* The Ever So Soft (the micro-soft) Drumbeat of The Bill and Melinda Gradgrind Foundation

Let us remember that these ‘students’ who the Bill and Melinda Gradgrind Foundation seek to cram into the cubicles of statistical ‘outcomes’ are human beings in the process of unfolding ; that they have souls ; that, the human spirit as it unfolds is in perilous danger of being warped and mutilated when it is mistaken for a hothouse plant, to be pruned and force-fed, in order to flower on time and in competition with other hothouse plants.

The wonder of human being is the indefatigable durability of its myriad manifestations.

To reduce humanity to an organism to be pruned for show as the Gradgrind Foundation would have us do, is to entrap the tender spirits of children tightly into academic slippers for binding.

The result of such tampering with the human spirit will be legions of grotesque beauty, limping in unison to the ever so soft, micro-soft,  drumbeat of Bill and Melinda Gradgrind  as it sounds in their ears.

Paul D. Keane

M. Div. ‘80

Yale Divinity School