>A Brooklyn middle school has asked its students to consider whether God should be treated as poetry, considered to be neither true nor false (read the article). I wonder if they mean that? Do the educators at this school consider this poem by Langston Hughes to lack truth:
What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load. Or does it explode?
I doubt that the reality of this poem escapes the teachers in Brooklyn and I’m certain they teach their students everyday the injustice of a dream deferred simply because of the color of a man’s skin. But what is the educational motivation is in asking the students to consider whether or not “God” might be an idea rather than a reality. Is it to inspire critical thinking – an ability to defend one’s beliefs? Or is it that the teachers at this school believe that a dream of world without has been deferred too long?
Christian Striver 