She watched as O’Connel, looking up from his desk, noticed a boy with long blond hair asleep on his arms. He went to stoop beside him, and the boy peered up through bleary eyes.
“Huh?”
“You sleep last night, Frank?”
“Nah.” Frank rubbed at his eyes.
“You’ve got to get some rest before I can do anything for you.
Go grab a cot in the nurse’s room.”
“I was hoping you’d say that, Mr. O’Connel.” He scooped his binder off the desk, slid out of the chair and out the door.
The radiator gave off heat at last. Solange shrugged out of her coat, and looked up to find him squatting beside her desk, forearm across the desktop.
He nodded at the door. “Frank, the one I sent out, lives in an eight by sixteen travel trailer with his mom, dad, sister and brother.
Five people— His little sister’s got the croup, and no one’s slept for a week. That’s one thing this old dump’s got that the new buildings don’t— a sick room. I’ve been sending him there to get some rest.”
“The office doesn’t mind?” He made a sound through his teeth. “What do you think? Sure they mind. Parnell sent him back the first time, with a note that said beds were reserved for illness, so I went down and raised hell, and they haven’t said anything since. What’s the use of him being in class if he can’t stay awake? They’ve got empty beds in an empty room. Who’s Frank going to bother?” A girl laughed and squealed hysterically next door. Someone pounded on the wall. Frowning in puzzlement, she caught his eye.
“I’ve been told that I’m stifling their creativity by having them write like this when they come in.” He shrugged with a smile.
“Maybe I am. The gal next door is a very popular teacher, great coach. She doesn’t stifle anything. Everybody’s got their own style, that’s just not mine.” Several pencils were set down with finality, and he went to the front, giving them thirty seconds to finish writing.
She made a second entry— A student was sent out of the room (without a warning or parental notification) for falling asleep, a violation of district policy and assertive discipline guidelines.
She folded down the screen, preferring not to see what she’d written. Okay, it wasn’t exactly the truth, but it wasn’t a lie either.
When most had finished, O’Connel leaned against the lab table, arms folded across a broad chest. “OK, ready or not, here we go.” Several students continued writing.
“I’ll wait.” Grudgingly, they laid down their pencils, looking up.
“Right. Today we’re doing a group discussion. Miss Gonsalvas, our assistant superintendent is here visiting.” He winked. “So make me look good, huh?” Pleased he had pronounced her name correctly, she nearly smiled.
Few got it right—for some reason he always had.
“You’re responsible for ten questions. You’ll find the answers you need in the copies of the Constitution I just gave you. Everyone must have the answers in their journals for a written grade, and each group will make an oral presentation at the end of the hour for a second. Test tomorrow over the Bill of Rights as well, so we’re talking about twelve points here, guys. Make sure and pick the best speaker in your group because you’ll be graded both on the thoroughness of your answers, and the effectiveness of the speaker.
“Now, I’ve given you ten situations. A couple are hypothetical, the others you can read about in the photocopied articles on the counter along the windows. If the amendments offer protection, I want you to find it and quote the line where it occurs, and I want your opinions on what should be done to right the wrong if one was committed.
“If you don’t think the Bill of Rights offered protection, explain why not. I’m going to ask each group for one, but you won’t know which one, so you better be ready to do any of them. Okay. First situation— Men, women, and children, members of both racial and religious minorities, are gassed and burned.” Chelsea spoke up— “The Nazis didn’t have a bill of rights.” O’Connel shook his head. “I’m not talking about Germany.”
“China, USSR, Turkey, Cambodia, Africa, Timor, it could be anything,” a boy dressed in black said.
“It happened here, Paul.”
“Two hundred years ago in Salem, maybe,” said Moses, a small boy with dark eyes.
“Eighty American Christians, many of them black, more than twenty of them children, were gassed with cyanide and burned by U.S. Government agents.”
“Waco! I remember that. They were a bunch of crazies. They had machine guns and they were sexually abusing the children, weren’t they?” asked Armando.
“We’ll never know. The evidence was bulldozed into the fire and incinerated with them.”
“Why would they do that?” Armando asked.
“Why does anybody destroy evidence?” Paul asked.
O’Connel cut them off. “If the Bill of Rights protected them, cite the amendment.”
“I’m not sure protected is the word you want,” Paul said.
O’Connel nodded. “Second question— When you go to the polls, you’re told you must pay a tax to vote.
“Wait a minute!” said a tall, slender young man. “Why a tax to vote?” O’Connel shrugged. “Why do you think, Armando?” He frowned. “To raise money?”
“To make sure certain people don’t vote,” said Paul over a paperback.
“Ah, you mean that way only the people with the money to pay could vote.” Paul shook his head, rolling eyes heavenward.
“That was the idea,” answered O’Connel. “Numbers three and four— When Chelsea goes to vote, she’s told she has to be twenty-one, and for that matter, since she’s a woman, she should just go on home and not bother.” Chelsea folded her arms over her chest. “They’d better not!” she said quietly.
“Have you registered, Chelsea?”
“I will next month when I turn eighteen.”
“Five— A woman is shot and killed by BATF agents when they raid her home in the middle of the night. She attempts to protect herself and is shot and killed. It was the wrong house. Their warrant was for the house next door.” Chelsea frowned. “What’s a B-A-T-F? Paul answered without looking up from his book, speaking slowly, emphasizing the first letters of each word as if he were explaining to a child— “Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, B-A-T-F.” Chelsea gave him a saccharine smile. “Well, thank you so much, Paul. I’m just so stupid, I don’t know what I’d do without you.” O’Connel clenched his jaw to keep from smiling. “Six— A college student at a town meeting asks President Clinton why he reneged on his promised middle class tax cut. The President is taken off guard by the question from a crowd he was assured was friendly, and has the Secret Service ask him to leave, which he does.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Chelsea said.
“A few hours later, he’s arrested at home.”
“No way!” said Moses. “For what?”
“The charge is creating a disturbance in the presence of the President, and being where he shouldn’t have been. The Secret Service later told him he wouldn’t have been arrested but for the President’s insistence. “
“Man, that’s scary!” Chelsea said.
“Freedom of speech only applies when you agree with the government, I guess, huh?” asked Armando.
“Ask a question, go to jail,” said Paul.
“Seven— In 1994, a New Jersey teacher is fired solely because of her color.”
“Man, racism sucks!” Moses said. “Was she black or Chicana?”
“She was white. Her firing has since been upheld in court.” Several students expressed disbelief He raised a hand, waited for silence.
“Eight— A black landscaper pays for an airline ticket with cash and is turned in by the ticket agent.”
“For what?” asked Moses.
“For having cash. He’s stopped and frisked by DEA agents—” Chelsea turned around. “That’s Drug Enforcement Agency, Paul.”
“Wow, no kidding?�
� he said, voice dripping with vitriol.
“Okay, okay,” O’Connel said, bringing them back. “Thirty thousand dollars in cash he is carrying for the purchase of nursery stock is confiscated. He’s charged with nothing.” Moses laughed, not believing. “That’s true?” O’Connel nodded.
“So what happened to his money?”
“It’s DEA money now.”
“Man, you got to be kidding!” Moses said.
Paul raised a hand. “Sieg, Heil!”
“Nine— An immigrant farmer is arrested, tractor impounded, business ruined, the value of his land wiped away. His crime— While tilling to plant bok choy, he ran over a rare kangaroo rat.
“A what?” Chelsea said. “A rat? And he went to jail?”
“My dog kills rats all the time under the trailer.” Moses said.
“How come he’s not in jail?” O’Connel waited for them to quiet down.
“Ten— During a crisis, the government knocks on your door and demands twenty U.N. peace keepers sleep and eat in your house for the night.”
“Be kind of crowded at my place,” Moses said. “I’d send them to Frank’s.” They laughed.
“OK, you have thirty minutes, no more, presentations at 9:45.” They broke into groups, and he moved about the room, answering questions, restating problems, and reminding them of the time.
Soon most were leafing through the small booklets.
A couple girls at the back of the room were obviously doing no work. Solange watched as they laughed and gossiped, and one fed the other from her bracelet of candy hearts. Surprised, Solange opened her laptop.
Students permitted to remain off-task during lesson.
Chelsea called O’Connel over. “Mr. O’Connel, I just don’t see why Paul has to be in our group. He won’t help at all. He just reads.
Why should Armando and I have to do all the work, and then he gets the same grade we do? It’s not fair.” Solange smiled. How would he handle this? “Well, what do you think, Paul?”
“About what?”
“About Chelsea’s complaint. Do you think it’s fair that you read while they do the research when you’re all graded the same?”
“No.”
“Well, then, will you help?” Paul said he wouldn’t.
“See what I mean?” she said.
“Okay, Chelsea, what do you want to do?”
“Can just Armando and I work together?”
“Sure, go ahead. It looks like you’re on your own, Paul.” When the time was up, they gave their results. Paul set his book aside momentarily to answer the question posed to him from the top of his head, using no notes. He had no problems.
Last to come up were the two girls in back who tried to bluff their way through by aping other presentations.
Solange watched his face, wondering if they were fooling him.
When they had finished, he read off the grades by number. There were two zeros.
Outraged, one of the two slammed her notebook to the desktop. “Why’d we get a zero? We did the stupid thing!”
“You got a zero because you chose to do nothing.”
“That’s not fair!” she said, lip curled back over small, sharp teeth.
“You can’t just fail people because you feel like it!”
“Yes, I can,” he said, eyes smiling. “You see, it’s my job to prevent outbreaks of false self-esteem.” She turned away in her seat, disgusted. “I’ll have my mom call the school about this! She knows Mrs. Lovejoy, and she can get you fired.” O’Connel nodded. “You do that, Kim.”
“Mr. O’Connel,” Moses said, “If this stuff happens, even though it’s against the Constitution, then what good is the Constitution?” The room quieted. O’Connel found a perch on the edge of his desk. “Maybe you’re asking the wrong question, Moses. Maybe you should ask— if we allow our government to ignore our Constitution, what kind of citizens are we?” Moses frowned, shook his head, not getting it.
“Shaw said, ‘Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.’” Chelsea raised her hand. “How come I’ve never heard any of this on the news? I mean, I heard it, but not all of it. This is stuff we should know, isn’t it?”
“It’s not anyone else’s responsibility to keep you informed,” O’Connel said. “It’s yours. There’s no such thing as an unbiased source for the truth. Not me, not the—not the paper, not the radio.” Chelsea opened delicate hands. “You mean they’re all lying to us.”
“I don’t know if lying’s the right term—let’s call it selective truth telling.” Chelsea scratched her blond head. “Selective truth?”
“Yeah, it’s not exactly lying, is it? Mom asks if you took the car out for a spin last night, and you say you were in bed by ten. It’s not a lie—you were in bed by ten. You just happened to be up by eleven.” She laughed. “Oh, you mean just not telling some of the truth.” O’Connel nodded. “After Korea, the government knew that U.S.
POW’s were being sent to the Soviet Block to be used as human experimental animals. Some were exposed to deadly doses of radiation or chemical and biological agents, some were used to train field doctors to do amputations.” Chelsea gasped. “You mean they cut off their arms and legs?”
“That’s what amputation is, Chelsea,” Paul said, annoyed.
“We knew it, but if the government had told the people, we would have demanded they go in and get them back. One admiral whose son was one of the men taken suggested sailing nuclear carriers up off P’yongyang and sending a one word message—produce.
“We could have done it, though it might have started World War III. But we didn’t. They kept it quiet, and thousands of young men, not much older than you, were abandoned.” The class was silent.
“I’m not saying it wasn’t the right thing to do, trading several thousand lives for tens of millions, though I’m not sure I could have done it. The point is, don’t expect the truth and you won’t be disappointed.
Truth is dangerous, it’s power. No one gives power away.” Chelsea shrugged helplessly. “Then what can we do?”
“For a start, read, read everything factual you can get your hands on, no matter what anyone else says or thinks about it. Communist, fascist, liberal, conservative, radical, moderate, progressive read it all, file it away in your mind. Run it all through the filter.
Shake it, sift it, and keep an open mind while you do it. Question, suspect—everything! “Subject every source to the test of reason, of logic, and let it stand or fall on its merit. Think for yourself— and always, always ask— Why am I being told this? And— What is it they aren’t telling me? And most important of all— What do they want me to think about this? And eventually, maybe, you’ll find what’s true for you.
“But you’ve got to be a cynic, don’t let anybody do your thinking for you. It’s not easy, and it’s not fun, but no one who doesn’t can think for themselves. Adolf Hitler said— ‘What luck for rulers that men do not think.’ Herr Schicklgruber had it right. Without thought, a people cannot remain free.” A blond with a radiant smile raised her hand.
“Anna.”
“But how do we start?” O’Connel smiled. “For now, read, listen, think. That’s enough to make you different from most. The rest will come.” The bell rang, and when the class filed out, Anna stayed behind.
“You know, Mr. O’Connel, I read a whole bunch. I love reading.” Solange made one last entry on her laptop, listening, fascinated.
O’Connel nodded and smiled as he gathered up the booklets.
“That’s great, Anna”.
She followed him, notebook clutched to her chest. “And I’m trying really hard in school this year, and I’m going to pass all my classes. I want to get a good job to support my little girl.” He stopped, dropping the booklets in his case. “How is she?”
“Growing like a weed.” She smiled proudly. “I’m due again in May.” Shocked, Solange looked up to see her gently caressing her swollen abdomen through the jumper
.
O’Connel held his face carefully neutral. “I didn’t know.” She nodded, beaming. “Yeah, I’ll have two in the nursery next year.”
“Well,” he said, “ I’m glad to hear you’re working hard, Anna.
Keep it up, okay?” She breezed to the door. “Sure will, see you.” When she had gone he looked up at Solange, then away. “A good girl, but she can barely read. She’s sixteen.”
“My God,” she said, stunned, crushed under a great weight of hopelessness. “What was that about? Why’d she stay?” He smiled sadly. “A little attention, maybe, a little pat on the back, that’s all she wanted. Sometimes I think it’s the most important thing I do.” Rain beat heavily against the windows.
Solange looked down at her laptop.
“Did you intend to give the activity closure? I mean if Moses hadn’t asked that question?”
“Closure—” He smiled, snapping his briefcase closed. “I haven’t heard that since teacher training. Oh, I know how it’s supposed to work, but the last thing I want is closure. I try not to give them answers. I just try to get them thinking. I never have been very good at wrapping it up in a neat little package and sending them on their way. It’s never closed; it’s never done. I want it to nag them, to drive them to distraction. Maybe, if I do it right, they might just switch off the tube long enough to read something.” He clicked off the lights, leaving the room in near darkness.
“I’ve got to return a call to a parent. Coming?” She had to struggle to keep up in her heels. The passion he felt for the job surprised her. Nothing like what she’d been led to expect, he had the fire in the belly, she could see that—anybody could.
Halfway down the crowded hall she remembered what he’d said before class. “I want to know what you expect for all this cooperation.
Because if you think I’m going to go easy on you—” At the head of the busy stairway he turned abruptly to face her.
She reached out to stop herself, and drew back a hand from a chest taught as a horse’s flank, bringing it to her throat.
“Don’t misunderstand me.” He leaned close, face hard.
She could smell him, a man smell—good, clean, familiar. Her father’s smell. The pulse throbbed on his bull neck, and in that endless second she was ten years old, a girl wanting a father’s approval.
A Terrible Beauty: What Teachers Know but Seldom Tell outside the Staff Room Page 2
