The Q-View

Over 12,000 words are now drafted for my fictionalized-based-on-my-real-experiences-satirical-view of education. (Working title 422) I have a vague idea of where I am going when I sit to write a scene, but thoughts and recollections begin to flow and intended paragraphs turn into pages.

For example, I had no preconception of the following scene, but I wrote myself into a description of a superintendent hired with the mandate to run a District like a business, a laughable concept put together by people with agendas, educational efficiency “experts” with either no concept of what the classroom is like or a willful blindness, and non-educational geniuses who would not last a week in front of a high school classroom.

So, this is kind of a revenge scene: push-back at a department chair meeting.

While Rudd had managed to give the administration center a business-like gloss, he ran the District like a blood-sucking corporation CEO who did not give a rat’s ass about its employees, its “clients”, and, most importantly, its “products.”

“Uh, students are ‘clients’ now?” Cassie DeKalb had asked at a department chair meeting.

“No, Cassie,” corrected Buckholz condescendingly, “The parents are clients. Students are products.”

“Really. Are you freaking kidding me?” blurted Tom Moore.

“Why not ‘commodities’?” suggested Dewey Patton.

Other chairs chimed in.

Lucy Dobbs: “Wares?”

Wilbur Willis:“Goods?”

“Or ‘Bads’, for the unmotivated,” suggested Moore.

“A’s and B’s could be goods, C’s not as goods, D’s damaged goods, and F’s ungoods,” offered DeKalb.

Williams: “Merchandise. I like merchandise.”

“Vendibles,” said Dobbs, who now had a screen full of synonyms for “products” in front of her.

“Vendibles, I like that,” said Willis.

Buckholz’s face was a pasty red as she turned to Woodman for support. But he was wistfully looking up and away at something on the ceiling.

“Curriculum compacting and mastery-focused differential instruction in heterogeneous configurations are essential for our culminating products,” bloviated Mel Paladin.

“Exactly,” Buckholz said emphatically.

“Exactly, what?” asked Moore. “Does anyone here know what he just said, or am I stupid?”

“I believe what Mr. Paladin is saying,” Snowden replied, “is that we are going to dumb down, eliminate electives, up class sizes, and group every ability together so that our students will somehow benefit from this masterstroke of managerial genius. It’s good to be finally run like a business.”