Lost Lad (2 page)

Tracing through this day-dream of sudden death, the master imagined his cadaver, still motionless in that academic chair, throughout the shrill ringing of the bell, a corpse continuing to command absolute obedience through the sightless eyes set in a frozen pale face.  Perhaps after a few minutes a brave boy would venture -

           
"Bell's gone, Mr Hogg."

After two seconds of meeting the hard unflinching stare, the student would fear an imminent sharp reprimand, lose courage and return to his task.  A second student would make a similar attempt and interpret the same ominous silence in the same way - and again, continue to apply himself to composing acceptable answers to the test before him.

At some point shortly later, a student might rise to her feet, approach the master's desk and ask a question.  Mr Hogg would appear not to see her.  He does not move his head.  He still stares to the mid-distance of his class.  He ignores her question.  She is fearful of his stony silence.  The 'Horrible Hogg' is today even more grumpy than ever, but her feminine temper is aroused by his refusal to, at least look at her!  Rank bad manners!  And now, six minutes into her free time, she is becoming angry and about to summon up the courage to think the unthinkable, to openly complain to the unapproachable Mr Hogg when ....

Something odd ... something different ... he is too quiet, too still ... She has an instinct to reach out and touch ...  Mr Hogg falls to the ground - dead.  She screams.           

Enough of this nonsense - he could not get so lucky.  Simeon wearily looked at his watch to find that the bell was indeed imminent.  After all, this was a good class and they had worked well during this last hour.  They deserved to be dismissed on time.  A few words were followed by the usual orderly exodus which left this miserable master alone, but now, in a different kind of silence.  As with many times in the last few months, he considered his position - and he considered his position to be grave.  How long could he carry on? 

In total despair, but with new resolve, he marched to the office of the Principal, fully prepared to put his job on the line. 

            Unfortunately the Principal had gone home.  It was Wednesday, April 16th 2003.

Chapter 2

The Dreaded Confrontation

Simeon Hogg and Principal Betty Lou Vanderburgh had tolerated an uneasy professional relationship over the previous eight years since her appointment after the Easter of 1995.  Always pleasant, friendly and caring, she was a difficult woman to disagree with.  When she imposed a 'comments only' form of student assessment and outlawed all traditional grades in 1996, Mr Hogg was outraged, but could only summon up the courage to politely express -

           
" ..... serious concerns!"

           
" Oh, how unfortunate you see it that way, Simeon!  I do hope you don't mind me calling you 'Simeon'?  Please call me Betty.  After a semester or two, I'm sure you'll notice how much happier our students have become when they're free from the pernicious doctrine of segregation by outcome.  We must move forward, release their self expression and unchain their spirits.  Let them fly!"

They flew all right!  Many to more traditional schools.  And many
were
'much happier', especially the bone idle who no longer had to worry about returning home with a grade 'D' - or worse.  The new 'Records of Achievement' had replaced the report cards and were largely written by the students themselves - with minimum input from the staff.  All remarks were required to be couched in positive terms. It was the opinion of Mr Hogg, one of a minority from the 'old guard' plus a majority of parents, that the end of semester report had now descended into a nebulous and worthless evaluation of euphemistic verbiage.

Every
graduate of Eisenhower was now a winner!  There were no losers and therefore no distinction between the hard working conscientious and the lazy disruptive contemptible.  Indeed, if you attended classes at least half the time you were guaranteed to graduate.  In desperation, at a second meeting, Mr Hogg raised this very point with Principal Vanderburgh.  But once again, he was thrown off balance with her firm hand in the iron glove of clever diplomacy -  

           
"But, Simeon, you surprise me!  A well respected educator such as yourself is
much
better off.  Think of all the extra time you now have to invest in your lessons.  Time which was once wasted on preparing tests and exams which only serve to distress and disadvantage our young charges."

Once again he emerged in a daze of confusion.  Had it really happened?  Had accountability gone for ever?  Worse was to follow in the following months.  Students were addressing teachers by their first names.  It had become school policy, but Mr Hogg had adopted his own policy of being deaf to the word 'Simeon' and only hearing 'Mr Hogg' from the lips of any student. 

Unbeknown to Mr Hogg, during that very Wednesday afternoon of his imagined demise, a fourteen year old girl had decided to drop into the office of her 'new friend' Betty Lou, and complain about the 'old fashioned' practices still being perpetrated in Room 76.  The next morning Mr Hogg found an affable note in his pigeon hole -

           
Hi Simeon,  Would you be kind enough to pop into my office sometime today?  Thanks, Betty Lou.
  

He looked at this missive for some moments.  In spite of the friendly casual tone, he felt sick to the very pit of his stomach. 

            He decided to counter attack and confront her with a list of all the recent philosophical changes which had damaged the school, a school which had once been the pride of Lincoln Gardens.  He would draw attention to the sloppy dress of some teachers turning up to classes in jeans, track-suits and tasteless body piercing rings and studs.  He would complain about the pressure from his newly appointed young and trendy Head of History, who was implementing fundamental changes to the teaching and very understanding of the subject.  Indeed there were structural changes afoot regarding the total abolition of history as a separate and discrete subject.  He would object to that particular rankling occasion when he walked into his room to find that all the desks had been moved into a group arrangement, where the students would face each other - instead of the teacher.  He would protest about the new 'discussion document' which spoke of getting away from traditional 'content led and factual history' and into a 'more meaningful skills-based approach'. 

The ever increasing gobbledegook was driving him crazy.  The stress was mounting, not least that he could no longer exclude difficult adolescents who disrupted his classroom -

           
"These disturbed people
need
us, Simeon.  We mustn't keep sending them to the counsellor.  Try not to see it as bad behaviour, try to see it as
challenging
behaviour.  You've taught in that same room for the last 34 years, Simeon.  We're all so very proud of you and we're all trying to help you.  You're experienced.  You can do it, I
know
you can!"
 

This from the diminutive and politically correct Principal, who was little more than half his age and looked even younger, rather like a little girl with her long, straight, shoulder length hair.  Despite the up-beat words, her fresh pleasant face regarded him sadly.  It was unspoken, but they both knew that Mr Hogg had nowhere to go.  No other school, no matter how traditional, would appoint him (nine years from retirement) over younger applicants in their twenties and thirties.  After a lifetime of specialisation in British History, his command of the subject was absolute and he delivered lessons which were exciting and dramatic.  They held their audience in complete silence.  The Principal and other progressive colleagues respected, but could not agree with his strict classroom management which was inconsistent with the new relaxed approach.

Furthermore, there was something nasty and insidious about this charming, friendly, smiling little girl.  She had power.  She was imposing an alien and flawed philosophy upon the frightened man before her.  It was like science fiction films where invading creatures from another planet get into, and take over human minds.  Many had already been 'converted', but Mr Hogg was the only one who was still able to see real education.  He could imagine her persuasive, soothing and sinister voice with an eerie echo saying -

           
"Don't resist us, Simeon, we're too strong.  Join us.  Give in.  Yield.  Come with us over to the left.  Sleep.  You'll feel so much better when you wake up and then ... and then, Simeon ...  you'll be one of us."

He was swimming against a tide of left-wing liberalism and losing the battle.  Indeed Simeon Hogg was suffering from battle fatigue after eight years of prolonged and useless struggle.  He was becoming the butt of jokes from the new appointments who seemed to be getting younger, more trendy and more progressive.  Every day he was getting more depressed, and the job to which he had given his life, and once so much enjoyed - was becoming meaningless. 

The assorted, casual, chattering historians in the third floor staff-room seemed to Mr Hogg to get more and more cheerful every day.  A cheerfulness which increasingly irritated him.  Standing by the kettle waiting for it to boil, he tried to avoid social contact by staring out of the window.  He dreaded their teasing comments.  A miserable countenance said it all.

           
"Cheer up, Simeon!  Think of all those exam scripts you'll never have to mark again!"

The window looked out on to private gardens.  A scene Mr Hogg had contemplated for over 30 years, but now it appeared to have a new meaning.  He saw not just shrubs, trees and lawn: he saw freedom.  A cat was idly cleaning itself.  Happy cat, contented cat, lucky cat! 

            They had all recently entered into a new millennium.  This would be his fifty-eight year, and he had reached the time of life when most other people were younger than himself.  It had not seemed five minutes since the reverse was the case.  For the first time he started to think about death.  How much longer did he have left?  He had recently read that the average life expectancy for a white man in the Detroit area was seventy-three. 

           
"Seventy-three!  Only fifteen years left!  My God!"

To get the scale and size of fifteen years he considered the scope of the previous fifteen years.  1988!  It was nothing - yesterday!  It was hardly worth calling it 'the past'.  1988 was still very modern.  In that year kids were already walking around with personal stereos and wearing digital watches on their wrists.  Satellite TV's, video recorders, computers and electronic games were in nearly every home. 

            Fifteen years!  It was like a death sentence .... and he was wasting the little time which was left: the few precious remaining years!             

Ten minutes later he was in the rest room washing his hands and, suddenly, noticed his pained old face in the mirror. 

           
"Too right!  I
am
the picture of gloom."

But it was
his
face, only older.  Inside he was the same.  He could go back much further than a brief fifteen years.  He could go back a length of time which made a big difference.  He could go back half a century to the 'stone age' when he wrote on a slate, using a slate pencil, under the stern authority of a Victorian schoolmarm.  He could go back 40 years to the time when .....

Suddenly he looked at the reflected image and tried mentally to delete the many lines and other sad, sagging acquisitions of age.  He particularly studied the eyes.  Basically they had to be more or less the same eyes which had looked back at him in 1960 - a year he often thought about.  He imagined the constant cheerful expression of those eyes, as they once were.  Smiling, dancing eyes, lit up with joy...

            He leaned forward to the mirror -

           
"Are you there, Dobba?  Are you still there ... somewhere?"

At the end of that day he stood outside the 'Office of the Principal', but the old sign, with the old name 'W.M. Forbes Ph.D.',  had long been removed and now with egalitarian simplicity it said - 'Betty Lou Vanderburgh'.

            With the crumpled note, which had requested this interview, stuffed in his grey suit pocket, together with his contentious list of grievances, he was fearful, but, notwithstanding, now prepared to engage in a full scale confrontation.  He gave the door two firm knocks.