This chapter begins with the collage above (Fig. 3.1) of children playing at scribble, where the chalk lines on the ground are free-wheeling, roaming and variable, yet caged within the prison bars of national checks, tests and metrics. When tracing or following a line, the ‘point’ becomes a goal, or purpose and a ‘line of flight’ its direction. Lines can be learnt or sent, clear or blurred; we can be at the back or next in line. The line offers a series of powerful metaphors to learning: a straight line may be thought of as a true one, yet education for Thoreau, which he argued ‘makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook,’ limits natural (non-linear) possibility, and makes a prison of our play.