A teen once offered to BUY my classroom poster poem by Tupac Shakur. Can you believe that? I checked out other poems by 2Pac like In The Event of My Demise in which he predicted his early death, and On the topic of Education. Here’s an excerpt of what he said at age 17: “There should be a class on scams, there should be a class on religious cults, there should be a class on police brutality, there should be a class on apartheid, there should be a class on racism in America, there should be a class on why people are hungry, but there’s not, their class is on gym … Their class is like Algebra. We have yet to go to a store and say, ‘Can I have X Y + 2 and give me my Y change back, thank you.’ You know? … Like foreign languages. I think that they are important, but I don’t think it should be required. Actually, they should be teaching you English, and then teach you how to understand double talk, politician’s double talk. Not teaching you how to understand French and Spanish and GERMAN. When am I going to Germany? I can’t afford to pay my rent in America! How am I going to Germany?”
Tupac came to mind as I searched for plane tickets to Germany even though I don’t speak German.