She stared at him and, as if testing him, said, “How do you mean that?”
“I mean that when they’re teaching this conformity stuff I want Billy pulled out and put somewhere else.”
“You can’t,” she said flatly.
“What do you mean I can’t? I’m the parent, aren’t I? Don’t I have some rights?”
Sue was restraining some heat of her own. “First of all, as a practical matter, conformal behavior is a core affective goal and not a class. It’s supposed to be included as such across the curriculum, so there’s nothing to pull Billy out of. Secondly, even if it were isolated and even if you did succeed in pulling Billy out of that hypothetical class, you’d still be teaching him a value.” She held up a finger, “I know I said it’s not teaching values, but that’s the board’s circumlocution. Not mine. You and I know better.” She put down her hand and leaned into him, restraint gone. “But as for rights, don’t you dare talk to me about your rights. As a parent, you have responsibilities and one of those responsibilities is to pay attention to what your child is exposed to and help him to deal with them. You call yourself a free thinker and just look at your first reaction to an idea you don’t like. Don’t you dare put this on me, or on the school, Jack Phillips. Shame on you.”
She sat back, face flushed and expression hardened. Jack sat back as well, his anger rapidly cooling. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right. Again.” He blinked. “But what can I do? As I was leaving Barstow, I saw these art displays that scared the hell out of me.” He looked distraught. “There’s got to be something.”
She softened at his distress. “Jack, you’re already doing a lot. Look at it this way: Billy wouldn’t be in this situation if you weren’t having an effect at home. You are doing something.”
He grimaced. “Gee, thanks. I’m the cause of my boy’s pain. Thanks a lot.”
“Come on, Jack. Remember we were talking about Dawkins memes? Well, if you really accept that the best meme wins through honest competition, then you have nothing to worry about. Adjusting to new ideas is like another childhood disease. Don’t go getting in a blue funk over this. Just keep doing what you have been doing.”
“It’s not honest competition. No matter what they call it, the schools are teaching values and I don’t like it.”
She snorted. “Jack, old shoe, welcome to the other foot. Think back a bunch of years ago when sex ed was the issue. It’s people like you that said, ‘Well, we’re teaching health, not values. But if you don’t like it, that’s only fair. You can pull your kids out of class.’ You kept your kids in. Then in some states it was evolution, remember that? ‘It’s just-a-theory vs. it’s really science’ went that argument. You didn’t want to let them out of class on that one, but you already had a precedent and had to allow it. How about prayer? Both sides finally saw that pulling kids out did them more harm than good, so you all invented this so-called separate but equal three-tiered system we have now.” She took a breath and had at him again. “So now it’s turned around, the cryptos are in control and poor Jack doesn’t like it and wants to pull his kid out of class.” She stopped, clearly ready to say more, but unwilling to turn the discussion into an open brawl.
“Whoa,” said Jack and held up his hands. “I’m sorry. Again. I drilled a nerve and I didn’t mean to; guess I have a few nerves hanging out myself. I came here to ask for help, not to pick a fight.”
They both worked on their food in silence for a time. Then Jack asked, quietly, “Why do you stay?”
She sighed. “Because I still believe I’m making a difference. The rewards are… fleeting… sparse… but they are real all the same. Every day all it takes is one pair of little eyes lighting up when a new idea clicks. I go looking for that, trying to make it happen; when it does, that makes my whole day.” She brightened. “Sometimes I’ll have a really big success. I’ll see a big Ah-ha happen. Oh, it never looks spectacular and nobody else would notice it, but one of those can keep me going for weeks. Months.” She looked up at him. “It’s not a thankless job. Not at all.”
“But there are things you would change.”
“Yes. I’m not at all clear on the mechanism, but I know the principles. You do, too. ‘The answer to free speech is more free speech.’ ‘The best school is a log with a teacher on one end and a student on the other.’ ‘The best way to learn something is to teach it.’” She started to warm to her subject. “The cryptos’ plans are ultimately doomed to failure because they are a hothouse culture. They can’t survive unless they bar disagreeable ideas, but to bar them they have to learn of them and that in itself infects their leadership. The thought police have to know what to suppress. In the end they can never stop telling people ‘don’t think about purple hippopotami’ and that’s their doom.”
“An awful lot of folks get burned at the stake while they’re learning that lesson,” said Jack.
“Too true,” she agreed.
Jack leaned forward, “Back to the question, though. If you could change one thing, practically, just one thing, what would it be?”
“Myself?”
“Yes. One thing in your situation.”
“Hunh. I can’t bring back tenure, so I have to watch what I say. I can’t bring back the union, so I’ve got no appeal from the board’s curriculum committee.” She looked off into the distance. “Method,” she said, finally. Her gaze swung and her face came alive. “Somehow, in my own classroom, I’d figure out a way to make the method more interactive. The syllabus as it stands is crammed with stuff we’ve got to cover. To touch on all of it, to meet the schedule, I’m forced to put the students in a passive role. They have to accept what I tell them on authority most of the time. I’d somehow make it more active so they could bounce these new ideas against the ones they already have.”
“Seems like that depends on the teacher,” said Jack. “It would work in your class, bouncing ideas off you, but as soon as they tried that with somebody like Barstow they’d get slapped down. That’s what happened with Billy.”
“Right. You’re right,” said Sue, but she was excited now and wouldn’t be put off. “But Billy’s mistake, if you can call it that, was trying to bounce ideas off the teacher. In a rational world he should be able to do that, it’s what we’re here for, but this isn’t a rational system. The key is giving the kids some way to test ideas even when the teacher is a power junkie and wants the kids to stay passive.”
Jack had a glimmer of an idea. “Passive mode accepts authority. Active mode integrates,” he mused aloud. He dug out his phone and asked, “What’s your time like tomorrow afternoon?”
“Where are we going?”
“On an adventure. I hope.”
She knew this mood. “I can be ready by three-thirty in Trad drag, four o’clock without. At the school entrance either way.”
He nodded, already bent over the phone. It had an older-style small display and he had to hold it close to work it so she couldn’t see where he was linked. She watched him punch out his side of the transaction in impatient silence. He looked up and said, “Tomorrow’s no good. How about Friday?” She nodded.
Finally he snapped the phone shut and put it away. “Good,” he said with a grin, “I’ve got us a four-thirty appointment. I’ll pick you up at four on Friday.”
“Appointment where, Jack?”
“Jefferson Open Elementary school. We’re going to talk to the principal.”
On Friday evening, Jim and Billy were sitting on the floor in the front room, waiting for Dad and Sue to return from their appointment. It had been a hectic couple of nights from Billy’s point of view. It must have been for Jim, too. He was slumped back in the chair, chin up, eyes closed and looked like he hadn’t slept for a while.