“You’re drinking your milk in the living room, minding your own business,” Rick said. He pointed toward the windows, indicating someone drinking over there, out of sight of the kitchen. “So who should come into the kitchen?”
He paused, waiting, listening.
“Your kid sister!” he announced, and here he became a prancing ten-year-old brat, sticking his tongue out at the class, skipping up to the kitchen table and looking for trouble.
“Ooooh,” he squealed, “a great, big, fat, old fow-tin pen!” He picked up the pen with childlike delight, hugged it to his chest, and then began scribbling on an imaginary sheet of paper, doodling wildly, his tongue caught between his teeth as he leaned over in a grotesque position. Then he skipped across the room, held up the fountain pen and said, “But the kid gets tired of it, so she finally puts it down. But where? Where? On top of the refrigerator!”
The class howled, and Rick let them howl, and then he carried the sequence to its end, dragging in mama and papa, and even the refrigerated cat, moving the fountain pen from spot to spot until its original owner couldn’t possibly find it in a million years.
“Do you get the idea?” he asked when the class had stopped laughing. “Something Lost. I just gave you an example of how something can get lost. Now you tell me about your own experiences.”
He passed out the lined composition paper, said, “Don’t forget the heading at the top of the paper,” and then watched the class get to work. He was rather pleased with himself. He’d held their interest all the way, and he’d graphically explained the type of composition he wanted them to write. The class worked until the bell rang, and then he collected the papers.
The surprise and realization didn’t come until later, when he was correcting them. He did not expect decent English. He had long since stopped expecting good spelling, organization, or grammar from any of his classes, even the seventh-termers. So he was not disappointed on this count. But he was almost floored when he read the contents of the compositions.
Jackson, a seventeen-year-old boy, a seventh-termer, wrote:
Come home from school. Opin door an get mik from rifridgator. Putt books and fontin pen on table. Go drinck mik. Kid sister comes in the kichen, took pen from table, putts it on top refrigater. Father took pen from rifijerater, takes up to bedroom on burow top. My mother fines the pen up there and...
Conrad, eighteen years old, a term away from graduation:
Wass I suprise when I put down my fountain pen on the kidgen table, when I get home, from school, and then latter I can’t. I wass drin a glass of milk in the room so I don’t know my sister takes the pen and moves it around the house while I am. Latter my father also moves this pen, and wass I suprise. Thats how my pen got lost, and I have’nt found it to this day. Its sure funny how things can get move around a house when you not looking or drink your milk. It can come like a shock if you not careful and leave with your things to lay around and get. Even my mother move the pen, so I cant find it. Careful with things means they don’t get lost.
Rick read the compositions slowly and carefully, the fear growing within him. He kept thinking of the little skit he’d performed, kept seeing that same skit performed over and over again in composition after composition. A little imagination, yes, but just a little. Not what he’d wanted at all. A few embellishments on what he’d done, but basically all the same, all poured from the same master mold.
From Di Luca:
Even my cat; shes a angora with a hell on her neck; took the pen in her mout and carryed it down her baskit.
From Perez:
This pen move the house all around like a chicken head. I never fine him cause everybody stick they fingers in the soup. Pretty soon my fader come home fine the pen and take it upsters with himself. I drink my milk this time wile the pen go.
Rick stared at the compositions, feeling completely defeated, wondering how this thing could have happened. Hadn’t he made it clear? Didn’t they know he wasn’t asking for a simple repetition of what he’d given them? God Almighty, didn’t they know that? Could they be that stupid? Had all his goddamn work been for nothing?
He checked on their records the next day during his Unassigned period. He found the I.Q. of every boy in every one of his classes listed on their permanent record cards. He knew that intelligence tests weren’t truly accurate gauges of intelligence, especially with people whose manual skills were better than their language skills. He had never fully trusted such tests, but the evidence presented on the record cards — especially in the light of what had happened the day before — seemed overwhelming.
Like the low-numbered jerseys on the backs of a football team, the intelligence quotients spread across his field of vision.
72 85 83 86 84 89 77 81 85 93 82 87 80
He checked all the cards, and then he went through them again, making a rough computation and coming up with an average intelligence of 85. He was familiar enough with the Stanford-Binet test to know that an I.Q. between 80 and 90 was considered Low Normal. He sighed and looked through the cards again, studying each one carefully, trying to identify each boy as he read off the intelligence quotients.
He was not surprised to find that Santini, the smiling, first-row-first-seat boy in 55-206, had an I.Q. of 66, and he knew the S tan ford-Bi net test classified anyone within the 50 to 70 range as a moron.
There was one boy in all of his classes with the surprisingly high I.Q. of 113. In Rick’s mind, the Stanford-Binet table took photographic shape and form:
He looked at the figure on the record card again — 113. And then he looked at the boy’s name.
MILLER, GREGORY
On impulse, he turned to the card headed WEST, ARTHUR FRANCIS, almost relieved when he saw an I.Q. listing of 86. He left the records with a new knowledge within him, and he wondered why a teacher in a vocational school wasn’t told about little unimportant things like average I.Q.’s before he started teaching. Or was it policy to let a teacher find out for himself? Was it policy to let him blunder around on his own until he happened to hit the right combination? And if he never hit the right combination? Well hell, vocational school teachers were expendable.
But he could not dismiss the seeming injustice of the system. He had taken enough education courses at college to qualify him for licenses in both the high school and the junior high school. He had taken the junior high school examination and had passed it. The license, in fact, was home in his dresser drawer, under his socks. He had tried to get a job in a junior high, and failing in that, had taken the emergency license examination when it was announced. The exam had not been an easy one, in spite of the need for teachers in vocational high schools. He had taken a good many exams throughout his years of schooling, and this one had definitely not been a snap.
Nor had the education courses at Hunter College been lacking. Dry, yes; but lacking, never. At least, not lacking by current standards. He was taught exactly what he was supposed to learn. Hunter was a good teachers’ college. He knew that, and was secretly proud of the fact. He had no doubt that the education courses offered there were equal, if not superior, to those offered at any other teachers’ college in the country.
But he could not remember any emphasis being placed on the vocational school. Passing mention, yes. But emphasis, no. And perhaps passing mention was sufficient for the fellow who wound up teaching at Christopher Columbus, but it was definitely not sufficient for someone who now found himself in a vocational high school. The topic had, of course, come up during his conferences with Professor Kraal, the college instructor who’d supervised his student teaching. When Rick had been assigned to Machine and Metal Trades, even though he’d asked for an academic high school, he’d been none too pleased about it. He’d voiced his displeasure, and Kraal, a mild-mannered man who preferred discussing the days of the nickel glass of beer to education, had shrugged and simply replied, “Someone’s got to get the trade schools. It’ll be good experience for you.”