Cry, cry.

Jonnie Comet


Can you hear the mother cry;
Cry, cry, mother;
Baby on her back doth lie
With some man or another.
Baby take what mother give,
Calling it initiative;
‘Mamá, this is how I live;
‘Bye-bye, Mother.’

 

A sixmonth: sixteen; what’s amiss?
’Fore the mirror weeping;
No swimsuit will flatter this;
Nature’s way is keeping.
Rush from school to clinic free:
‘R-U-4-8-6 for me!’
Doctor says, ‘Too late, you see:
‘Midnight, come a-creeping.’

Oh! –all agony, no pride,
Heels in stirrups snaring;
Motherhood thus nullified
With medical paring.
Fair trade? –for but three weeks’ pain
To avoid the peers’ disdain,
And to wear swimsuits again
With the boys all staring?

 

Can you hear the baby coo?
Cry, cry, mother;
No; that joy’s denied, for you
Cast away that bother.
Now all babies’ bliss a knell
Not of heav’n, but closer Hell;
In your Purgatory dwell:
Fie, fie, ‘Mother’!

- 2002

* * *


l. 14 - RU-486 - in former days, a ‘morning-after’ contraceptive pill whose role as an inducer of abortion has been debated. The narrator’s request for it at this point shows her lack of sense about the issue

A roster of suggested improvements, for the American early-secondary school.

Between a rock and a hard place...

Jonnie Comet


Having spent what sometimes feels like an aeon in and out of comprehensive schools in America in one capacity or another, I have discerned several distinct problems with the way they are run– especially in what is known as middle school, that for ages 11 to 14.   This most precious age has been subjected to some of the most short-sighted and illogical educational notions ever to come along in the whole time of man; and in my humble estimation very little of it has been any good.   What children of this age need most is consistency; and yet in the myriad of changes that face them, not only in their own society which is constantly and inevitably mutating, but in the realm of their educational environment which they ought to be able to trust as reliable, it’s no surprise that their lives should appear as topsy-turvy as they do to the rest of us.

And then too many educators and parents blame this all on ‘hormones’, or ‘the way it is’, without ever speculating that their own contributions to the lives of these poor innocents could be improved dramatically and to the children’s infinite betterment.  It doesn’t take an idiot to see that however goes the life of the young shall go the quality of the future.   So why do we continue to treat our children like guinea pigs labouring under our own foolish and selfish schemes?

The following suggestions are offered in the interests of remedying what has become the norm for comprehensive middle school.  An openminded educator truly interested in restoring quality education to the masses will recognise that any one of these suggestions, if implemented alone, would be a vast improvement on the average school of the American Northeast.  All of them together could become an educational Utopia.  The ideas have basis in psychology and scientific study, but are influenced by objective observation and reason just as much.   They are not concerned with existing legal or financial issues.   They do not come from long years in the ‘trenches’ of comprehensive-school education, and they pay no attention to needs or perceptions of teachers’ organisations or school administrations.  Rather, in the spirit of Absolutism, they are intended to represent what ought to be– the ideal.

 

1. Stop making up cute names for everything.

When a class of people in public service tend to name every policy and process with cute acronyms or nicknames not understandable to the public (their employers) they appear as an elite group distancing themselves from the very people they are supposed to be enlightening.   It is only the sincere, student-minded educator communicating in the common language of the people he serves who can ever be truly successful.  In all my pædagogical studies I never really learned what all that terminology used by professional educators really meant.  I still don’t know and now I care even less.   There will be no reliance on esoteric ‘educator-speak’ jargon in this article.

 

2. Require parents to be responsible for their children’s education in a consistent and meaningful way.

School is not a day-care centre for busy adults to simply drop off children and leave all the educating stuff to ‘the professionals’.  A family needs to expect that homework will be important, and optimistic standards of achievement need to be clearly understood.  In all cases the blame for any child’s failure will rest primarily on his parents’ shoulders.  If a student’s home environment is not conducive to his adequate achievement and behaviour in school, that family is jeopardising the child’s welfare.

In fact a very good legal case might be made that a lack of appropriate involvement in a child’s success in school should be considered child abandonment or neglect.

 

3. Homogenise classes by ability.

This was always the way of schools in the past; yet for political reasons over the last 35 years the reverse policy has been applied, and the record shows it has failed.  It is immeasurably more efficient for the teacher to reach all students in the class when the learning level of the students is essentially homogeneous– whether of high or low ability is immaterial.  When the class is of mixed learning abilities teachers and students become frustrated and far less learning actually takes place at both ends of the scale.

A policy of homogeneous grouping might also serve to deter schools and parents, and ultimately students, from seeking serendipitous ‘classification’ of students based on symptoms and behaviour.

 

4. Stop using ‘ADD’ as an educational or behavioural classification.

Far too many students of all ability levels have been classified as ‘Attention Deficit Disorder’ when probably most of them are just rude or undisciplined.  Classifying as ‘ADD’ does nothing to actually help the child in the long run; it only adds negative stigma to his self-esteem.  What can be expected of an adult whose formative years were spent under the perception that he cannot control his own behaviour without drugs or special treatment?

Career teachers will agree that such demonstrated learning troubles are far more likely the effect of a detrimental home environment than of an actual clinical condition.  Firmer, more attentive parenting will render much of this issue inconsequential.

 

5. Sponsor more upper-level lesson plans, learning activities, enrichment programmes and even whole classes of students.

It is glaringly obvious that there’s been a void at the upper strata of academic ability for too long.   Comprehensive schools spend far more of their time, effort and budget on modifying even the most basic lessons to keep the lowest-level achievers out of the failure ranks than they do promoting achievement among those with the most potential for success.

Not only do bona-fide enrichment programmes for the bona-fide high achievers benefit the learners, they also benefit the schools themselves since the academic reputation of these students will ultimately become that of the whole school.

 

6. Segregate classes by gender through the middle-school years.

Only the naïve and the narrowminded deny the plain scientific fact that girls and boys of this age learn different things at different rates.   More often than not ‘high-technology’ and ‘real-world-relevant’ subjects are taught enthusiastically at the boys’ level, thus perpetuating the idea of girls being a lesser caste.   In reality, girls outperform boys in other areas in which the boys’ ability has not yet reached that of the girls.  From a human-rights view it is only fair to educate each sex on its own terms, giving them identical material but at appropriate rates and in appropriate sequence.   With the distraction of the opposite sex set aside for a few years, attention to wardrobe, fashion, and flirting is decreased whilst gender identity and healthy self-esteem are enhanced.   Both sexes gain more respect for the other when they come together only in structured, mixed functions.  And there need be no major adjustment to budget or scheduling.

Remember that the scope of the US Constitution does not enforce coeducational comprehensive schooling– it only requires that education be conducted responsibly and without discrimination.   So, in light of the facts, it is very likely we are being discriminatory by indiscriminately subjecting all students to an inflexible curriculum without regard to the immutable characteristic of sex.  (See additional article.)

 

7. Refrain from considering ‘block scheduling’ (the doubling of class period time) in the middle school.

You are facing an age group whose short attention span and susceptibility to distractions are legendary.  These students will do far better in shorter, discrete class times for specific subjects, so that the student is aware before the bell rings just what the objectives of the class and his responsibilities for meeting them will be.   The goal must be to wean them from the all-in-one-class environment of primary school towards the more open scheduling of upper school and university; and concretely delineating lessons and meeting times reinforces this.

 

8. Quash the dated and failed notion of ‘whole-language’ in lieu of discrete grammar and literature classes.

Students of this age may never again have the opportunity to fully learn the basic principles of grammar, conjugation of verbs, parts of speech, and rules and terms of rhetoric.   Too many schools intermingle grammar and reading in the interests of providing class time for computers or Spanish when the students are still functionally illiterate in English.  They will not get more of this in most high schools; so however they are at the end of 8th year will be their highest level of proficiency– and in most cases it’s not good enough.

Further, reading needs to be emphasised as the most crucial of all subjects, fundamental to all the student’s future studies anywhere, no matter what the genre.  Yet middle schools are often content to have elementary-certified teachers in maths and science ‘take over’ reading instruction as their fifth class assignment, rather than using bona-fide reading educators who are capable of appropriate techniques and more likely to teach more thoroughly and impose higher standards.

 

9. Abolish ‘teaming’ (the forming of exclusive subsets of a large student body based on arbitrary or random criteria).

Ironically it is the big, impersonal regional school districts which tout the sacred goals of American comprehensive schools, ‘inclusion’ and ‘globalism’, who have promoted teaming as a way to establish smaller, more intimate ‘neighbourhoods’.   Teaming is nothing more than the arbitrary structuring of student cliques.  It perpetuates the provincial immaturity of primary school, babying students too often babied by everyone else.  Ultimately the awakening will be rude indeed if they’ve never had the experience of finding themselves in a class full of strangers, as in high school, which usually assigns students only according to time, subject, learning level and space criteria.  And teaming is hardly analogous to the real world in which many occupations assign associates to many different groups in different areas.

The unmentionable real reason for teaming is to permit teachers of the same core 100 students to meet regularly– an issue solved by simply providing them more time to meet with colleagues about curriculum.  Benefits to teachers should never be balanced against detriments to student learning environments.

 

10. Do not rely on money to solve fundamental problems. 

It always seems that the worst-performing schools are the ones most loudly clamouring for more money and complaining when they don’t get enough.  Does no-one else recognise the reverse correlation here?  Any school administration with such a focus on raising funds from the outside are obviously not focussed on education.   American public education began with one woman in one room teaching twelve children with no money.   Projects were cut out of paper and books were cherished as the priceless opportunity for enlightenment they really were.   Lunch was a bowl of soup off the fire and science objectives were achieved with walks through the garden.   There were no computers or security systems.   School status was determined by students’ performance.  The basic underlying principle was that of care for children.

This is still valid today.  Poorer schools doing things like the above can and do work, through the commitment of teachers and with the support of concerned parents.   Air-conditioning, carpeting, and computers in every classroom are not guarantees of success in the important areas of a school’s mission.  Though a school may not be at the height of fashion for the given time, if its purpose is clear and those involved are dedicated to it, they may achieve far and above what those posh schools with their so-called ‘amenities’ are doing.

 

11. Bring back ‘industrial arts’.

Only the out-of-touch will insist that every middle-school student has an equal chance at a lucrative liberal-arts university education.  And all benefit from even basic knowledge of engine repair, electrical circuitry, woodworking, metallurgy, sewing, cooking, and health service.  Draughtsmanship, starting with pencil and paper, is invaluable in teaching the principles of proportion and perspective, concepts inextricably tied to maths and physics (not to mention fine art) yet too often alien to designers who have never designed anything without a computer mouse.

Instead of blithely skipping over ‘trades’ training which many claim is ‘beneath’ them or their children, we ought to be fostering education in all fields of study, handiworks included.  Otherwise the hot-shot ‘dot-com’ entrepreneur has no right to argue that TV repairmen and carpenters are overcharging him for work he does not understand and making such a good living at it too.

 

12. Don’t put so much emphasis on computer education in the curriculum.

It is a plain waste of time to devote a full class period every day (or even every week) to computer training when these students are going to get that information on their own, one way or the other, sooner or later.  If industry requires a computer education, let industry provide it; but this is not the job of the publicly-sponsored school.

Besides, computing has got so easy that any idiot can master nearly any widely-used business programme within two weeks on the job; and best of all he will have learnt it the way the business wants him to and not on the waning equipment of a comprehensive school scrambling to upgrade their systems on the backs of the taxpayers (including those industry owners).

 

13. Reinforce standards in penmanship and require handwritten papers.

This will never be a completely paperless society and the writing abilities of many so-called educated Americans are bad enough as it is.   It might be beneficial to use copies of handwritten memos by haughty industry executives and ‘dot-com’ entrepreneurs in the classroom as pertinent (and entertaining) examples of functional illiteracy. 

If a purpose of comprehensive schools is to make each succeeding generation more knowledgeable and better skilled than the last, this is one area which if applied, even alone, cannot help but be successful in that goal.

 

14. Teach and enforce standard English grammar and rhetoric more assertively.

Testing standards in literacy need to be progressively raised year by year, ad infinitum.  In this growing world clear, concise communication is increasingly crucial.   The differences between casual expression, including slang, idiom, and jargon, and formal speech and writing appropriate for larger audiences must be emphasised and consistently demonstrated.  This is particularly important in those ‘other’ realms of language arts, listening and speaking.   Many media materials preferred by teachers, such as popular films on video, serve only as negative illustrations.

Verbal instructions with no written back-up on the chalkboard need to be given more frequently and for increasingly important assignments.  Students’ speech needs to be more closely monitored, both in the span of class time and elsewhere in the school domain, as their independent application of standard English is analogous to their proficiency in it.  Both these examples are directly pertinent to the real world, in which verbal directions may be given only once and one’s oral adequacy may be instrumental in being preferred for a job or promotion.

 

15. Resurrect abstinence as a principal theme in all ‘health’ or ‘sex education’ curricula.

Both the simplest and the wisest of us know that the only way to completely avoid sexually-transmitted disease, unwanted pregnancy, and loss of adults’ respect is to not risk it in the first place.   It may be only because today’s young teenagers are being raised by the sexually-liberated children of the ’60s and ’70s; but somewhere the whole notion of safety and decency in relations with the opposite sex went out the window.  Modern schools are more likely to pass out condoms, thus encouraging children to enjoy themselves in ignorance and with a false sense of security, than they are to promote a healthy self-image and the idea of a good reputation.

So long as man is an animal there will be hormones; but the part that makes us human is our ability to make rational decisions; and surely even the arrogant and the puerile will agree that for the 11- to 14-year-old, the correct choice is to say no.

 

16. Teach, demonstrate, require and enforce etiquette and respect, especially amongst students and towards staff.

Throughout the last 200 years American educators and politicians have been so committed to removing class barriers and on endowing everyone with equal rights that the politically-incorrect idea of ‘social superiors’ has become an alien concept.   It is simply reasonable that just by virtue of his position a schoolteacher ought to expect some degree of respect from his students, especially within the classroom or school walls.  There can be no tolerance for a student who will not comply with that.  A student does not have the inalienable right to address the teacher in the casual disdainful manner he would use with a teenaged peer, over trivial points of only personal relevance, and in the open classroom.   Defiance and disrespect are taught by conditioning, both by school policies and the greater social sphere; and the only response to that must be counter-conditioning, including, if necessary, the consistent application of negative consequences.

The school which teaches and enforces manners and respect, even to the point of invoking disciplinary sanctions against those out of line, will always be efficient at conveying meaningful education from elders to children.  And any body of students who treat each other and their superiors with insufficient respect will always appear as a failure, to the students, the faculty, the public and especially to the taxpayers’ purses.


However archaic some of these ideas may seem, they address the intrinsic problems manifest in American middle schools for over three decades.  Of course points like these are raised whenever the issue of ‘reform’ comes up; but in the end politics, emotion, and perceptions about money cause them to be swept under the carpet.  The worst factor is that of fear on the part of educators– fear that some arrogant dissenter somewhere is going to call foul, fear that some sensibility of some amoral atheist is going to be offended, fear that a lawyer may show someone’s civil liberties are being compromised.  In reality none of the improvements here proposed should appear anything but sound to the most responsible members of a community.  Yet American comprehensive education often seems incongruously devoid of a policy of effort towards expectations, behaviour with consequences, and responsibility to something greater than self and comfort. Only when this most fundamental oversight is corrected can the true reform begin.

As an Absolutist, and parent, I can only hope, and pray, that no further damage is done to the children’s generation whilst the educators and parents and communities continue to bicker over their own concerns.


- August 2001


* * *

Descartes’ sadly misunderstood conundrum.

Blind leading the blind...

Jonnie Comet
22 April 2001

  If I were to tell you that all your life experience is not really as you have perceived it at all, but that you are actually a guinea-pig taking a test in a clinic in which we have sealed you in a virtual-reality dome and provided you with every sensation you’ve ever perceived, could you prove me wrong? 

  The answer will depend on how you determine reality.  Do you rely upon senses or thinking?
 

  Rene Descartes and the other absolutists of his time accepted the axiom that the cardinal nature of Man is to reason.  The faculty of Reason is, after all, what sets Man apart from lesser beasts.  This is all well, especially when we read or hear Descartes’ oft-repeated adage, ‘I think; therefore I am’.  It is so easy to assume that this idea proposes that since we can think, or reason, we can determine reality.  But in this modern and relevance-related world Descartes’ statement is highly misunderstood.  Too many people, throughout all ages, but especially now, tend to equate what they perceive with what is true.  These are the same people who will claim that any opinion is valid, and then rely so heavily upon their own assessments of people and issues and events that they unknowingly erect a smoke-screen of subjective ‘data’ entirely irrespective of the real facts.  Sadly these people will be the last to ever accept that their own application of reason may be inherently flawed. 
  

  When Descartes says, ‘I think; therefore I am’, he does not mean, as the typical modern American relativist may claim, that perception determines reality.  Subscribing to this misconception, it is all too easy to indulge the common logical fallacy of assuming, ‘Since I think such-and-such about this, it must therefore be true’.  For example, if an individual feels cold, he may believe that in fact it is cold– meaning that the ambient temperature is less than it usually is– in spite of the equal likelihood that he may simply have a fever and be unaware that his temperature-sensing ability is compromised, and thus his awareness about the weather today.  To debate this with him– hopefully without agitating his illness! –will result in his frustrated declaration of ‘Well it’s cold to me!  What else is there?’ 
  

  The first thing our misguided, suffering friend must realise is that the philosophical axiom ‘I think; therefore I am’ is an absolutist one to start with.  And it does not defend any reliance on personal relevance at all but does quite the opposite.  It condemns the concept of a subjective reality, suggesting instead that there is only one thing anyone can be sure of: that he can be sure that is the only thing he can be sure of.  In other words, I know I am thinking, since to merely question whether or not I am thinking already proves that I am thinking.  And Descartes’ point is that since that is entirely internal, as if conceived in a vacuum, not affected by outside circumstances, it can be considered logically pure, and therefore can be accepted as true by virtue of being purely reasonable.  It is only when I begin to involve perceptions of outside circumstances in my thought processes that the determination of what is or is not true becomes problematic.  
 

  Truth may or may not be hid from an individual, but surely he will not be able to tell it by his physical senses, nor sometimes even by his intellectual ones.  Though Jefferson has it that truths will be self-evident, by definition easily perceived as true, it does not automatically imply the reverse, that the obvious must therefore be true.  For example, I might perceive that the sky is pink, since all round I see pink; but I may not know whether or not I am wearing pink glasses.  If it is true that I am wearing pink glasses, it fundamentally alters the validity of my claim that the sky is in fact pink.  If in fact I am not wearing those glasses, then perhaps the sky is pink after all; but notice that it all depends on my awareness of some greater reality which may have been kept from me, without my knowledge that such a fact could even be possible.  Therefore any claim to reality I might make before I fully investigate the existence and status of all the truth is therefore incomplete and probably invalid.  The truly logical thinker will allow for the possibility that he may not know all the facts, but allow too that absolute truth does exist, however it may be beyond his perception for the moment or for ever.  
  

  Now this may seem like an inane argument, because how often might it be that I would be wearing pink glasses?  But take it a step further and consider how such a misunderstanding can influence larger issues.  The archetypical misapplication of the Descartes idea is for one to use a personally-perceived relevance as proof of a universal truth.  A relativist politician may feel that a certain plan for economy seems risky, but he measures risk by how it would affect his own personal finances and so votes against it, claiming that it is truly bad even though millions of others, about whose finances he knows nothing, may actually benefit from it.  A relativist fairgoer might say that since a Ferris-wheel appears dangerous to him, it must therefore actually be a material threat to life and limb.  Yet his understanding of the physics of Ferris-wheels, or the modern materials used in their construction, or the safety ordinances governing amusement rides, or the fact that the Ferris-wheel in question has just been thoroughly rebuilt and inspected, may be partly or entirely incomplete or just plain false, and so his report that the Ferris-wheel is unsafe may be precisely counter to fact.   
  

  And so far these examples might be attributed to mere idiocy on the parts of the politician and the fairgoer, and easily dealt with or overlooked; but consider how such an uninformed concept of reality can affect one’s whole lookout on the rest of life.  For example, a certain butcher might perceive that his shop is being boycotted by ethnic Semetarians.  He has not seen a Semetarian come in for five or six days, and whenever he rings up some of his regular and satisfied customers who are Semetarians he gets their answering machines.  What this butcher may not know– perhaps because he never bothered to think about it– is that this week is a Semetarian religious observance, and there may be mores for Semetarians about fasting and attendance at prayer services, for the term of the holy week but not beyond.  But based on what he perceives, he concludes that Semetarians no longer wish to buy meats from him; and since it seems that only Semetarians are doing this he forms an opinion about the Semetarians’ buying habits and how they feel about non-Semetarian butchers.  His resentment towards Semetarians appears justified to him based on what he perceives where he is at the time. In other words, his personal perception, not his logical reasoning, determines his working concept of reality.

  
  The reality this butcher does not recognise, but easily could, is that his conclusions came from incomplete or even invalid information.  He may never consider that his competitors are also missing their regular Semetarian customers.  It may be that the Semetarians will return after their fast and buy twice as much meat as on other weeks.  Others might have come through the shop this week and just not mentioned to him that they were Semetarian.  But if this butcher is unwilling to grasp a reality that transcends any one butchery in town, any one week in time, or any one group of people, his immediate, relevant, and personal perception may fix for him that the Semetarians are deliberately choosing to avoid his shop in particular.  Not understanding why, nor even comprehending that there may be a reason which has nothing to do with any subjective assessment of him or his shop, his reliance on personal perception alone can lead to an irrational resentment which could of course grow into something more socially reprehensible– and perhaps bad for his business, which would only exacerbate his resentment. 
   

  Of course it is entirely possible to prolong such a debate over perceived reality and absolute truth to the point where the minutest points about the concepts are bandied back and forth ad nauseum.  The focussed, most applicable reality is that thinking Man must accept that he might not have complete awareness of all realities affecting his existence at all times.  Rather than to accept as truth only what he can perceive and to act upon that assumption– for I cannot refer to it in any better terms– it is his duty to seek more data, especially that which his personal judgements may deem distasteful or disconcerting, before deciding what is and is not reality in the given case.  In the absence or unavailability of such definitive data, his only logical recourse is to accept that he simply cannot know for sure, no matter how discomforting that may be for him to admit.  It is when a man allows his own comfort, whether physical or intellectual, to shield him from acceptance of true reality that he casts off the one divinely-granted attribute that makes him Man in the first place.  Without the deliberate exercise of that marvellous Reason in situations that call for it, he is no better than a brute. 
   

  The secondary ignorance that results from modern Man’s utter dependence on his own personal perception would have irritated and incensed Descartes himself. To show even the barest modicum of respect to his idea, the least we can do is to stop misunderstanding or at least misapplying him– for our insistence that we understand only proclaims to the better enlightened that we certainly do not understand after all. As a certain more famous absolutist has said, 
   

  ‘If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but that ye say, ‘‘We see”, therefore your sin remaineth.’ –John 9: 41
  

  
   * * *

An apology, for 'Virtue Reclaimed'.

The Pammy premise....

Jonnie Comet
23 June 1999

‘Merit should be chiefly placed

In Judgement, Knowledge, Wit, and Taste;

And these, she offer’d to dispute,

Alone distinguished Man from Brute.’    –Vanessa

  More boldly than is usual I have been initiating discussions of a new work in progress from my hand; a novel with the working title of Pamela; or: Virtue Reclaimed.  Deliberately to be like Richardson’s 1740 Pamela; or: Virtue Rewarded, probably my favourite book of all time, it is a fictional diary of a young lady ‘in service’. Mine is an updated version of the story, where instead of the cruel manipulating master whom she must forgive, my Pammy has a much more insidious problem within herself.  The story, then, shall deal with how she comes to face her own temptations and rise, like the Mr B of Richardson’s book, to a new level of propriety, respectability, and Godliness.  

  The heroine’s father abandoned the household when she was two and her deceptively celibate mother forced her own man-hating precepts upon her all her life.  The narration starts just as Pammy, an effervescent prodigy with 170+ IQ, and the sweet, good-natured Vicki, the youngest of a good Catholic family and Pammy’s childhood ‘blood-sister’ and soulmate, come to America from Australia as exchange students to the Cs in Delaware.  Inspired by the recent acquisition of a Macintosh computer, which seems to accompany her everywhere, Pammy has begun a very detailed, honest, and startlingly introspective journal which may apparently be her life’s one great opus. 
  

  The Cs (you never hear their last name, as in Richardson’s book, in which the diarist endeavours to keep ‘Mr B’ anonymous– as if she could) are the most enigmatic part of the story– a very contradiction in terms. The father, not known as John Paul Caprici, is an old character of mine of whom I wrote in the 1980s and then gave over but have since resurrected as an adult.  Born on a Wednesday, he is ‘full of woe’– Pammy will call him ‘the man of sorrows’.  He was a member of a rock band on Long Beach Island in the late 1970s but lost a beloved fiancee in a tragic plane crash in 1980 and, distraught, sold off the beachfront property intended for their honeymoon cottage, broke up the band, made a few enemies in the process, and fled to London to immerse himself in music-production work and a rakish lifestyle.  Following the death of his father he met Lisa in New Jersey, who is an angel.  Eager to leave his spate of recklessness behind, he retires to a gentleman’s country life at a very nice authentic Colonial-style spread on the bay beach at Lewes.  
  

  Lisa embodies everything good and Christian about women, and as the mother of the two little girls whom Pammy and Vicki are to mind as live-in exchange students, becomes a very good influence on the heretofore ill-guided Pammy. Vicki feels homesick and departs one December leaving Pammy alone, who chooses to not return to her mother but to attend high school and then UD in Delaware.  Her mother, acknowledging Pammy’s reasons, recognises that her daughter’s academic prowess and literary demeanour would be better served here than at UQ, where at home ‘everyone’ goes (Queensland has a mundane English literature programme), and signs her over as ward to the Cs.  Gradually the humble, dutiful, scholarly Pammy achieves a somewhat ambiguous relationship in the household, something akin to a younger sister to Mrs C, an older one to the girls, and a niece or almost daughter to Mr C; she admits often that she feels like she’s living with her ‘faery godparents’.  

  The conflict Pammy faces is over her own sexuality.  Seduced by a deceitful female school-friend at age 14 she has never been fully confident since.  She readily recognises that having been intimate with the Catholic Vicki, who was too remorseful with guilt to allow it to continue, was morally wrong, but it is like an addiction that she cannot help and it undermines her self-worth.  Over the second third of the story she develops an abject fear of being ‘found out’ and losing the respect the Cs have for her, and the trust they have in her with their two little girls. In at least one way however she is far stronger than she believes.  She embodies my own view that most of what liberals call ‘sexual preference’ is just that– a matter of choice rather than a natural (as in genetic) determination.  Whether the inclination is adopted freely or under subtle, chronic conditioning, as on an immature intellect, is not the issue. Pammy insists that if properly motivated, she can leave behind her corrupt ways and ‘go straight’.  Therefore she repels all ‘politically-correct’ labels for herself, even when reflecting her innermost thoughts in the privacy of her own diary.  Whether this is out of philosophical nobility or denial she cannot say, but despite her profound haughtiness in writing the reader will surmise Pammy is deluding herself.  

  Lisa contracts some unnamed blood disorder in the summer of 1998 and dies unexpectedly in October.  Upon her deathbed she tells the weeping Pammy, ‘I have always believed you were capable of much more than you have done.’  As she labours on in mourning Pammy slowly realises she had never really deceived Mrs C, who probably always suspected her inclination and yet as a true Christian chose to love her anyway, in ways Pammy’s own mother never could have.  Inspired by the faith of a friend she had long underestimated, she must rise out of the moral mire of her sinful existence and endeavour to deserve her keep, both by the decimated C family and by the Shepherd of us all.  

  Therefore the real core of the story is the tedious household arrangement during Mr C’s widowhood, when Pammy, set up with her own apartment in Newark, attends UD with 15-18 credits per term, carries a GPA over 3.7, drives the 75-mile distance between Lewes and Newark every Wednesday afternoon to make dinner and help the little girls with homework, and then returns each weekend to do washing and other chores.  Mr C takes up quarters in the attic to be away from his wife’s room which is kept intact until he must enlist Pammy to clear out her wardrobe.  Under the weight of what’s been lost, Pammy reports, ‘I would rather have spent the same two hours in a nuclear reactor.’ The departed Lisa has now become a saint to her, and though she dares not say so directly, she wishes to emulate her as a Christian and woman in general. The fact is that she does, much more than she realises.  

  The most obvious and yet troubling criticism of the premise of this love story is the hasty assumption of many that no ‘normal’ man could endure in a household with a ‘nubile’ young woman for long after his wife’s death without ‘hitting on her’.  In fact this is exactly what Pammy’s mother cautions her about, prompting Pammy to promise to the heartbroken Mr C– precisely as Jane Eyre promised Rochester– ‘I would stay with any friend.  I will stay with you.’  But I submit that the belief in an inevitable, irresistible consummation of two people thrown together in adversity is too low a view of human potential.  The great problem with modern society is that sexuality has come to the fore and is generally claimed to be the most important influence on our lives.  This belief is Romantic– the idea that one’s own personal perceptions and sensory satisfaction can be more important than absolute truth or absolute good.  But I am no Romantic.  I am only concerned that so many seem to be.  

  My criticism of the world today is that people have grown too trusting of what we see and feel round about us, which is anti-intellectual and subjects the God-given power of Reason beneath the perceptions of inherently flawed physical feelings and senses.  Modern people are no longer interested in the ‘irrelevant’ thought processes of the past, if they are even aware of them.  As a scholar of literature from before the Romantic period I can attest that, whilst in 1999 it may be implausible to expect that a young single woman and an unattached, lonely man can coexist in a household, observing all prior rules of propriety, without their quickly developing a sexual or at least overtly passionate premarital relationship, before 1799 the story I am writing would not only have been perfectly plausible, but the public would have demanded it develop precisely as I do develop it.  

  It is logically and morally dangerous to claim that the capacities of human nature have changed so much since ‘then’, that we know so much more about mankind now, that we were naïve and clueless ‘then’ but are not now.  St Paul says we see in a mirror dimly– meaning all of us, in every time of life, in every time of man.  Not one of us has any better clue about the true capacity of human nature than another.  This is where so many go wrong– they claim, for example, that the Bible reflects a way of thinking then, but is irrelevant now.  That claim is Romantic– it assumes that what is right for one man or one age may not be right for another, totally disregarding the possibility of an absolute truth.  What God has deigned is universal– it cannot change.  What must change is the way mortal and mutable Christians view it, so that we can be more in line with how God would have us think. In this way pure Romanticism is anathema to true Christianity.  
 

  Emerson would justify Pammy’s transgressions in saying that so long as she felt personally satisfied by it there could be no judgement of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in being intimately involved with her childhood friend.  Fortunately I have read enough chivalric and moralist literature to have something to base my arguments on. After Richardson’s 1740 masterpiece in which Pamela reforms her rakish master and marries him respectably, the public raved over it and demanded a sequel just to have more of it. Preachers praised it as the epitome of Christianity put to good earthly use.  The Catholic poet Alexander Pope boldly stated that priests could do far worse than to base sermons on the openly Protestant Pamela– and many took the advice.  Ben Franklin published it in 1744 as the first novel printed in America. Austen, Thackeray, Charlotte Bronte, and even Hardy were profoundly influenced by it; but by the time Romanticism had done its full damage at the close of the 19th century only the most moralistic literati cared a whit for it.  
 

  What I am attempting is to take a major problem of our time– the inane argument over whether any alternate mode of sexuality or morality can be personally prescribed and justified– and put it into a context which leaves little room for doubt.  Pammy has always been a good little girl and has always gone to church and with the Cs, at least at first, she merely follows what she’s been taught.  Like many mainstream Anglicans (a minority in Catholic Queensland) she takes it all for granted. But following Mrs Cs death and searching for some clue about what to do, she discovers the Bible again.  Passages like ‘You are the light of the world’ and ‘Whosoever will not take up his cross and follow me, cannot be my disciple’ haunt her– she knows there is guidance in there somewhere.  So she explains to Dani, her eager young ‘protegee’ (as it were) in Delaware, that she will end their intimacy cold-turkey– and does.  With the understanding Dani’s blessing she begins a single-minded crusade to do nothing for herself and to be the best nanny she can be under the circumstances, caring for the two little lambs who have lost their mother, taking every example of their mother she can.  She denies herself in order to serve others.  She loses half her friends who don’t get it– but recalls Helen’s words to a sceptical young Jane Eyre: ‘If all the world hated you, you would not be without friends.’  

  Deliberately, the very ironic part is that Lisa is 33 when she dies– the perfect angel, the one without blemish, the one whom everyone should look to as a paragon of virtue, who essentially says to Pammy on her deathbed, ‘Love one another, as I have loved you’.  Despite all her book-learning, Pammy will only accept the full gravity of the symbolism when a full year afterwards, at nearly 20, she accepts Mr C’s serious, sober proposal of marriage, which he actually suggests as an expedient way to keep her in the family (and country) after she has become to him the best teammate and the most loyal of friends.  But they both know better.  They are of the same mind on so many things– but are also, after all, flesh and blood too.  It is only that there are procedures to follow for propriety’s sake.  In church that Sunday, as they anticipate speaking to the priest about it, there is a baptism service and the whole concept of rebirth and being ‘sealed as Christ’s own forever’ comes back to Pammy like a boomerang from the Outback.  In a sudden revelation she gets it, and there is a very moving moment when she begs the priest for a penance– having learnt too much from going to Vicki’s church, no doubt– and his only response is to read to her about Jesus at the charcoal fire from Acts and then say that her penance is to ‘feed the lambs’. Pammy knows who the lambs are.  She has been serving them all along.  

  I put everything I know into this story. It is part Jane Eyre, part The Sound of Music, part Emma, and partly Swift’s Cadenus and Vanessa.  It has begun to appear to me more eminently publishable than anything else I’ve written, if only for the incredible breadth of its market (I should love to publish it in installments in some mass-market periodical) and so I am not really working on anything else at the moment.  It is a modern Christian fairy tale, in which the good people are obvious and no-one’s flaws are so awful that they cannot be corrected and forgiven.  Pammy ends up marrying the only one suited for her in every way, a gallant and respectable gentleman of means, the only male role model she has ever known, and her very best friend, in a largely intellectual union of two kindred souls separated by 23 years, but the admiration and affection between them is sincere and there is no doubt they will be well matched till at last one of the loves of Mr C’s life will outlive him.  

  The character of Pammy is a deliberate paradox.  Truly beautiful, she gets called ‘Barbie’ because she looks like a bimbo, but her beauty is juxtaposed with a formidable intellect– as with Vanessa in Swift’s comic epic mentioned earlier (which Pammy quotes from in fact). Young men hate her– they cannot get past her looks to care about what she thinks and so misjudge her.  When they discover how brilliant she really is they can’t reconcile such stirring beauty with such daunting brain power and so are at a loss as to how to deserve her.  She goes through high school and college in the US like Frankenstein’s poor monster, out of place, out of time, an 18th-C Absolutist in a 20th-C Romantic world.  People ask me why I made her so physically striking– it’s simple when you think on it.  In the modern sensory world, for a woman to be both intelligent and beautiful is a liability, even a curse.  Either attribute alone would be easier to take. But as Pammy writes in a sophomore sociology thesis, men are primarily visually stimulated and judge women first on their appearance.  As a man myself I have studied this at great length and have come to be able to put mere looks aside– honest.  It is true that many women are pleasant to look at, but I don’t care.  A beautiful-looking woman is like a work of art– you can take it home and admire how it looks, but you can’t have a satisfying conversation with it. And good conversation ability can last a lot longer than than good looks.  

  Therefore Pammy is fodder for the modern Romantic male-centred misconception that worth is equal to looks– that is, appeal to the senses rather than to the intellect is most valuable.  Pammy appeals both ways and is actually the very best ‘catch’ a rational man could wish for.  The sad thing is, there are precious few rational young men. Thus she represents another of my long-standing beliefs that the dumbest thing a modern girl can do is marry an immature idiot her own age with an earring in his nose. The only truly sensible choice of husbands for an intelligent young woman is an adult who is already established in his station in life and comfortable with being himself.  This is only what everyone believed up till that damnable book Wuthering Heights and the whole Romantic movement in fiction, when emotion took over logic throughout society.  I lament that, for its negative aspects are still with us and show no signs of abating.  This is why I study the 18th century, because it was the middle period in which the good aspects of Passion and the good sides of Reason were melded successfully.  Such a perfect blend is not likely to ever happen again– more to pity.  

  All I am trying to say is that I haven’t made anything up here that’s implausible.  This book is founded on all the precepts I have learnt in school, studied on my own, and lived myself, for all the years I’ve been thinking.  It is not intended to be scholarly, but realistic– the character at times nearly bores the reader with what appear to be trivial details (a trick I got from Dickens, Austen, and even Billy Joel).  What she does not say is as important as what she does.  She is struggling and occasionally admits it, but what she is struggling about does not occur to her till nearly the very end.  She is human and fallible and knows it, and her failings are as authentic as her strengths.  Above all she realises the power of free will, which she must accept and harness in order to follow the will of God.  She does not know the eventual outcome and eventually stops asking God to tell her, leaving it all to Him and reconciling herself to whatever fate He determines for her.  When at last she can do this completely, she will have earned the best reward imaginable.  

  I’m sorry if this is trite and boring; but I can’t abide the ‘film noir’ genre of literature.  Hemingway does not impress me with his tragically hopeless, permanently scarred anti-heroes.  I think the entire premise of that Naturalist, amoral outlook is dangerous to impressionable minds, especially today. It must be remembered that all literature by definition has a teaching component, whether admitted or not by the writer, because the net effect of all reading is that the reader comes away changed in some way from having read it– the same as the definition of education.  My primary concern is how that reader changes.  A good story is not the goal– that is Romantic, to please through perception.  The good story is the means to the end, which is an important lesson.  Failure to accept this on the part of the writer has led to exactly what we have now– an entire culture built on gratifying false ‘needs’ as perceived by flawed people and forgetting more profound issues of life. Any book which seeks to gratify the reader in the ‘here and now’ at the expense of a valuable lesson for posterity abandons the morality of mankind for a quick quid for the writer, which is, of course, socially irresponsible. Any writer that does so is therefore part of the problem, no matter  how materially wealthy he becomes.  

  This is the belief of mine I have long wished others to understand, though often I worry that no-one ever will.  Yes, write– never fail to write– but always place yourself beyond the work, not only into the chair of the reader, but into that of the critic in posterity.  What has your book taught?  What effect does it have beyond the first few readers who say they like it?  Why is it worthy of being remembered after you cease to collect royalties on it?  What will a professor say about it in 200 years?  For as sure as you and I are sitting here the printed word will endure and come back one day to affect someone in a very different time than ours. Literature by its whole definition is not intended to be transitory or ‘for the moment’.  If all you mean to do is please an audience at a sitting and make 6.95 into the bargain each time, you had better hold a lecture up at Loveladies, tell your story, and forbid notes, rather than to ever take out a pen or switch on your computer.  The whole premise of writing it down and publishing it is to make an impact on posterity.  Otherwise, why bother?

  
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epigram  - Merit should be... Vanessa  - J Swift, Cadenus and Vanessa; 1713

Girl in a dress.

Jonnie Comet
11 June 1999

  She was probably in tenth year, about 15 or 16, lithe and lovely, carrying herself down the pavement with her shoulders back and chin set firm– unusual in such a young lady.  She wore those block-heeled shoes that for some inexplicable reason have come back from the ‘70s to haunt us– she might have done far better in a pair of plain white two-inch slingbacks.  But the shoes were forgivable.  Draped in a print of violet splashed upon white she was a picture of femininity, in the best sense: a vision of beauty in a simple cotton dress.
  What is it about a girl in a dress?  Have I gone so old and feeble-minded that I cannot help but gaze, lecherlike, at the compelling comeliness of a young lady so presented?  But I assure you, it’s not the physiognomic appeal that waxes me to words.  A woman’s shape is essentially universal. –no, do not fret, dear ladies, but you’ve got to admit that on a purely rational level, the female form varies very little from example to example.  All the same parts are there on every one, intended for the same functions, and in their function lies the truest beauty of the form.  To a given man one example may appear more attractive than another; –but, to each his own.  The only delineator is taste.
  It is not purely a cultural appeal either.  I know of women who toil an hour to get ready to put on a dress and go out in public– though for my life I cannot understand why.  I do pity them, not for the ordeal they must endure in dressing but for their belief that they must do it.  Doubtless these are the same women who growl with envy at one who can pull her hair back with a clip, throw the dress on over her head, and step into shoes on her way out the door.  I suppose such envy could even be healthy; it’s not the physical form that’s envied, but the aplomb.  Aplomb is always appealing in a woman.

  No; I mean that the young woman in a dress has a profoundly intellectual appeal.  There is something unspeakably satisfying to a mature man who observes a woman, particularly a younger one, in a dress, as she displays all the aplomb of one who wears dresses as a daily matter of course.  As with most things men think, this whole principle is admittedly anachronistic.  In days gone by all women wore dresses.  It was even more than stylistically de rigueur; for a woman to do otherwise was unthinkable.  Yet the generation of women born in the 1970s and thereafter have grown up knowing they can wear absolutely anything and be socially acceptable.  Good-fitting jeans or slacks always look sharp.  Shorts are cute– what other word could describe them? The tunic-and-tights ensemble of autumns past is sensible and flattering.  A skirt and jacket, as for the office, is exquisite. –indeed any top looks good with the right skirt; a savvy woman can wear a plain t-shirt with a wool skirt and look terrific.  But none of these beats the dress.
  I’ve never polled a sample but I would like to know just why any woman, in this age of liberated genders, would choose to wear something so gender-specific as a dress.  For one thing, there is a certain inherent vulnerability to a dress, in more than one sense.  The physiognomic entwines with the cultural to suggest the very reason why even less respectable men than myself find the look of a woman in a dress indubitably irresistible.  On one hand the woman in the dress is unprotected, socially and physically– there is little room to ‘hide’ in a dress and you certainly can’t run in one.  The woman so attired exhibits that vulnerability to the world, true; –but by choice, and therein lies her power.  So long as she has a choice in the matter a woman is never truly vulnerable.  She chooses the dress from her myriad of wardrobe and goes out with head held high, to brave the onlookers whilst knowing half of them will ogle her wantonly.  Not every man’s thoughts run pure as spring water.  Most men’s imaginings rage and bubble like lava just beneath the surface, frustrated to look upon the outward appearance of a woman and to only imagine what lies beneath what they see.
  Yet I tell you, the mature, thinking man sees much more than the surface and imagines much more than what lies just beneath.  He smiles to behold the girl in a dress, not out of base lust, but of sublime satisfaction.  He is comforted to see that a modern young lady might choose to wear a dress in the face of all she must endure for it, as though he believes she’s enduring it all for his approval.  But he approves– any man would.  His mother wore a dress.  His teachers wore dresses.  The girl he first dreamed of in grade school wore a dress.  Females are supposed to wear dresses.
  It’s not about physical vulnerability or the opportunity to see more of her than she might prefer to exhibit.  It’s just that to the man, the young lady in a dress seems to represent everything good and wholesome about feminine virtue.  Never mind that it’s only a façade– don’t break his bubble.  The young lady in a dress appeals to his best intentions: to admire, to protect, to cherish.  He may envision a companion in a dress bringing tea and slippers to his favourite chair.  In forty years she will not have changed enough for him to notice– still the tea, still the slippers, still the dress.  He closes his eyes and sighs happily, and the example before him saunters past and disappears into traffic.  It is not really the example he savours, but what she stands for.  When she is gone from sight he will still ruminate on it– that under more favourable circumstances he might meet a woman like that, that they would talk, admit a mutual interest, even date.  She will wear a dress.   He will adore her.
  The illusion does not lead to a perceived reality, but the reverse.  The mould is preexisting– every man’s dream girl wears a dress.  To see one so attired reminds him of that carefully cultivated dream.  The man marvels that the woman in a dress seems to have anticipated his dream and means to appeal to it.  It is not merely acquiescence on her part, because the choice is hers, and therefore so is the power.  The poor, admiring, well-meaning man is helplessly enraptured by her.  He cannot be otherwise.  Those men old enough to understand this will smile doubly: once at what they see and once, even more so, at what it means.  God is in His place and all is right with the world, when young ladies choose to wear dresses.
  I watched, as the little beauty strolled by and disappeared into traffic, but I wouldn’t let her see me smile.  I am no ogler and my thoughts were hardly shameful– it never even crossed my mind that under other circumstances this girl in particular might have had potential for me personally.  True, she was a pleasant picture that my memory could savour for the rest of the day, but she was more than that also, a symbol of all that is right, can be right, should be right, amongst young women.  She made an impression on me– in fact a profoundly good one– and may never know it, and might not have understood if I’d attempted to explain it to her.  You see, I don’t have to know her– I know what she stands for, and that is enough for me to be thoroughly, hopelessly charmed by her.  She chose to wear a dress today.  And a girl in a dress is omnipotent.

* * *

Farewell to the garden.

Jonnie Comet
20 May 1998


  My old school has died. I was by there today and stopped to look at it.  The grass has grown tall and the yard is littered with trash, not thrown there carelessly, only blown there by the weather and never taken up by the maintenance men.  There used to be dozens of maintenance men, every day, driving round in tall 4-wheel-drive Ford pickup trucks in dark red or dark green with ugly black wheels and tall skinny tyres.  The trucks all had manual shift– everyone drove manual shift back then. We used to see them creep by the windows when the guys were doing work in the yard, with the narrow lettering ‘Willingboro Township Public Schools’ stencilled proudly on the doors.  The guys wore work suits with their names on them and worked quietly– I do not remember ever hearing any of them yell out loud or swear during school hours.  They were hard-working men and reverent of the tasks they were performing.  They knew, as even we did, that they were doing them for us.

  We, the schoolchildren, were the pride of the whole township.  We came to the new development when it was still an experiment, and we proved the founding fathers (seems so strange calling men in their 30s and 40s ‘founding fathers’!) were right.  Our class in particular was the very elite, the creme de la creme of the entire district.  By the time we would graduate high school, there would be an even 1000 of us in all, having attended 13 elementary schools and two junior-high schools through 30-plus students per class and split sessions and intra-district busing and some of the most unconventional and even fanciful educational programmes the state had ever seen. By and large we excelled where educators expected only better-than-average; we were sought by university recruiters all over the country and were accepted wherever we chose.  We broke the mould and made a new one, and our aggregate achievement and attitude spoiled the teachers rotten forever.  As students in the township we were never to be rivalled.

  I walked up to the windows of the kindergarten wing, in the corridor on the way to the multipurpose room– there were only two kindergarten rooms, because in the days when this school was built mothers were home and there could be half-day sessions.  I was in K-2, in the afternoon class, because I was older and would not need a nap.  The last class of children painted flowers and grass on the inside of the windows, and little construction-paper clouds and suns dangle above them.  Inside, everything remains as I remember– the little ceramic water-fountain, the blue tile of the toilet, the grey marble of the wash-up sink, the light switches so close to the teacher’s closet door.  Above the three snaking rows of flimsy fluorescent lights, I measured the room by counting ceiling tiles– imagine a kindergarten classroom 26 by 40 feet!  It was immense– a whole world behind that polished birch door. In that world we learned common courtesy (there was such a thing then), and how to write our telephone numbers and addresses.  We heard stories and built with blocks and did not look under the girls’ dresses (little girls all wore dresses then).  The teacher kissed us goodbye when we left, and we knew it was not to be polite, but because we were loved.

  The floor looks original– brown and gold asphalt tile, incredibly well kept.  The room is set with half a dozen round or hexagonal tables and little chairs, as if pretending to ready for a class, but there are no other furnishings in the room now.  The tables are original– 37 years old at least! –faux white-ash Formica laminate over birch plywood, very heavy, with metallic pale-green steel legs, very Space Age, very stylish and state-of-the-art for institutional furniture in 1962.  In those days the idea of school as an ‘institution’ was still palatable.  It was the best example of an institution, where children were cherished and minds were moulded for the greater good of all society.  This is not to say that we were brainwashed– on the contrary.  We were nurtured.  Our mothers stayed home in their housedresses and shared coffee at ten and watched The Edge of Night at noon, and hung washing out back and hoovered the carpet and waxed the floors, and when we came home our bedrooms were tidied and our windows were open to the crisp October air and the house smelled fresh and clean and new, like it really was, the house and township and whole experience of what we were doing.  We had jelly sandwiches and changed into our play clothes and ran outside to do whatever it was all the other kids on the block were doing, since there were so many of them, Walt and Mike and Barry and Neil (or Ricky) and Elizabeth and Naomi and Paul and Robert and William and Brent and Cybil and Marcie and Jeff and Bobby and Gary and Bryan and Wayne and the entire extended neighbourhood.  We had more in common than we had differences; we had all moved in at the same time and wore the same kinds of clothes and spoke the same slang and watched the same TV programmes, and our fathers had all been in the same war.  Our fathers came home, one-by-one, from jobs in Philadelphia which could support their families in the lifestyle of their dreams, and one by one the kids of the neighbourhood would cry with joyous voice, ‘Daddy’s home!’ –and then every game would be split up till tomorrow, because there would be hugs or presents or news to share, and then dinner, then homework, then baths, and then another day of the same thing, all autumn and on through the winter and into the spring.

  When summer vacation came we fled the hallowed halls of our school, never appreciating that our own children would not know such comfort or sense of purpose.  We pretended to hate school, but inside perhaps we all knew that it was crucial to our well-being, and we all attended all the time.  We did homework and read the book and studied for tests.  When the teacher told us to sit, we sat.  We did not talk back.  Those who did were severely ostracised.  I can remember the horrid feeling of staying after school for some minor misinterpretation of the class rules (for none of us was ever truly bad), and sitting there alone in a quiet room with all the chairs put up on the desks, their metallic light-green legs surrounding me like some foreboding institutionalised forest, while the teacher worked quietly at the teacher’s desk, grading homework or quizzes and pretending not to notice how awful I felt, even as the tears of knowing I had somehow transgressed the boundaries of what was expected of me by the school and the teacher and my peers and my mother (worst of all!) streamed out of my eyes.  We all knew that there were expectations for us to meet, and we knew that meet them we surely must.  Dissent was unthinkable.  One day in fourth grade about twelve of us– almost half the class– decided en masse that we would rather play dodge-ball than report to choir practice, so when Mrs Joyce insisted we go, we rebelled by announcing we had all quit the choir. She gave us some very stern words of disapproval and made the defiant dozen sit silently in our seats, writing a three-paragraph essay on something like why things like choir are important, and none of us played dodge-ball that day– or failed to report to choir practice next week.  Thirty-five years hence, a teacher would have been hauled in front of a Board hearing for infringing upon our rights, and the ACLU would never have let go of it.

  The changes in educational philosophy have been dramatic, but they are not to blame for the closing of the old school.  With a mindset of centralisation and falling population, or falling school attendance, the township committee have obviously elected to let it die.  This is the new renewal theory: demolition by attrition.  J Cresswell Stuart Elementary School (named for the orchard grower whose lands made up most of the early development) is the oldest one in the township, needs plenty of maintenance and is now surrounded by shopping centres and too much traffic.  It has become redundant; and Willingboro has fiscal problems.  They need revenue desperately, and liabilities must be neutralised at any cost.

  Even so, however unsentimental, no councillor can ever happily sign an order to demolish a perfectly viable school.  It may not even matter if the accountants swear that removal of insulation or whatever will cost more than the building is worth as a community asset.  There is something profoundly disheartening about terminating a school building.  It represents the passing of something that can never measured in cash value nor superseded by something ‘new and improved’.  It is akin to the removal of a gravestone or the replacement of a wedding ring.  A school building is only so much brick and steel to one who never attended there.  But, to those who did, it is the very memorial in material form to what those experiences therein have wrought.

  As I peered in between the painted flowers on the windows, I noticed the clock is an hour off. It was never changed for daylight savings time.  It occurred to me that it will probably never be changed again.  No, I thought.  This place will never be brought up to the times.  Too much has changed already, and that time is gone forever.  The clock is a symbol of the school; it is slightly behind the time to which we have come now.  There is such a thing as progress, and such a thing as being stupidly uninterested in the values of the past.  Something transpired in this room long ago that can never be recaptured, if only because the people who could now effect it never went to school here. It is not part of their past, and so, as with too many Americans, the experience of someone else is irrelevant to them.  They are blind to anything but what they know personally.  They did not grow up in our class, where we learned to notice the world, inspect the world, understand the world– the whole world, as far as Telstar and Cape Canaveral and Vistadome and Chromacolor could help us see.  If we were a homogeneous community, at least we were an educated and enlightened one.  Our parents chose this township and this school for us because they knew better.  They chose for us a life better than the lives they might have known, a township where their values could remain secure while the prospects for their children could be broadened.  Their houses were not ‘investment property’ for them– they were our homes.  We went to school because we were raised to believe school was important, not because it was a place for childminders to deposit us on the way to work.  We belonged in school– there was simply never a question about that.  Our school was our garden, where we were fed and cared for and nurtured, and, when necessary, pruned back a little; and we always knew, though we never consciously acknowledged it, that one day we would no longer be physically part of the garden, but that the garden would always still be there, bearing at least some small reminder of having known our presence there, just as we would forever bear the fruits of having been there too.

  The yellow and green paint of the flowers painted on the windows has faded, having baked in the sun over a year now. I wondered if the children who painted them ever come back from wherever they are going to first grade now to see their handiwork, and what they think of its still being here, with no new children to see it and appreciate it. Then I worried about what will become of their painted garden into which they had put so much happy effort and which they had been so delighted to see every day. It was a difficult thought to consider for me, but I decided that someday, when the workmen come to dismantle the building, I hope they just accidentally break the glass and then have to get it out of the way without another thought. Who, who had ever been a kindergarten child, could bring himself to shatter those windows?

* * *