting, saw band members sauntering, carrying their instruments, a leering sun on their shoulders. I followed the “Visitors must check in” sign, approached the desk operated by a student and a professional. I introduced myself, then asked where I could find Ms. Wiest. The monitor looked at me, responded: “Are you the Uh … (“poet”, I fill in the word for her)?

Approximately 30 7th – 9th graders enter the library and arrange themselves in a standing/sitting semi-circle in order see my poems projected on the wall. This is an-after school writing group that voluntarily meets each Tuesday, much of it is about poetry. The students are well prepared. They have been given copies of 8 of my poems. They have looked at them before this meeting. They are sincere, attentive, thinking about something occurring to them they cannot quite articulate. But we all feel it.

We talk about their work, and mine. They ask simple, but also sophisticated questions. I read; they listen. They read; I listen. They tell me they write for “self-expression” and as one so delicately put it, “to cope.” Afterwards, many came up to me, one by one, with a photocopy of their “favorite” poem of mine, asking me to sign it. They also show me their writing. Nothing is quite so humbling as to have, for a second, a future in your hands.

This weekly meeting is voluntary on the part of the teachers and librarians who work there, dedicated, underappreciated professionals who go beyond what is expected, and at their expense, provide opportunities for something that poets like to call “transcendence.” As in so many states, education for the common good is increasingly under attack. The test-driven, official curriculum is traumatizing the human spirit. Legislators and/or ignorant and/or belligerent parents oversimplify most of the issues. Like so many places, there is not much room for exploration and creativity, despite all kinds of evidence that such activities significantly bolster, rather than detract from a serious education. I’m all for lab science and math and all the other survival skills and traditional subjects, especially history, if it is taught honestly and completely (a couple of these students had been to the Holocaust Museum in Dallas; I was impressed). But poetry does not deter from these subjects. In fact, we had a significant talk about my poem “Security Guard” (which they asked me to read, one I probably would not have volunteered). The discussion began with the Holocaust, but moved naturally to lingering implications of cultural oppression.

We need to have poetry in the schools because, for one reason among many, it moves us toward honesty and seriousness in all the rest of the curriculum. Students instinctively seek their soul, and when they don’t find it in standardized curriculum, they become disenchanted with school, deflating them during a significant portion of their developmental life. The social challenges they face become daunting with little release at school, or home. These teachers at Ada Jr. High, are making soul development possible.

I doubt if oil-plagued Oklahoma will ever get its resources adequately arranged for the best holistic education. There is so much mismanaged energy toward rushing ill-prepared students into the corporate work force, students who have never confronted their humanity, their essential sense of a developing self that cries out for affirmation and understanding. When we treat our local school systems as simply production lines for a labor force, really, in the long run, no one benefits, except maybe a small percentage at the top who might capitalize, then flea when skies darken. Contrary to the bleached, scaled-down approach to education, when students are given opportunity to seek self-understanding within their social and historical contexts, ironically they become more outward looking, gaining perspective of others. Self-aware students tend to be thoughtful about their society.

As I am leaving the campus, Ms. Wiest walks with me to the parking lot. I tell her the goal is not to produce Pulitzer Prize winners. Not everyone can do that (though this part of Oklahoma has indeed produced some pretty amazing writers over the years). The goal is for each of us to participate in the creative process. Even in reduced circumstances, we may find satisfaction within that greater conversation of self and others: Who are we? Who are my neighbors? What is our obligation to one another? Who cares? In a 1980 essay, Marvin Bell asked: “Is it wrong for people who can’t write well to write as well as they can?” Of course, the delightful irony is that the more our students write, the better they write, but even writing poorly (or in an incomplete or rough, or even juvenile manner) is better than not writing. One doesn’t have to be a great talent to embrace great issues, to find a responsible place in society. I don’t want to oversimplify the education budget issues in Oklahoma (or around the nation, for that matter), but one thing is clear. The problems with Oklahoma education are not the fault of the teachers.