In this poem and reflection, Johana Souvenance identifies education as a core concern for both Rodó and Retamar. Both authors see education as a tool of cultural control that can be manipulated to maintain or challenge existing hierarchies and power structures.

This poem explores the many different kinds of “education” that structure U.S. society today. Although we often focus on the kind of education that happens in the classroom, Souvenance points out that everything we see and read and do constitutes a kind of education. The poem offers a subtle connection to the aesthetic concerns that are so prominent in Ariel by criticizing the beauty industry. Introducing X to represent forced education further connects Souvenance’s ideas to Caliban’s overt rebellion in Aimé Césaire’s A Tempest.

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