The Mourners Tread: Considering the Death of Rational Public Education

      The phone rings repeated from the corner desk, while the teacher paces for fifteen minutes, leading thirty-five fifteen sixteen year old students into a project on Emily Dickinson and "I felt a funeral in my brain."   

     "You want me to get that?"  a student interrupts just as the teacher gets to the part about what to think about, talk about; then write.  

     "No, let it ring."  A minute passes and the phone rings again as students ask questions about the spinster, Dickinson.  They bite at the build-up.

     "I can get that for you,"  the same student offers again.  Teacher sighs.  

     "Go ahead."  Teacher stops the lesson to hear the message.

     "D'Angelo, go to the attendance office."  

     "Do I need to take my things?"  

     "No, no.  She said you'll be right back."

     Teacher fumbles back to lesson.  "Where were we?" He remembers where a "plank in reason broke" and asks students how in the world you can have a "funeral in your brain."  

     "Mental illness," Flustered Antonio barks out as he ducks his chin deep into his black, sweaty hoody.  

     "Ah, ha!"

     The class is two hours long and Flustered Antonio will attempt to take a nap, complain about the way everyone else is writing so much faster than he is, and illustrate a literal plank falling through a brain to symbolize his reading of the Dickinson poem.    

     The phone will ring four more times.  Two announcements will be made over the intercom (excusing the interruption), and Teacher will accept an urgent handwritten message "requesting" (remember that agreement you signed last year about complying with attempts at improving student test scores and graduation rates) his presence at an interdisciplinary Advanced Placement meeting aimed at increasing student test scores during the upcoming High Stakes Testing Season.  In the session, Teacher is told, "This report says colleges aren't even looking at AP scores unless they are 4s or 5s."  Other Teachers ask questions.  

"What do you prefer Administrator, that we narrow or broaden the scope of inclusion? Because we can definitely improve our test scores if we do like other schools do and test students before admitting them."  

"Good question. We want both."  

Teachers hear another plank creaking.