By Madison Dymond ’16

When students begin school, they have the creative capacity to be independent thinkers. This is the capacity needed to appreciate and analyze poetry in their own ways. At this age, however, they usually have not built up a strong vocabulary and have not mastered the English language well enough to properly understand poetic devices.

This is why school systems wait to have students fully delve into poetry until late high school, but the problem is, from the time they enter grade school to the time they have freedom to interpret and understand it, teachers have completely butchered poetry. They have given students no freedom to empathize with the writer and find their own meanings. Instead, teachers give them one meaning and, rather than letting students find them, rhetorical devices with preconceived significances. This leaves students apathetic and with a passionate hatred for poetry.

If students were given creative freedom, if they were allowed to have their own opinions instead of being given the school system’s opinions, they would be able to enjoy poetry the way it was meant to be enjoyed.