No Time To Learn

In school we were taught French.
The most I achieved back then
was how to ask the time in that language.

We were never taught,
and I have been unable to learn since,
was how to listen to the answer to my ask,
were I to put it to a Frenchman.

It was like that with most of what I learnt;
we were taught to be glad that we could ask
and that we would not understand the answer.

Such a half-education
has made me stumble
and left me to pick myself up
until my success was complete
when I learned to ask no more.