What We Talk about When We Talk about Stuff (apologies to Raymond Carver)

I’m on the phone and trying my damnedest to get off when the doorbell rings. Who could that be, I’m wondering, and then I remember. Oh hell, she’s not gonna be happy about this. I forgot to mention it to her. “Hang on a minute,” I mumble into the phone and then yell, “Can you get the door, Cassie. I’m on the phone. I think it’s the guys who moved in downstairs. I invited them over for a drink.”

“You what?” she says, sounding as cross as I was afraid she’d be. I have to admit she’s got a right. I put my hand over the phone and shout back, “Aw, just open the door, hon. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. I forgot all about it. I met one of them in the elevator when I came home. I’ll be off the phone in a minute.”

“I got papers to grade tonight, you know,” she shoots back testily. But a second later the door opens and I hear her chirping sweetly, “Oh, hi. Come on in.”

Somebody says, “We thought maybe you weren’t home. We were just about to go back downstairs. Your husband, you know, he told us to come by.” There’s some polite banter and I get back to my phone conversation.

A couple minutes later I hang up and walk into the living room. Two guys are sitting on the sofa and Cassie is setting some wine glasses down on the coffee table. “Ah, there they are,” I say in my hardiest host voice. “Glad you could make it.”

“Hope we’re not intruding,” says the guy from the elevator, jumping up from the sofa and looking kind of uncomfortable. Maybe they heard us yelling while they were standing in the hallway. He was wearing a dark suit and tie when I ran into him earlier but now he has on a shapeless gray sweater that maybe his mother or an aunt knit for him. Still, you could tell that he has an angular, athletic build. His black-rimmed glasses give him a studious look. Clark Kent is who he reminds me of.

“No, of course not,” I protest, and the other guy starts rattling on about how nice it was of us to invite them over, this being New York and all and people live their whole lives without saying hi to their next door neighbor et cetera. He says his name is Charles and I’m already regretting inviting them over. There’s something oleaginous about the guy. He hasn’t said much but already he’s getting on my nerves.

He puts his hand on his friend’s shoulder and clears his throat. “This is my mate, Bryant,” he announces, and there’s something in the way he says it and the defiant look he gives me that tells me they’re not just roommates. Who gives a damn? What’s weird is how he’s taken over as if he’s the one I invited in the first place. Then he goes on, “I really appreciate you having Bryant and I come by tonight.”

I see Cass wince. She’s an English teacher and grammar infractions irritate her. But she covers her annoyance and says, “I’m Cassie. Nice to meet you both.” Then she turns to me. “Arthur, look at the nice bottle of wine they brought. Can you open it?” She hands it over, telegraphing me a private, venomous look in the process.

“Ah, a Malbec,” I say, reading the label as I walk over to the sideboard to get the corkscrew, happy to have a task to busy myself with.

“A Vista del Sur 2011,” beams Charles. “Hope you like it.” He says it in a way that implies that if we don’t, it just shows our ignorance and lack of taste.

“I’m sure we will,” Cassie says, holding out her glass for me to fill, but not looking at me. I fill all the glasses and we make a toast to good neighbors. Then we all take a sip of wine and make appreciative noises but nobody says anything. We drink some more. The silence is getting a little embarrassing but I don’t know how to break it. What are complete strangers supposed to talk about anyhow?

Cassie finally says, “What do you fellas do?” and then, blushing a little adds, “Uh, I mean for a living. What field are you in?”

I try to keep a straight face. I’m in enough trouble with her already. Bryant looks straight ahead and Charles is barely suppressing a smirk. “I’m a financial guy and Bryant here is a hotshot lawyer,” he says, slapping his friend’s knee.

“Oh, hardly that,” his friend protests. “I’m just out of law school and low man on the totem pole at the firm.”

Bryant is shy, self-effacing, likable. I guess that’s what made me invite him over. Charles is nothing like that. He’s outgoing in a pushy, manipulative way. I feel kind of sorry for Bryant and wonder how long they’ve been together.

“Oh, you’ll be climbing that pole in no time,” says Charles, thumping his friend on the back and chuckling. “Don’t you think he’s got what it takes?” he says, looking at the two of us and winking. “How about you, Artie? What’s your racket?”

I hate being called Artie. I should call him Charlie. Or maybe Chuck. He’d just love that, I bet. Down a peg or two from Charles. “I’m a teacher,” I say. “High school biology.” I can tell as soon as I say it that Chuck dismisses me right off the bat. He probably works on Wall St. or Madison Ave. and pulls in three times the salary I do.

“And what do you do, Cassie?” asks Bryant after a pause. I see what’s going on. He’s embarrassed that his partner didn’t even think to ask Cassie about her work. Maybe women aren’t important enough to have vocations or include in conversations. So Bryant has to step in to recognize that women are people too.

“I teach ESL,” she answers.

“Essel?” says Chuck, his interest momentarily aroused. “What’s that?”

“English as a second language,” she explains. “You know, to students from other countries.”

“Oh, I thought it was something technical, like some branch of physics or something,” he says.

Maybe if she was involved in some kind of applied science Cassie would have gotten a little respect from him. But as soon as he hears what ESL is, you can almost hear him thinking: “Oh, so that’s it. Women’s work. Nothing serious.”

We’ve all been drinking nervously the whole time and now I pick up the bottle and refill everyone’s glass. “Nice wine,” I say. “Very fruity.” I set the empty bottle down on the table and only then see the look on Cassie’s face and realize what I said. But Chuck doesn’t notice. He’s busy looking around the room, taking everything in: big box store furniture, bourgeois decor, a couple of lowly teachers wearing off-the-rack clothes. Nothing to hold his interest here. He probably paid more for the casual designer clothing he’s wearing than I did for everything in my closet. I’m guessing his apartment is furnished with nothing but Second Empire antiques. As soon as we drink what’s in our glasses they’ll get up and leave and good riddance to them.

“Sounds like interesting work, Cassie – how’d you get involved in that?” Bryant asks, apparently trying to make up for his partner’s implied dismissal of it as a creditable job.

“Well, I majored in Russian and linguistics but that was the only language-related job I could find.” Cassie answers. “I guess I just kind of fell into it,” she continues, “but I like it.”

“Hmm,” Bryant presses on, “how do you manage to teach English to students who don’t know any English?”

This is a subject Cassie is passionate about. She can talk about it for hours and I’m just hoping she won’t. With a little luck the conversation will die down and in a few minutes they’ll get up and go home.

“Here’s the thing,” she says. “It’s not about teaching but trying to get students to learn.”

“Huh?” says Chuck, a quizzical look on his face. “You don’t teach but students are supposed to learn it. How does that work?”

He’s chuckling again as he says it. Chuckling Chuck. Better yet, Chuckles – that’s the name for him. It’s not a serious question. He doesn’t give a damn. He’s just mocking her. But it doesn’t matter. She’s off and running, explaining that you don’t learn a language but acquire it.

“You can’t teach language,” she says, just like you really can’t teach somebody how to swim or ride a bike. All you can do is try to make it easier for them to learn.” Here she pauses and swirls the wine in her glass. It’s just about empty. “Arthur,” she says to me. “We have another bottle, don’t we?”

Well, what can I do? If I say no, she’ll go and get it herself and I’ll look like a jerk. So I march back to the sidebar while she continues her lecture. “It’s all about what you do to help students learn.”

By now I’m making the rounds, re-filling everyone’s glass again. Chuckles is sure to say something snotty about the Three-Buck Chuck I’m serving and if he does I’ll say he should enjoy a wine with his name. But for the moment his attention is elsewhere.

“Sounds kinda touchy-feely,” Chuckles says, with a smug smile, feeling that he’s discredited everything she’s said by using that label. But Cassie won’t give in and goes into a full blown lecture about Bloom’s Taxonomy, the affective domain and Carl Rogers’ principles of learning.

“I still don’t get it,” Chuckles says, slowly nodding his head back and forth. “How do you run a class like that? Do you say, ‘Okay, kids, this is English class, go ahead and learn,’ or what?”

Cassie is more than ready to take him on, and it’s no surprise to me. Somehow, wherever we are and whatever we happen to be doing, our conversation gravitates to language or teaching. We could be watching a movie or a ballgame or eating a pizza and we end up talking about language or teaching. So now she says, “Okay. First you have to understand that language acquisition happens through exposure to the language.”

“You know,” Bryant says, “I once spent a week in Taiwan and heard nothing but Mandarin the whole time, and when I left, I didn’t know any more than I did when I first got there. I thought I’d get something out of exposure – they call it immersion, don’t they? – but I didn’t.”

“Maybe if you stayed longer the exposure would have turned you yellow,” offers Chuckles, laughing, as usual at his own wit.

Cassie goes on as if she didn’t even hear him. “You had exposure but not comprehensible input.”

Oh boy, here it comes. She’s hitting them with Krashen. I’ve heard it all before. Now Cassie is explaining to Bryant that he was exposed to Chinese but none of it was comprehensible so there was nothing to build on. “You can’t learn a language magically,” she says, “just by hearing it. It’s all gibberish if you can’t understand any part of it. But if you hear something that you can understand a little, maybe because of context or accompanying gestures or pictures, you can work with it and that core of understanding grows as you get more and more input that you understand. It’s like a snowball rolling down a snow-covered hill, picking up more snow along the way and getting bigger. The bigger it gets, the more surface area there is and the more snow sticks to it.”

“Sounds like a snow job to me,” Chuckles predictably exclaims, but it doesn’t faze Cassie who forges on.

“Do you see what I mean?” she asks, looking at Bryant. “You start with something you know and keep adding to it. Your problem was you started with zero. Even if you multiply input by hearing it every day, the end product is still zero.”

“Makes sense,” Bryant says.

“Not to me,” Chuckles says. “Wouldn’t it be easier just to teach the language – you know, vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and stuff like that instead of expecting students to learn things they aren’t being taught?”

“That’s what happens in most language classes,” Cassie replies. “The problem is it doesn’t really work.”

“Why not?” Chuckles asks.

“Because,” she answers, “that’s just not the way language works. You acquire a language by hearing it, by using it. The rules get formed inside your brain from what you take in. You don’t learn rules first and then apply them. It’s the other way around. It’s inductive, not deductive.”

“I still don’t see what’s wrong with just teaching the rules instead of making students figure them out for themselves,” Chuckles insists. “That just adds an extra step and makes it harder for everyone.”

Cassie gives him the kind of look she might give a student who used the simple past when he should have used the present perfect. Of course, I never would have known what a simple past or present perfect was if not for Cass. I’ve become quite the linguist from listening to her rants for the past six years. And now she’s explaining it all patiently to Chuckles, saying, “They’re not figuring out the rules – the rules get created automatically. We can’t teach them because we don’t really know what they are. And even if we knew them, they would be really hard to teach and even harder to learn. It would be like trying to teach someone to walk by explaining what muscles to use. We don’t need to know anatomy to learn to walk and we don’t need to know grammar to learn to talk.”

“So the brain figures out everything about verbs and nouns and prepositions and that kind of stuff without being taught?” Bryant asks.

“Not exactly,” Cassie says. “Those are just labels for classifying words. People used language for thousands of years before those labels existed. It’s an internal grammar I’m talking about, not the formal grammar they teach in school. You don’t have to know anything about verbs and nouns to be a perfectly fluent speaker. Just listen to any five-year-old who never went to school and has no idea what a verb or noun is.”

“So what are you saying?” Chuckles asks. “The grammar we learn in school isn’t important? What about a rule like not using a double negative? Don’t we have to learn that?”

“That,” Cassie laughs. “is an example of a grammar rule artificially fabricated from the laws of logic – two negatives cancel each other out. But language doesn’t work that way. Double negatives can be intensifiers.”

“The people that came up with that rule didn’t know nothing,” I put in, trying to lighten things up a bit. Cassie ignores me. In fact she’s been pretty much ignoring me the whole time. I can’t figure out why she’s still mad. I can understand her being annoyed at my inviting these guys over and not telling her, but if she hadn’t started lecturing they’d be gone by now.

“Those kinds of prescriptive rules,” Cassie goes on, “are all about making sure you speak a certain way – they’re not the rules for producing language.” I notice that even though Chuckles is the one she’s arguing with, she’s looking at Bryant and directing her comments toward him.

“So what are the real rules of language?” Bryant asks, genuinely curious.

“That’s what people like Chomsky work on,” Cassie starts to say, and that’s as far as she gets.

“Chomsky!” Chuckles bellows. “You don’t mean the commie, anarchist Chomsky, do you?” He’s really animated now.

Cassie is nonplussed and splutters, “I, I, yeah, it’s the same Chomsky but this has nothing to do with his political views. People consider Chomsky the father of modern linguistics . . .”

But Chuckles is hot and cuts her off. “I’ll tell you what he’s the father of.” He hasn’t been too keen on this whole language discussion. I have to admit I kind of enjoyed watching Cass treat him like a slow schoolboy and seeing him bristle at being lectured to. I think the only reason he’s participating in the conversation at all is to have some control over it. But this is a subject he can sink his teeth into. He’s ranting wildly about Chomsky. He hates the guy. But something else is going on too. He’s denying the validity of everything Cassie said because it’s connected with Chomsky. He finishes his tirade almost shouting that Chomsky should stop blaming America for everything wrong in world and go back to wherever he came from.”

“You mean Philadelphia?” I put in. Even biology teachers know a thing or two. Not that I know much about Chomsky but I remember hearing on a TV interview that he was from Philly and it must have stuck in my gourd because that’s my hometown. Anyhow, I just say it to get a rise out of Chuckles and because I want to say something. I’m tired of being ignored.

“Is that really where he’s from?” Chuckles laughs and relaxes a bit.

Now that he’s calmed down, everyone is quiet. It’s hard to believe we’ve all gotten so worked up talking about language. I’m trying to think of a good way to wind up the conversation and put an end to the evening. But Bryant starts things right up again.

“Cassie,” he says, “I’m curious. If you don’t teach your students grammar and that kind of thing, what do you teach them.”

“As I said,” Cass goes on, “it’s not about teaching but learning. That old idea that the student is an empty vessel waiting to be filled by the teacher’s knowledge just doesn’t work for language.”

“Or other subjects either,” I put in. It’s a chance to take Cassie’s side and maybe get a smile out of her. Besides, I really believe it. I like to do hands-on stuff in my classes when I can. I don’t lecture unless I have to. For the zinger I add, “You know what Einstein said . . .”

“E=mc²,” deadpans Chuckles, cutting me off.

“Well, besides that,” I say, annoyed that he stepped on my line. “He said, ‘I never teach my students. I only provide the conditions in which they can learn.’ Or something like that.”

“You see?” Cassie says, smiling at Bryant instead of me. “Even in the hard sciences, even in higher education, it’s learning, not teaching that matters.”

“So, what do students do in your class? How do you help them learn?” Bryant asks.

“Oh, I organize activities to get them using English. For example, I might set up a role play and have them pretend to order a meal at a restaurant, or get them to watch a bunch of TV commercials and discuss them, or ask them to act out a scene from a movie or something they wrote. The main thing is to get them involved in some kind of real communication with other people so that they’re using language. I’m not teaching them English but getting them to use it and keeping an eye on their progress so I can organize new activities that will help them.”

“That’s interesting,” says Bryant, scratching his chin. “The reason I’m so curious is that I want to learn Japanese. I was thinking about taking a course but . . .”

Old Chuckles interrupts with, “I keep telling him that at six-two and with that blond hair and those blue eyes he’ll never pass, no matter how good he speaks the lingo.” Chuckles seems to feel as ignored as I do and just wants to derail their conversation.

Bryant smiles at him indulgently and continues. “Here’s the thing. I took French in high school and college but I really can’t speak it at all. Maybe I’m just not good at learning languages. I’m kind of afraid the same thing will happen with Japanese.”

“Tell me about it,” I say. “I took two years of French in high school and a year of German in college and the full extent of my ability in those languages now is to say merci beaucoup and Gesundheit.”

“You guys shoulda took Spanish, like I did,” puts in Chuckles. “I can say muchas gracias and pinche culero – oh, wait a minute, maybe that wasn’t from Spanish class.” That gets a laugh after he translates.

Then Cassie says, “I wonder how many people end up being able to use the language they took in high school. What do you think, five, ten percent? Everyone else feels like a failure. It’s a sad thing about high school language classes. Their main purpose seems to be making people feel that they’re no good at learning languages.”

At that point we get into a general discussion about high school language class. Everyone has a story to tell and for the first time all evening the conversation gets kind of interesting. We’re all talking about our experiences and I’m enjoying myself enough to ask if anyone would care for a strawberry margarita now that the wine’s all gone.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had one of those,” Bryant says, “but it sounds good.”

Everyone is willing to give it a try so I grab a bottle of Cuervo Silver out of the sideboard and retreat into the kitchen with it, leaving them all boisterously discussing their school days.

I’m already feeling a pleasant buzz from the wine as I take a tray of ice out of the freezer and rummage around in the fridge for strawberries and a couple of limes. In a few minutes the blender is full and I hit the pulse button. Hearing something behind me I turn around and see the three of them standing in the doorway, laughing and cavorting. “We thought you might need some help,” says Bryant brightly, “so we’ve come to offer our services.”

“Actually, I just wanted to steal your recipe,” chortles Chuckles.

“Too late to do either,” I yell over the whir of the blender. “It’s just about ready. All I need from you is your glasses. But wait a second.” I take a small plate from the cupboard and dump some sea salt on it. Then I pick up a leftover wedge of lime off the counter and rim one glass at a time. “Okay, now we’re ready,” I say and pour the gaudy pink mixture into the glasses previously occupied by the more somber-hued wine. It’s almost as if we’ve traded our serious adult beverage for something more frivolous and childlike, and it goes along with our mood which has turned kind of giddy too.

Cassie raises her glass in a toast and says, “Here’s to lowering the affective filter.”

I doubt the others know what she’s talking about but it doesn’t matter. We’re all intent on our drinks. There are slurping sounds mixed with outbursts of laughter and disjointed remarks. “I may have put in a bit too much tequila,” I remark as we all spontaneously slide into chairs around the kitchen table.

“I don’t think that’s possible,” Chuckles opines, picking up the bottle from the table where I left it and studying the label. “Hecho en Mexico,” he reads. “Hey, I can understand that. You see, I still remember something. Those high school Spanish classes weren’t a waste after all.”

“First time I ever tasted tequila was when I was in high school,” muses Bryant, “and I sure remember that.” After a little prompting he tells us about it and we laugh not only at the story but at the genteel way he narrated his raunchy tale.

After that, we take turns telling about the first time we ever drank alcohol and the first time we ever got drunk, and we laugh hysterically at incidents that once caused us the utmost embarrassment and mortification. Chuckles has the most outrageous stories to tell and as I watch him reenacting scenes from his past, I realize for the first time how profoundly ugly he is. Repulsive, really. It amazes me that I didn’t notice it before. Maybe it’s because of the way he carries himself and his expensive clothes. But he’s sitting right across from me now, contorting his face and pretending to retch, and I can’t help noticing his pale, almost translucent skin, his beak-shaped little nose, his misshapen, lip-less mouth. I bet high school was tough for him, ugly as he is, and feel a little sorry for the guy.

It’s not long before we’ve drained our glasses. “Can you make another batch of that, hon?” Cassie asks and I have to tell her that there’s no more strawberries and the ice is all gone.

“No problemo,” Chuckles says. “All we need is Señor Cuervo here.” He picks up the bottle, unscrews the top and pours a couple of fingers into her glass and then into the other glasses. No one protests.

I get up and bring over the salt and remaining lime wedges. “Well,” I say, sitting back down and raising my glass for a toast. “Here’s to high school. Maybe it didn’t teach us a foreign language but it taught us a thing or two about drinking.”

“That’s for sure,” agrees Chuckles. “That’s one subject I learned without being taught. Spontaneous learning, you might say.”

“I like the idea of spontaneous learning,” I say. “I wish my students could learn spontaneously. I had a student once who asked where he could get brain pills. He was serious. He thought there was a pill he could pop to learn things without any effort.”

“That’s the problem with kids these days. They expect everything to be easy. They don’t want to work hard,” Chuckles complains.

Frowning, Cassie says, “I don’t think kids mind working hard if they like what they’re doing. Just look how hard they work at video games and skateboarding and other really difficult stuff.”

“Sure, they’re willing to work hard at having fun,” Chuckles laughs.

“Well,” Cassie says, “maybe if school was more fun, they’d work harder at learning.” Her voice has a sharp, petulant quality, not quite shrill but not what you’d call calm either.

“What is fun, really?” Bryant asks. He’s the only one of us who still looks absolutely sober, even though he’s been drinking as much as everyone else, but that question makes me doubt his sobriety. Chuckles makes a lewd gesture with his hands as a response to his question, but Bryant just smiles and says, “I mean, what is it that makes something fun to do? Sure, some things feel good. They’re pleasurable in their own right. That’s one kind of fun. I can see how skateboarding can be exhilarating when you’re flying through the air. There’s definitely a thrill there and I can see how that would be fun. But I see kids practicing very mundane things on their boards all the time, over and over again. It looks boring – the opposite of fun. And computer games, video games – they take so much effort and attention and don’t give any physical thrill. So maybe some things are fun because of the satisfaction you get when you accomplish something difficult.”

“That’s exactly right,” Cassie beams. I wish she looked at me in the way she’s looking at Bryant. It doesn’t make me jealous exactly, just kind of sad. Chuckles looks irate. It doesn’t matter. Cass is looking at Bryant and Bryant is looking at her. She goes on, “What I was trying to say is that learning is fun. It’s enjoyable. But somehow school manages to turn it into a drag. Kids end up hating school and even the idea of learning. It doesn’t have to be like that. I see students having a good time in my class and their English improves a lot without them even realizing it. Teachers are always complaining about how lazy and bored their students are, but maybe that’s because they’re too busy teaching instead of helping their students learn. Real learning is fun but what passes for learning in lots of classes is students regurgitating back meaningless information from textbooks or stuff the teacher said.”

I pick up the bottle and pour myself another drink. “What do you expect teachers to do?” I ask. “There’s a curriculum to follow, textbooks to get through, standards to meet. Then there’s the Regents to worry about.”

“And that’s all part of the problem,” she says. “Too much focus on those things instead of learning.”

“Not all subjects are like language,” I say. “Maybe students can learn language without being taught, but if you want them to learn biology you have to teach it to them. That’s just reality.” So much for Einstein, I’m thinking as I say it. But I don’t care and I don’t give a damn if I sound peeved. Not only is she ignoring me and flirting with a guy who likes other guys but she’s making it sound like I don’t know anything about teaching. That happens to be what I do for a living and I think I’m pretty good at it.

“What he’s talking about,” she says to Bryant as if I’m not even there, “isn’t learning. It’s not real, significant learning. It’s only memorizing stuff for a short time to pass a test.”

“Isn’t passing tests important?” Chuckles asks, “or do you want to do away with them too?”

“Sure, tests can be useful,” she answers. “It’s helpful to know what students understand and what they don’t and tests can give information about that. That can help learning. But most tests aren’t for that.”

“What are they for?” Chuckles asks.

I take another swig of tequila, content to sit back and watch the two of them go at it.

“Mostly for ranking students,” Cassie answers.

“What do you mean by ranking?” Bryant asks.

“You know,” Cassie says, “rating students, classifying them according to their ability – or at least according to what the tests measure and I doubt they really measure anything important.”

“But don’t you think tests help motivate students to work harder, to study more?” Bryant asks. He says it gently, a little hesitantly. He doesn’t want to sound like he’s piling on and joining Chuckles and me in criticizing her ideas, but it looks like even he’s having a hard time swallowing what she’s saying.

“They probably do,” she answers. “But motivating students to get better grades and be more competitive isn’t the same thing as motivating them to learn. They’re already motivated to learn and might be even more motivated if teachers didn’t constantly send them the message that they’re too stupid or lazy to learn and that learning is just drudgery and no one would do it if not for rewards and punishments. I think a bad grade says more about a teacher’s failure to help a student learn than it does about a student’s intelligence or effort.”

How did the conversation get so damned serious again? Just a little while ago we were having a good time. We were laughing and clowning around. Now everyone’s up in arms.

“Don’t you think,” Chuckles says, “that we need tests to keep teachers accountable?” He’s refills his glass and takes a gulp.

“They only tell us if teachers are helping their students get good grades,” she says, “not if they’re helping them learn. That whole accountability thing is a sham. It’s all about teachers and administrators being able to cover their asses. Real accountability would mean being responsible for every student learning as much as possible and not just proving that you taught what’s in the curriculum. Everyone’s obsessed with grades and test scores instead of with learning.”

“You seem to be saying,” Bryant says in that god-damned earnest way of his, “that schools have it all wrong. What do you think the perfect school would be like?” His question is sincere. He’s looking at her admiringly, like she has the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything.

And she takes off talking about how all human beings have a natural curiosity and drive to learn that schools too often quash instead of trying to nurture. She says students should be able to explore what they’re interested in and discover things on their own. She paints this picture of a utopian school where students are playing music, speaking foreign languages and programming computers before third grade. She imagines students building robots, planning cities and doing all manner of science experiments on their own. She sees students becoming good readers and writers and learning algebra and calculus not because someone makes them but because they’re eager to learn and to acquire the tools they need to work on projects that they themselves take on. School is this wonderful place where students find fulfillment and get all the skills and knowledge they need to lead intelligent, enlightened lives.

It all sounds so grand. It’s wonderful all right and if you’ve never set foot in a classroom and tried to teach a group of rowdy fifteen-year-olds you might even get swept away and believe it’s all possible. But I know just how eager students are to learn about the circulatory system or how meiosis works and I’m not buying it. Her ideas are hopelessly idealistic. It drives me crazy even if it’s also what I love about her, how she’s never satisfied with the way things are and is always trying to improve everything. I just put up with things as they are. Maybe that’s why she’s ignoring me and looking at Bryant like that.

Chuckles has been scowling the whole time but hasn’t uttered a word. Now he clears his throat and says, “So that’s what you think education is, eh? That’s what you think school is all about?”

It’s something in his tone. We all turn toward him. Bryant says, “What do you think the purpose of education is, Charles?” There’s not a lot of warmth in his voice or in the way he’s looking at his friend.

“I’ll tell you,” Chuckles says, “if you really want to know. School is boot camp. It’s a training ground for life. It’s not a god-damned playground and isn’t meant to be. It’s where we become who we’ll be for the rest of our lives. It’s not supposed to be fun. She says that tests are used for ranking. Damned right. That ranking is the glue that keeps society together. Everyone learns their place in school and if they didn’t, the world would be a jungle with everyone thinking he was just as good as anyone else.” Turning to Cassie he says, “You think the purpose of a language class is to teach everyone to speak a foreign language? That’s naïve. Why do you think the whole world has to learn English in the first place? It’s because we don’t learn their languages. You think you’d have a class to teach if the rest of the world didn’t have to learn English? You have a job because we don’t learn their languages. The whole damn purpose of language classes is to discourage anyone from learning a foreign language.”

Chuckles can see the look of revulsion on Bryant’s face and knows he’s gone too far. He’s revealed something about himself that a guy like Bryant, who’s capable of being enchanted by Cassie’s idealism, can’t stomach. But he can’t restrain himself anymore, or maybe it’s because he knows he’s already blown it. Glaring at Cassie he sneers, “You think education is all about self-fulfillment and self-actualization and all that crap, don’t you? Where would society be if everyone was educated and self-actualized? It couldn’t exist. There’d be no laborers, no workers. Everyone would be a god-damned philosopher or artist. You want to know what school is for? It’s to make things exactly the way they are. And it works perfectly well as long as people like you don’t go mucking it up.”

I feel like I’ve been whacked on the head. I didn’t like Chuckles from the start because I thought he was too damn glib. Now I can’t believe how cynical he is. Who knows if he even believes what he just said or if he just said it to be spiteful and malicious? It doesn’t matter one way or the other because it still gets to me. I’m a teacher and I work hard at it. I care about my students and want them to succeed. I teach what I’m told to teach. I work within the system. It’s a job and I do it. I don’t analyze everything and question if I should be doing something different from what I was hired to do. Just give me a curriculum and a textbook and I’ll teach. Cassie isn’t like that. She wants to know if what she’s told to teach and the way she’s told to teach it make sense. She doesn’t take anything for granted and she’s ready to change anything she doesn’t think is right. Sometimes she seems so radical to me because she wants to reform everything – not just the school system but the health system, the transportation system, the justice system, the military, the government. She thinks everything can be made better.

But what Chuckles is saying is more than radical. It’s conspiratorial. He says schools aren’t for learning at all. Students are supposed to fail. Schools are designed to maintain the status quo. He doesn’t want to reform schools or any other institution. For him reform is futile. No, not futile, wrong-headed. He doesn’t want any tinkering with a machine that already does exactly what he wants it to do. So what am I? A cog in a machine that’s not meant to produce anything but noise, a machine whose only purpose is to keep things the way they are? No doubt that’s the way Chuckles sees me. A worthless part of a useless machine. And how does Cassie see me? As someone content to be a cog? A good little soldier ready to carry out whatever orders are given without question or objection? Should I be fighting the system every step of the way like she does, even though she’ll never get anywhere because there are too many people like Chuckles at the controls? I feel like all the meaning has been sucked out of my life. I thought I knew who I was. A teacher. A husband. Someone with some worth. Now I don’t know anything except how empty I feel.

Maybe the others are lost in their thoughts the way I’m lost in mine. No one has said anything for a while. No one has anything left to say. We just sit there, staring at the empty bottle on the table.

End