THOM THE WORLD POET: The Daily Poem

Rob Ayling, yer Gonzo Grande Fromage, writes: 

"Thom the World poet is an old mate of mine from way back in my history. Even pre-dating Voiceprint, when I was running "Otter Songs" and Tom's poetry tapes and guest appearances with Daevid Allen, Gilli Smyth and Mother Gong are well known and highly regarded. It just felt right to include a daily poem from Thom on our Gonzo blog and when I approached him to do so, he replied within seconds!!! Thom is a great talent and just wants to spread poetry, light and positive energy across the globe. If we at Gonzo can help him do that - why not?"

UNIVERSAL EDUCATION

HAS BECOME MARKET PLACE EDUCATION

You pay for tuition ,for degrees that will enable possible income

Then you compete with fresh hatched graduates and old school graduates

in a diminishing  marketplace for employment(unless you start a "start-up!)

Both education and employment have irreversibly changed.

Universal literacy was once such a strong reality/every body was exposed to basic knowledge.

"Classical"education might include art,history,philosophy,rhetoric,Greek,Latin ..

but a divide occurred between "trade"skills and "intrinsic learning" skills

Those taught computers needed a basic maths base,but may not have been exposed to literature.

C P Snow wrote "The Two Cultures"about this divide-and it resulted in a schism between  

"Technical"education and "Classical"learning.One was employment driven,the other for learning itself. 

We have seen art,philosophy,history ,poetry,music,classical languages expunged from common core curricula.

We have seen bass mass literacy rise,with a corresponding ignorance of the roots of learning itself.

 When we learn how to learn,not just what to learn,perhaps true education might begin (again)..  

 

Interesting piece. The shackles of the 'internship' system are biting here now and, speaking as someone who is both working class and a writer of poetry, I have to say I feel the impact of the class divide on a regular basis. When I was a a teacher I made a point of teaching working class authors wherever possible and, at A Level, I offered a whole unit looking at literature and working class life which was extremely popular with students. However, working classes poets and authors are being 'squeezed out' because they can't afford to do the MA's, the internships, and the constant round of literary festivals that are more and more part of the 'literature game'.

How The Literary Class System Is Impoverishing Literature

One of the things I was taught as an elementary school student in Illinois was that America differed from Europe in that it was founded as, and has remained, a…

lithub.com