Fear changes with age. When I was a kid, I remember this red
bull monster (an actual crimson beast; not the crack-in-a-can energy drink)
from this movie “The Last Unicorn” being utterly terrifying. The night I saw
Halloween 5 in middle school, I saw Michael Myers’ vacuous white mask in every
shadow.
The special effects haven’t aged well. That stuff looks
silly now.
As an adult, or at least an older human, I fear different
things. I fear failure and mediocrity. I fear bills and debt. I fear disappointing people
I love. You can’t slap a white mask on any of that abstract shit, but that only
makes it scarier.
Another abstract fright is fascism – that insidious merger
of corporate and government interests. We came very close to it in the
post-9/11 years. Our institutions are still too powerful, compared to the
individuals whose needs they’re supposed to serve.
Fascism in schools is the topic of my latest 99 cent story, “Equality
Chair”. The speaker is Charles Vance Cohen, a “Corporate-national school
inspector” (also, a prick), and he’s documenting the test run of a device meant
to ensure students receive equal access to the teacher. Of course, being designed with the
bottom line in mind, little thought was given to how it would affect the humans
it was allegedly built to serve.
Just on time for back to school, here’s a preview of “Equality
Chair”. Click the link after to purchase the full story.
Equality
Chair
Today
was revelation. It occurred in the least likely setting for epiphany – a
school. Not even an enclave school, one of those red brick monstrosities in the
outlands.
My
young wife worries when my duties take me beyond the Enclaves. It isn’t her
fault. To her it’s just a rational opinion based on limited world experience.
We go to Jamaica and we’re behind the walls – beige with meandering tropical
ivy. We go home to Pleasant Edge and we’re behind the walls – nude tombstone
granite. My wife, like so many of my old mates from Central Academy, she’s
traveled pocket-to-pocket, never really seeing the world.
In
my duties, I must venture out to the other America. As I tried to explain that
night she was hurling emotional artillery – our polished ceramic souvenirs, a
man’s work sometimes supersedes his safety.
Besides
that, I’ve always felt the outlands held a certain primal charm. There’s
something about knowing I’m out there, exposed, where a Miserable with a
sophisticated enough improvised explosive device could rip my armored limo in
half. It makes me feel so vital, so present and alive from moment to moment.
Miserables
– that’s the right name for them – those sorry souls who’ve given up on
bettering their own lives and seek only to ruin ours.
I
should stop. My feelings are immaterial. This document is for the schools.
The
Jennie Oakes School – that was the setting. Their front gates are a black iron
psychological baby blanket – security theater. The grounds are kept trim and
green by standard keepers, rewarded with a life of safety, or, at the very
least, a life free of starvation, a life behind gates.
All
of that was pedestrian, tedious.
It
was the sign that first piqued my interest: an old world rectangle light bulb
with black trim and letters. I read aloud, “The Jennie Oakes School: Every
Child Special as the Next.” I laughed.
Old
Jim, my usual driver, he actually asked me if I was feeling alright, sir. I
stopped laughing.
“Park
here,” I said.
The
building itself was nothing remarkable – the same baked brick that contains all
the outborn children looking to earn the label “lettered outborn.” Their
atrium, a bland square where two hallways ended, featured a mural of “character
models.”
There
they were, immortalized in oil: Rockefeller, Trump, Reagan, all the heroes of
history I’d approved for the atriums of the 37 outborn schools in my zone. The
first sight any student entering the building would behold: titans of business;
men of near-limitless vision and ambition.
I
heard the clopping of freshly-soled shoes.
The
principal, Dolores Harpe, appeared from the hallway on my right. My
administrative psych course at Central taught me how to judge someone: it’s all
in the shoes and neck. The fresh soles on her second-rate flats revealed a
woman trying to hammer class onto her peasantry. The smeared gleam of imitation
pearls on her neck confirmed my initial suspicions.
Shoes
and neck. That’s all you need.
She
wrapped her pudgy hand around mine and squeezed lightly. “I’m so glad to have
another administrator in the building today,” she said. I smiled. I wondered how
much make up it took to coat her bloated face.
Another
administrator, she said.
Like
so many of the other lettered outborn, she reminded me of a cow placed in
charge of chickens. Being in lower management, she thought she was no longer
livestock, perhaps even a farmer. She saw me as a peer. I didn’t know whether
to laugh or smack a half-pound of concealer off of her meaty cheek.
“I’m
honored to be here today,” I said. A Corporate-national school inspector must
be cordial, though there was one piece of fun I couldn’t let alone. “Tell me
about your sign,” I said. “The one out front. Is it serious or was it intended
as some private joke?”
She
frowned. “Well, no, that’s our school philosophy.” The poor woman didn’t
understand.
I
explained to her, “My dear,” I said, “if every child was special then no child
would be special.” She blinked like a micro-fiber of shrapnel was burrowing
through her cornea. I proceeded. “To be special means to be unique, apart from
average, distinct. If there were no average children, no normal children, there
would be no standard with which to judge excellence, to judge who was, in real
terms, ‘special.’”
Her
response: “Every child at the Jennie Oakes School is as special as the next.”
A
man in my position is often prone to this kind of error. Miss Harpe was a
product of her institution, as much as my wife and I are products of Enclave
parents and Enclave schools. She would respond to criticism of her institutional
platitude by repeating it verbatim, as if to do so was to verify its
philosophical foundation. I could point to the mud on which such a sentiment
rested, and tell her, “This is mud” and she would blink stupidly. I could shove
her wide face into it, until I pulled her up, muck-faced and sputtering, and
she would just look at me like I was some powerful sorcerer, capable of
changing the density of substances at will.
It
would never occur to her the structure of her beliefs had always been wobbling
precariously, on a bedrock of pure shit.
Then
again, look at the institution that molded her. Her happiest memories were
probably sitting in a desk in this very building, pleasing the impossibly tall
figure at the front of the room with a raised arm, a predictable insight, a
sugary grin. She was always going to come back here. I ought to disregard her.
Our society is built with a hundred thousand Dolores Harpes, pledging
passionate allegiance to some platitude on a light bulb sign.
I
apologized and told her it was a wonderful slogan. Every child was indeed
special and we merely needed to unlock their potential. She smiled a prescribed
smile and led me to the left, down the main hall.
She
boasted the triumph of their architecture first.
As
we walked, she explained: “At the turn
of the century, the curriculum determined what had to be taught at each grade
level and at each subject. It also determined the degree of depth, whether a
student was to be exposed to a concept, should be extending their use of a
concept, or achieving mastery of it.”
“Fascinating,”
I offered. I didn’t remind her that the past needn’t concern her. I didn’t
scold her that she should focus on the present, where what is taught, when it
is taught, to what degree and for how long it is taught, comes directly from Central,
directly through me. I allowed her to rant and ramble. The capacity to
self-delude is what keeps women like this from baking cakes instead of bombs.
“There
was also a device called an I.E.P. This stood for Individualized Education
Plan…”
I
endured her speaking to me like a child, reminding myself again to whom, and
what, I was speaking. In her mind, she was now the impossibly tall figure at
the front of the room, and I was the adoring little girl in the desk. She never
guessed she was being indulged. This is my gift.
“…so
why not eliminate the curriculum and give everyone an I.E.P? Why not
treat everyone as special as the next?” She beamed at me.
“A
revelation,” I offered. We continued walking.
“A
Corporate-national University study found that one of the key portions of the
I.E.P. was that a student with special needs be given preferential seating. The
more a student’s attention was likely to wander, the closer they should be to
the front of the room, where the teacher is likely to be. We are the first
school in the nation to take this idea and work it into the very structure of
the building.” We arrived at the first classroom Dolores wanted to present me.
She unlocked a plain oak door.
It
wasn’t a classroom as I understand the term. It was another hallway, running sideways.
Students scribbled right down the line. Dolores’ wide frame blocked the
instructor.
(End of free preview)
Link to view 99 cent purchase option:
