Midnight in the Opt Out Movement: The Hanging Tree – Testing Games – Part 5
THE PROPOSAL
“Are you, are you, coming to the tree?”
Chilling. These words, from Jennifer Lawrence’s rebel ballad in The Hunger Games, have burned themselves deeply into this school teacher’s psyche. But why?
You may remember the scene: While running from the Capitol forces, Lawrence’s character, Katniss, stops and sits alongside a river. She sings these lyrics among the mockingjays, harmonizing her voice to the whistle of the birds. The song is glorious. The message is bone chilling.
Watch and listen here:
What does the song represent? And, why oh why, does this song roll, over and over, in my mind, as I walk up and down the aisles of my classroom, watching my students dissolve into their exam booklets, during the long hours as I administer the required state tests? Why does this melody bring such a sense of sadness and hope, all at once?
In The Testing Games that we call ‘American Public Education’, what is our hanging tree?
CARVING INITIALS
“Are you, are you? Coming to the tree?”
Many have attempted to decipher the meaning of this question in the ballad. One Huff Post contributing writer, Julie Wherry, describes: “This is the singer beckoning the audience to return not necessarily to a physical place, but rather a state of mind and remembrance of a purpose (to be free) and of who the “real enemy” is.”
Now, that description makes sense to me. The ballad is a beckoning: a call to return to a state of mind, the hanging tree. So, when Katniss repeats, “Are you, are you, coming to the tree,” she is asking, ‘Are you willing to stand up and fight with me, no matter the cost? Are you willing to be brave?’
Are you coming to the tree? I am.
In fact, I would say, I have gone as far as taking out a pocket knife and engraving my name, conspicuously, on the trunk of that tree. The life I have been living, lately, certainly feels like the life of one running to her hanging tree. Let me explain.
I am a public school teacher in Florida. There are a few things you can’t say here, by Governor decree. Climate Change is one.
See, I said it. I am a rebel. Carve that into my tree.
Another phrase highly discouraged happens to involve the same initials – CC. No not Climate Change, but it is something just as controversial these days: Common Core. See. I did it again. Saying those two words in Florida equal a big ‘no no’. Our state leaders have, in fact, in an act of all great deception, I mean wisdom, re-branded those two words. Now, we educators are to use the phrase: Florida Standards.
Works for me – I just call it the F word. You can carve that into my tree, too.
Honestly, though, those words are not my fear. The initials I have carved into my hanging Midnight in the Opt Out Movement: The Hanging Tree – Testing Games – Part 5 | Welcome to the Testing Games: