Read the excerpts from "Escape" and "To Live"
I must take this test just like everyone
Takes tests
I am closing in on the sky
Hoping it will try to escape
* * *
learning without
knowing
without room
to learn how
to know myself
to be myself
What theme is expressed in both these excerpts?
School plays an important role in the path to self discovery.
People often see you differently than you see yourself.
Life’s distractions can make it difficult to know yourself.
Knowing yourself and your place in the world is a challenge.

Knowing yourself and your place in the world is a challenge.

Explanation:

An ideal education provides means for a young mind to discover themselves and to gain a perspective on how to make sense of the world around them.

This does not happen because of external pressures to do good at school which turns the process into a competition. In the poem 'Escape' it is presented with taking tests to touch the sky, hoping it would escape. On one hand, being good at tests is taking him far, on the other hand the nature itself will hope to escape from him.

In "To Live" this becomes a complain that the students too often learn without knowing and thus learn a lot about the world but never actually learn about themselves.