American schools have achieved something extraordinary.
After decades of reform, billions in funding, and endless task forces, they’ve finally cracked the code:
Students can’t read, can’t do math, can’t write a coherent paragraph—but by God, they can protest on cue.
This didn’t happen by accident. This was intentional.
From ABCs to ACAB: A Seamless Transition
Once upon a time, school was about literacy.
Then came the revelation: letters are optional, outrage is not.
Phonics was quietly replaced with Feelings Lab.
Math was demoted to an elective, somewhere between Drum Circle and Radical Poster Design.
Reading comprehension was deemed exclusionary—after all, not everyone feels like understanding words.
But resistance? Resistance is universal.
You don’t need to read to chant.
You don’t need math to block a hallway.
You don’t need logic to scream “THIS IS HARM” when handed homework.
The Walkout Industrial Complex
Schools now operate less like learning institutions and more like early-stage activist boot camps.
Students don’t ask, “What’s on the test?”
They ask, “What are we walking out for today?”
Snow day? Walkout.
Quiz announced? Walkout.
Teacher asks for evidence? Emergency walkout.
Administrators beam with pride:
“Our students may be functionally illiterate, but they’re extremely engaged.”
Engaged in what remains unclear.
Protest Literacy Is the Only Literacy That Matters
Ask a 17-year-old to read a lease agreement and watch panic set in.
Ask them to identify microaggressions in a sentence written before 1985 and suddenly they’re a Rhodes Scholar.
They can’t tell you what GDP means, but they’re fluent in:
- “Lived experience”
- “Systemic”
- “Problematic”
- “Do better”
None of which, incidentally, pay rent.
Career Readiness: Now With 100% Less Skills
Guidance counselors insist students are “career-ready.”
Ready for what?
Resumes now read like hostage notes:
- Organized mass resistance events
- Refused to participate in oppressive grading systems
- Walked out of environments that made me uncomfortable
Job interviews go about as expected.
Employer: “Can you follow instructions?”
Graduate: “Instructions are violence.”
Employer: “Can you do basic math?”
Graduate: “Math is a social construct.”
Employer: “Security?”
Teachers Know. Parents Know. Everyone Knows.
Teachers whisper it in private.
Parents scream it at school board meetings.
The data confirms it in bold red arrows pointing down.
But the system responds the only way it knows how:
by forming a committee, issuing a land acknowledgment, and lowering standards further.
You can’t fail students if failure no longer exists.
You also can’t educate them—but that’s a secondary concern.
Graduation Day: A Ceremony of Collective Denial
At graduation, administrators praise resilience, bravery, and courage.
No one mentions literacy.
Diplomas are handed out like participation trophies for surviving the system it broke itself.
Caps are tossed.
Reality waits.
The Harsh Truth No One Is Allowed to Say
Teaching kids to question power is good.
Teaching them only to resist—while denying them the tools to survive—is unforgivable.
Because eventually the chants fade.
The protest disperses.
The job application still requires reading.
And capitalism, cruel as it is, does not accept walkouts as payment.
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