He discovered that the kids simply did not care.
It was as basic as that. They did not want to learn.
He did not know what had planted this attitude inside them, but he suspected it was the vocational school system itself. He was surprised to find out that the kids knew they were in a bad school. He’d mentioned something in class about North Manual Trades being a damned fine trade school, and the kids had all but laughed at him. He wasn’t kidding them one bit. They knew the school was lousy, and they knew they were here because they’d flunk out of an academic high school within a week. What’s more, they knew that most vocational high schools were lousy, and they seemed to feel that the lousier the school was, the more desirable it was.
Now that was a strange manner of thinking, Rick felt, and he wondered who was to blame for it. Certainly not the guidance counselors who recommended vocational high schools to students. Certainly not them. They explained patiently and fully that perhaps a vocational school, since you are so good in shop, and since your academic grades haven’t been so good lately, might be best for you after all. The picture painted was a pleasant one, there was no denying that. A school where someone could learn a bread-and-butter trade. A school like that, imagine! The answer to the working-man’s prayer. Are there really schools like that? Golly!
But somehow, the secret had leaked, or maybe it just leaked after the kid was in the middle of a trade school for a few days. The picture wasn’t as pretty as it had been painted. In fact, the canvas had been slashed with a knife. And if a kid really wanted to learn a trade, see how long he kept his ideals when he was surrounded by other kids who’d have liked to blow up every school in the city.
And the worst part was that when you were in the middle of a bad school, when you were surrounded by kids who were acknowledged problem students, you began to feel bad yourself. The man who goes to a whore house because he likes the magazines in the waiting room is not considered a bibliophile. He’s spotted coming out of the red-lanterned doorway, and he’s considered a man who has just had a piece of tail. The Saturday Evening Post doesn’t enter into the observation at all.
So a kid who goes to a vocational school, even if he’s going there to learn a trade, is not considered a hard-working, earnest student. He’s considered a kid who didn’t fit anywhere else in the educational system. He’s considered that, and he senses it, and if he’s got the name, he’ll have the game, and so he becomes part of the waste product, and he considers the school itself a garbage can.
There are kids who survive, kids who learn trades, kids who maintain their individual goals despite the corrupting stench that surrounds them. Those kids are few and far between.
Those kids were not the problems. Rick had a few of those kids in each of his classes, kids who seemed to want him to say something, who were annoyed when his lesson was interrupted, who did their homework whenever it was assigned, who turned in book reports, who were excellent in the shops of their choice, who wanted to learn, who were eager to learn, and who somehow managed to learn in spite of the opposition.
Those kids were the easy ones to reach. They wanted to be reached, they longed to be reached. It was the others. Those who didn’t care, those who were content to wallow in the filth, those who not only didn’t want to learn but consciously wanted not to learn.
It was those he could not reach, and it was those he tried desperately to reach. It was almost fantastic, and he doubted if he could have explained his problem to anyone but Anne. It was like a man standing on a street corner giving out fifty dollar bills, and having a tough time finding takers. Why wouldn’t they take what he had to give them? He did have something to give them, so much to give them if they would only accept it.
So he tried to reach them, and he tried harder when Stanley was present because he did not have to fight the shouting and the ranting then. Time and again, he found himself remembering Solly Klein’s garbage can metaphor, and more and more he began to see himself as the fellow with the fat behind who sat on the lid of the can. He fought against thinking that way because he knew the thought preceded the action, and the instant he conceded the kids were filth and he was a garbage man, he would stop trying to reach them, and he didn’t want that to happen.
There were times when he wanted to shout, “Can’t you see that I’m trying to help you? Can’t you see that?”
There were times when they irritated him so much that he felt like chucking the whole goddamned mess and taking a job as a shoe clerk.
And there were times when he simply did not understand. Like the afternoon four of his seventh-term, eighth-period students stayed after school voluntarily, helping him erase the boards and stack the books away in the closet. They’d asked him if he had a car, said they’d be happy to fix anything that was wrong with it. When he’d told them he didn’t own a car, they’d seemed disappointed. They’d chatted with him about their own jalopies, and he’d found himself talking about Anne, and the baby to come, talking to these kids the way he’d talk to anyone else, treating them like the adults he felt they were. When they left him, they all waved and said, “So long, Mr. Dadier. See you tomorrow.”
He’d felt a strange inner peace when they’d gone, a feeling of having made some inroad, a feeling of having taken a first wavering step toward breaking through the shell that surrounded them. He’d liked the kids that afternoon, and he couldn’t wait to get home and tell Anne about how nice they’d been.
And then the very next day, those same four kids had raised all kinds of hell during the eighth period, creating a havoc he’d never had before in that seventh-term class. The same four kids, the same kids who’d listened sympathetically while he told them about his expected baby, the same kids who’d offered to repair his car if he had one, those same four were the worst bastards imaginable, shouting, yelling, disobedient, not caring for anything he said, not listening to any of his threats.
He could not understand.
He simply could not understand. They didn’t even seem like the same boys. What could you do when they ran hot and cold like that? Why even try to reach them? Why not throw in the towel and sit with your fat ass tight to the cover of the garbage can? Why not fool the system and fool the kids and fool yourself in the bargain? Why not collect a teacher’s salary, and tuck the good vacations into your hip pocket, and all the while be an employee of the DSC?
And you could forget all about being a man in addition.
Oh, so what the hell? Are you supposed to keep banging your head against a stone wall?
Yes.
Are you supposed to try to teach kids who don’t want to learn, who aren’t interested in learning at all?
Yes.
All right, how? How?
And he had no answer.
He had no answer to why Stanley dropped in so often, either, but he enjoyed the visits, and so he did not probe too deeply into the reasons behind them. He kept teaching in his own fashion, hoping for some miraculous thing to happen, hoping the kids would suddenly realize he was the man with the fifty dollar bills, hoping he’d break through if he simply kept at it, hoping he’d find the way.
He did not find the way, but he did find Stanley’s reasons for lavishing so much individual attention upon him.
It was two days before Thanksgiving. Stanley had dropped in on 55-206 again, taken his seat at the rear of the room, and watched, his gray eyes cold, his pencil moving. Rick had taught as well as he knew how to teach, calling primarily on his best students to impress the Department Chairman. At the end of the period, Stanley came to him and said, “You’re unassigned now, aren’t you, Dadier?”