Quality Matters™ (Round 3)
Let's workshop this poem about just a few small details of a world that more and more each day realizes the metric-driven dreams of a left cerebral hemisphere in overdrive
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Quality Matters™
Professors go quiet, marshalled by administrative mandate
into another corporate consulting-firm “training module”—
this one, on the heels of “how not to perpetuate Whiteness,”
facilitated yet again by certified mummies: business-suit BAs,
witches who lift the end of every sentence into question pitch
and stretch vocal-fried vowels (“Soo neeext Tu-e-sdaaay”)
while PowerPointing boardroom buzzwords, execubabble
tucked in mnemonic acronyms. The edict for fall semester
is that each syllabus be “S.M.A.R.T.” “Each must implement
only measurable outcomes, competency objectives identical
across all course sections (and safe for vulnerable groups).”
The order impacts even love-of-learning courses with goals,
yes, to cultivate empathy, curiosity, resilience, awe—courses
where, fearing test-centric sacrifices of soul-quaking depths,
unquantifiable Kafkas in nontechnical verse mock education
hollowed to boilerplate husks of trigger-free HR-commodity.
Left-hemisphere mumblings of caffeinated managementese
(“circle back,” “streamline,” “recalibrate,” “logistics,” “FYI”),
where else do we sit if not inside a bureaucrat’s schizoid dream
in which QR codes tabletop-laminated have “phased out”
waitstaff with their warm smiles and chatty suggestions—
humans who might make some lonely heart skip a beat?
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