Attrition / Genocide

    Children learn their numbers best
    when they can count how many homes and schools were destroyed,
    how many mothers and fathers were wounded or thrown into jail.
                       -Mosab Abu Toha

As a teacher, as a human, I was appalled
When I first saw the aftermath of an Israeli attack on Gaza

A camera visited school classrooms
Three or four seats were empty in each one…

These students from every grade
Will not be coming back. Not ever.

It doesn’t matter if they were dull or clever
Sullen or animated and lovable

There doesn’t seem to be much emotional content in an empty seat
How can we be affected by a child we will never meet?

We can only fall back on cold numbers
Use our imaginations, do a little math

These Israeli attacks on Gaza are regular, monotonous.
Solve nothing, Come at roughly two-year intervals…

The experts usually say this problem is complex
In truth, it is a word problem. Simple: 3rd grade math

It goes something like this:
Start with 30 students in first grade
Subtract 3 students every two years for 12 years

How many students remain?
(Don’t think too much about
what they might have attained).

In the first year subtract three,
In year three subtract three more,
For years 5, 7, 9, and 11 take out another dozen

and the score is…
You have now lost 18 (give or take a soul or two)
There are 12 left and now they face a big decision

Should they go to college?
Make sure they have a real future?
Prepare to do something truly worthy of note?

Year 13 would take away another three
Year 15 three more. Only six
would be left standing now to graduate

But what’s the difference? Even if they drop out
The killing will not stop

Soon the few that remain
Will have small children of their own.

You could call this attrition.
Israeli leaders call it “mowing the lawn.”

Another word for it would be genocide
(But we are studying math not English)

I think about Theodore Roethke’s poem
His “Elegy for Jane” about a single student he had lost

Take the grief inside that poem.
Multiply it by 30 or so…

That is just the teacher, not the mother
Father, sisters, brothers…family, community…

But I am just an English teacher
And we are working on some math right now

I could say it’s simply not my problem
(And I don’t teach math or certainly theology)

We are certainly not studying lost souls
(Because they are souls we couldn’t possibly ever know)

But there are surely souls in this equation and while I can’t really tell
I’m sure some may go to heaven, and some will certainly go to hell.

From the Book Sharing the Losses by Gilbert Schramm. Available here.