by Nōnen Títi
“That’s right. He was ferocious. Never mind that many fossils have been found so that we know quite a bit about him. The same goes for King Tut. He was an eighteen-year-old kid when he died. He hadn’t achieved anything aside from claiming the title of pharaoh and reinstalling the multiple deity system Egypt had before his father decided there should be just one god. This young king did only one thing: he obeyed the priesthood. What made him famous had nothing to do with him but everything with his discoverer, Howard Carter, who was determined to search the Valley of the Kings. You see, if old graves were found they were empty. Young Tut was so unimportant, even his grave had never been robbed. So once again his gold spoke to people’s imaginations and we know quite a bit about him.”
I nod to acknowledge this private lecture, but I can’t see where he’s going with it.
“I’ve read your website. I’m very pleased with the amount of historical detail you people contributed. I just wonder why you’ve chosen so many successes versus only one failed revolt, which was to the benefit of the population. Are you sure you’re not twisting the emphasis of history as a whole? Why isn’t the Russian revolution in there, for example? Where is Pol Pot’s Cambodia, the 1911 Chinese revolution and Chile, 1973, disastrous for their people? What about the coup in Haiti just recently? Or the July 20th plot against Hitler in 1944, which failed and resulted in thousands being tortured to death, not to mention Hitler’s own 1923 Beer Hall Putsch in an attempt to take power, in which he clearly announced his intentions?
“And not every illegal government takeover comes with a military revolt. Some dictators come to power through democratic elections, like Hitler; some pull off a coup without anybody stopping them. Good examples are Stalin after the original Russian revolution, Napoleon’s bloodless coup in 1799 just after the successful French revolution, Louis Napoleon’s coup in 1851 and most recently the U.S. armchair coup, to name a few. They didn’t come out so positive for the people, did they?
“And then there are those who stand up against the threat of tyrants and make the situation worse, like Lycurgus in 336 BCE when he legally banned tyranny by decree and more or less made it legal for any Athenian to kill anyone he suspected of plotting against the democracy without fear of reprisal. This was to keep Philip of Macedon from becoming a dictator, but all it did was plunge the city into anarchy, after which fear took over, so most people started longing for a leader and consequently they welcomed the tyrant, which put an end to the classical Greek period. But you’ve chosen to see only that part of history that promotes your cause and you’re presenting it to the world as if it’s comprehensive. Exactly the same thing you accuse the writers of the school books of, I believe?”
Of course, I’ve never even heard of half of those, so I can’t deny that we might have been biased.
“The same goes for using a fifteen-year-old dictionary, which is American besides,” he says, looking at my paper.
“Yeah, so? As long as this country runs after every little war they throw, like dogs after a bone, we might as well use their dictionary. It’s the best dictionary I’ve ever seen and that includes the school ones and it covers British words as well. Anyway, it was in Mr Shriver’s room. I didn’t have another one.”
“Fair enough. Now tell me something. If you were asked rather than ordered, could you wear a uniform?”
The question takes me by surprise. “I’m not sure. I’d definitely be less angry about it, but it’s insulting to have to be a copy of everybody else – it’s like being a clone, a number, like calling me sub-human or something. I can’t explain it. It’s like a black person having to be white, like I’m not good enough as myself.”
“And this is what you call a personality trait in your letter to the parents?”
“Yeah; how do you know about those?”
“Do I look totally ignorant to you?” he asks, feigning indignation.
“No, of course not.” I never really talked with him before, not about serious stuff, anyhow. “Then can I ask you something about those dictators not being stopped when they take power? Why is that? Why did so many people accept those things if they knew he was dangerous, but they still bought the excuses and voted for him? Why didn’t people protest it if they knew the election results were false or too good to be true?”
With his chin resting on his hand, holding his pen at an angle, he squints at me before answering. “A few thousand protesters threw food at him. That was the voice of the people. He ignored it. The rest remained silent; the masses always do. The depression guaranteed Hitler’s public support. People had nothing so they believed his promises, just like the people today who can least afford it gamble their money away on the dream of winning the jackpot, despite all the logical arguments against it. Since people always need somebody to blame for their misery they looked for what was a visible difference: race. Economic depression helps dictators rise, but so do disasters of any kind.”
“So do you think it was staged to reverse his failing support? I mean, it was a little too convenient, wasn’t it?”
“It was that.”
“Who would do that – kill thousands of his own people just to stay in power?”
“Mariette, what did I do wrong in teaching you history? Or did you believe that the tactics have changed, that twentieth century people are more civilized than, for example, Alexander the Great was?” He shakes his head. “Dictators ride on fear and therefore they fuel it.”
“Will it ever stop, the wars, or is this affliction of humanity irreversible?”
“Ha,” he answers. “That’s a dangerous subject. I have a theory, but if I were to express it in the classroom I’d lose my job.”
“Then let’s go outside.”
“It isn’t that easy. Why do you think people have wars?”
“Because they’re stupid.”
His face slips into a grin again. “No, if it were that simple we would have seen improvement over time. It isn’t just people; animals do it too. Just look as chimp societies.”
“Yes, but bonobos don’t; nor do pandas or sloths or bumblebees or… turtles or… uh…”
“Sea cucumbers or earthworms or bacteria?” he asks.
“Okay, but bonobos count. Are they more civilized than we are?”
“Possibly, and therein lies your answer, but you’ll have to come up with it yourself. Like I said, I can’t tell you.”
“Did I get this right, Mr Fokker? I’m supposed to go to school to learn something. You’re a teacher. You say you have an answer to my question but you’re not allowed to teach it. Worse than that, you say your answer is to why we have wars, which would suggest having the answer could prevent them. Just tell me if I’m missing something.”
“No, you’re not missing anything, but I won’t tell you or I’ll get fired.”
“Well, get yourself fired then, because I want to know.”
“No you don’t. But if it helps, I was serious about the sea cucumbers and the bacteria and the answer to your second question is that it will never stop. Yet thousands of people make their living doing research and studies in an effort to find a solution, thousands sit around tables writing peace treaties, thousands report the news each day as if it’s all brand new, thousands write books or reports on the causes of one or another war and thousands teach classes in the hope of making changes. They’re all pretending this time will be different, all pretending they’re not wasting their lives.”
“Like you are?”
“That’s right. I play the game. I have no choice.”
“Why, if it won’t help?”
“Well, let’s see,” he says and starts closing the windows one by one. “I had this job already when I worked this out and I still have to make a living in this society because they won’t pay me for contradicting the game. Now is it safe to go to assembly or should we stay here?”
“Why, are you afraid I’ll attack him?”
“The thought has occurred to me, Mariette.”
> “He just makes me angry.”
“As I’m sure you do him.”
“All we did was put up a banner. Unless it falls down I think it’s safe. Of course… it’s quite possible that stuttering clichés repeatedly will bring it down.”
He waves his hand toward my head, but as a gesture only. “Move; no more nonsense or we’ll be late.”
The banner stays where it is during the assembly but it results in yet another avalanche of angry threats which Mr Fokker and I missed the first ten minutes of. My being with him at every assembly suggests that I’ve been under his supervision and makes it hard for the principal to attack me for these jokes, which might be the reason I’m still coming to school every day.
So I stand against the side wall and watch the ripples go through the assembled students. With every negative statement one or two start booing and the rest follow. After the scolding, PM announces the term break coming at the end of next week, which is met with cheers. Suddenly all pleasant he expresses his expectation that everybody will come to their senses and that next Friday is still a free dress day for a charity.
“We need to do something big for that, just so they don’t expect anything will change next term,” Kathleen says.
Fred has an idea. He explains that in some countries people take one or two days off per year just because they’re fed-up. He suggests we should declare next Friday a fed-up day for public high school students, so instead of having to pay for the privilege of wearing our own clothes, we’ll have a mass gathering. He suggests Bellevue.
“Not Bellevue. They’ll send the police out right away because they’ll worry about shoplifters. No, if we do that we’ll have to go to the council building; do it officially and orderly,” Josh says.
We all go quiet with the weight of that notion. Do we really want to go that far; make it into a public demonstration? It’ll bring much greater risks. Will we be able to organize something that massive in one week? Is that even allowed?
“It’s a free country,” Kathleen says.
“I think the main problem is whether we’ll be able to control that many people, because if just one of them does anything wrong it’ll be a lost cause,” Jerome warns.
Slowly the ideas come together. We’d have to meet this weekend. We’ll need another petition. We’ll have to dress in a respectable manner to make the point about free dress. We need a spokesperson. We need representatives from Hillview involved, but they’re already nowhere near as organized as we are. They had a physical fight.
“Okay, the first question is whether we’re going to announce this early and risk it being forbidden or if we’ll try and keep it secret until Thursday and risk nobody being prepared and calm,” I say, since it seems pretty clear that this is going to happen.
“We’ll announce it and invite the teachers too. After all, what are they going to do in an empty school?” Charlotte says.
“She’s right; we can’t keep it a secret,” Jerome agrees, which is enough to set Charlotte aglow.
“Okay, Sunday at our house. We’ll need Hillview reps and our own school captains.”
On the way home Jerome expresses his concern. “Are you sure we aren’t going a bit fast?”
He’s right. I also have the feeling that the events are on an enthusiasm train, which is speeding up.
On Sunday Mum nearly gets a heart attack when more and more people arrive unannounced, including four Hillview people I’ve never seen before and who are clearly older than we are. I can see Mum thinking the wrong things, but I don’t feel like involving her in case she starts lecturing them.
“You didn’t mention you were having a party,” she says.
“We’re not having a party, it’s a meeting; no music, no drugs and no drinks, promise,” says Jerome, who has just come off the phone with his dad.
It takes the first half an hour to compare notes and explain what we want on Friday. The next hour is filled with vague ideas and objections.
“We need people who are willing to be controllers, dressed so they can be recognized as such and they need to be alert for anybody who misbehaves and remove them,” Mick says.
“You make it sound like a military exercise,” I object.
“Yeah, how did you think all those revolutions of the past were won again?”
“I don’t like that. Soldiers and police have a habit of feeling powerful and start beating people up.”
“No, Mick’s right. We’re talking about close to eleven hundred students. You need control,” Josh says to me.
They get support from most of the others, especially the Hillview people.
Kathleen comes up with a solution. She’ll ask her dad to organize a group of adults who are in favour of what we’re doing; they can keep control without looking like a police force.
So the ideas come, slowly at first, but building on each other and by five-thirty we have it planned and Mum can let out a breath of relief. I have to admit that the scale of this makes me nervous too, but we need to go public, so to speak, to show our good intentions.
“Public opinion sparks change, so the opinion of the majority of the students needed to be changed first, and now it’s the local people and then the rest,” Jerome explains to Miranda. “Just like the fur and ivory trade were stopped. At first people didn’t care too much, like most students don’t care about the uniforms, because they haven’t thought about it.”
He’s more self-confident now and promises me we have a chance if we keep a strict hold on all emotions and keep it short and official.
“I’ll control myself,” I promise him. “How’s your dad?”
“You know, he sounded okay. I was afraid he’d start crying again but I got a positive feeling from him this time and Grandpa Will says he’s good.”
Monday is the official announcement day. Pat, Fred, Kathleen and both our school captains go to Hillview for lunch to make it clear to their students that they are to abide by the rules. We do the same on the oval of our school.
I remind them of the purpose, the dress code, the need for order and that no aggression will be accepted. I explain about the adults who will be in charge and they are to accept that or stay away. Slogans and signs cannot be insulting to anybody. “We aren’t university students. We can do this decently and we hereby invite any non-students who agree with our cause to join us on the same terms,” I finish.
“You’re shaking,” Charlotte says.
She’s right. That started when I noticed the five teachers at the back of the crowd, one of them the independent observer.
Kathleen reports that the Hillview crowd listened but she has no idea if they’ll go along with it. “They have seven hundred students at that school. I’ll ask Dad to contact their parent council.”
On Tuesday morning careers is cancelled once again for an assembly in which PM focuses on the future possibilities of Flatland students by naming all the outstanding results ex-students have achieved so far. He names the school as having the highest-ranking test results, that it welcomes initiative, that bright students are supported and a whole lot more praise that seems both exaggerated as well as out of character.
On Wednesday new letters are sent home warning parents that allowing their children to skip school on Friday will result in immediate expulsion. We’ve already told the students that this would happen and arranged for one of the organizers to be at each school to collect the students who are forced to start their day there. Different groups will gather at different places throughout the neighbourhood so we won’t be refused rides in buses. A lot of these ideas came from Mick and Kathleen. Every student organizer will have an adult in black assigned to his or her group.
By Thursday the students’ high is tangible in the air and much more potent than any illegal substance. Classes, at least the ones I’m in, turn into discussions, usually with the students trying to convince the teacher to attend tomorrow.
The last two periods are English. Mr Shriver comes in and sits down o
n one of the front tables, apparently not in a hurry to teach. He looks at me. “In some countries people die fighting for the right to have their children educated,” he says.
“In some countries education is a right, not a duty,” I answer his challenge.
“In some countries people can’t afford to send their kids to school.”
“That might be because in those countries the money goes to school uniforms rather than food and education material.”
He nods, smiling. “In some countries children going to school are instructed in the assembling of machine guns.”
“In other so-called free countries kids get to stand up and pledge allegiance to a piece of painted cotton or sing a national anthem from age four onwards and then get punished for breaking their pledge when they get older and develop a conscience.”
“That’s called patriotism, Mariette.”
“It would be a lot healthier for this world if people stopped singing odes to their own country while pointing the finger at others.”
“She’s right,” Fred says. “Censure should come from within. People should have the right to criticize their own system, including school. At least if they do you know they care about it.”
“You’re both right, but patriotism isn’t the opposite of criticism. Patriotism brings people together,” Mr Shriver says.
“It also gives them an excuse to oust people who don’t belong to their own group under the pretence of defending themselves,” Jerome replies.
“Yes, Like the Patriot Act, which is in essence a dictatorial decree,” Mick agrees.
“That’s an act, decreed as you say, by the president. That’s not patriotism. That is using the root words in convincing language for propaganda purposes. Real patriotism lives inside people. It’s the bit of pride they feel for their heritage, their culture, the special achievement of a country man, the nostalgia for certain foods or sayings, even the weather – a bit of belonging.”
“Yes, but uniforms don’t live inside people and in some countries the uniforms of one culture are forced on another – like in New Zealand where all the Maori kids have to wear Scottish kilts. That’s discrimination,” I tell him.