Miseducated

by Brandon P. Fleming

  Soon after that, the students came into my classroom one day and found me sitting in my leather lounge chair in the far corner. They greeted me as they entered, but I ignored them. I pretended to be invisible.

  “Why isn’t Mr. Fleming responding?” Isaac asked as they settled in.

  Keanen pointed to the board and said, “Look!” There was text and the top line said: “One person stand and read the following directions.”

  Keanen instantly jumped to his feet and started reading aloud. “You must complete the following exercise as a class. It is pass or fail. As a group, you have twenty minutes to solve the problem below.”

  The problem was an ethical dilemma that together they had to reconcile. But there was one caveat. Before they could solve the actual problem, they had to decide how to approach it:

  Option 1: They could choose one person to solve the problem on behalf of the class.

  Option 2: Either the girls or the boys could solve the problem.

  Option 3: They could nominate five people to represent the class and answer the question.

  Option 4: Everyone could have a say and vote.

  Keanen continued reading. “When the buzzer goes off, the exercise is over and your conclusion must be presented. Your time begins in five… four… three… two… one.”

  I clicked a remote concealed in my hand. A countdown appeared on the board. Several kids shot up to lead the exercise. Isaac was one of the first to seize control.

  “Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do,” he said. “I’ll solve the problem for the group.”

  “No!” Jasmine yelled across the room. “That’s not fair.”

  “Define fair,” Isaac rebutted.

  The two charged back and forth at each other. Isaac argued that option 1 was the most efficient. Jasmine argued that option 4 was most just.

  “We don’t have time to be worrying about everyone’s feelings,” Isaac asserted. “Our grade is on the line.” But Jasmine pushed back.

  “Exactly,” she said. “And only having one person’s perspective puts all of our grades at risk.”

  Keanen jumped in to break up the duel. “All right, all right,” he said, hoping to advance the conversation with half the time gone. “How about option three?”

  Keanen made his case for the class to vote on the five smartest kids in the class who could solve the problem for everyone.

  “No!” Jasmine yelled again. “Then we’ll spend most of our time debating who’s the smartest instead of solving the actual problem.”

  Jayla stood up and yelled, “Five minutes left!” and everyone became frantic. It was the most beautiful chaos filled with passion. Students were standing on chairs and shouting from the tops of the desks and some were practically pulling their hair out.

  “Okay,” Keanen said. “Let’s just start solving the problem because we’re losing time.”

  They settled on option 4. Everybody was given a chance to contribute to the discussion and cast a vote. Except the vote never happened. They were struggling to reach a conclusion when the buzzer went off. But the commotion was so loud that no one heard it.

  I ambled up to the stage from my corner chair. They were so immersed in the debate that I had to shout to get their attention. “That’s enough,” I said. “Your time is up.” They went silent and quickly took their seats. I glanced around the quiet but uneasy room. They did not realize that the exercise had been a great success. I was so proud, but I pretended to be disappointed.

  “So what is your conclusion?” I asked.

  The students looked around to see who would break the news. Their faces were so downcast that they appeared to be melting. Some couldn’t fight back tears as they contemplated how they’d explain a failing grade to their parents.

  After a moment of silence, Isaac bravely rose from his seat. He grimaced like he had just gotten out of a street scuffle. He unleashed a diatribe against his peers.

  “We don’t have an answer,” Isaac finally said, his head hanging low.

  “Interesting,” I said. “So you mean to tell me that you all had twenty minutes to solve a simple problem and you couldn’t do that?”

  “It wasn’t that simple,” Isaac said, triggered by my words.

  I was internally overjoyed. Isaac was going exactly where I wanted. I held a straight face and said, “Oh, really? Please explain.” All eyes were fixed on Isaac.

  “We couldn’t get to the actual problem,” he said. The choice between the four options was too complex to be decided quickly.

  “So we went with option four,” he said, “which in my opinion was the worst decision ever.”

  “And why is that?” I asked. Then it came rushing out of him like a tidal wave.

  “There are several problems here,” Isaac said. He broke down the nuances of option 4 and why he disagreed. He understood why everyone wanted to have a say and conceded that it seemed most fair. But what seems most fair is not always most efficient, he said, and a leader must be willing to make hard decisions. To close his case, he added that it makes sense for the most qualified people to contribute.

  “Many of my peers were given the chance to contribute and still chose not to,” he said. “So why waste time trying to include them in the first place?”

  Keanen charged in to disagree. “But that still does not take away their right.” He drew a distinction between rights and personal responsibility. Keanen argued that because everyone in the classroom will get the same grade, their right to participate is inherent. “Their right belongs to them,” he said. “They can choose what to do with it.”

  Other students jumped in and the argument heated up again. I took a few steps back and let them have at it. They spent the entire class period analyzing and debating the pros and cons of each option, which is exactly what I wanted them to do. I looked at the clock and it was almost time for dismissal. Dozens of arguments were going on at once, and the most fired-up students were standing on tables and hurling words across the room like Molotov cocktails.

  “All right!” I yelled to end the commotion. “Look closely, I have something to show you.” Everyone was silent and leaning in as I stood next to the board pointing at the prompt.

  I smiled at them and said, “You did not fail this assignment.” The students looked at each other, saying, “Huh?” “What?” “How?”

  “What if I told you that it was never about the ethical dilemma?” I asked. “What if I told you that the exercise was all about those four options?”

  No one said a word. Some were processing. Some were squinting at the board trying to see what I saw.

  “Think about the arguments that you made,” I said. “Think about the bigger picture, and tell me what the four options represent.”

  They were still scratching their heads. Suddenly, Isaac jumped up with his hands locked together atop his head and yelled, “Oh my God! I think I got it!” He had their undivided attention immediately. “They represent forms of government!” The kids were so mind-blown that they nearly fell out of their chairs in astonishment.

  Isaac was right. Option 1 was dictatorship. Option 2 was oligarchy. Option 3 was representative democracy. Option 4 was direct democracy.

  I did not have to give them a list of vocabulary words and say, “Go home and memorize this.” I did not need them to regurgitate facts on a test. Those kids will remember these concepts for the rest of their lives. Not because they heard it. But because they experienced it.

  I never questioned the power of debate as my main teaching tool, no matter how many times parents objected to how hard I pushed their kids. I believed in what I had and its ability to transform students into scholars. We were wrestling big questions. We explored Jean-Paul Sartre’s theories of existentialism. We debated René Descartes’s theories of epistemology. There were times when I wondered if I was in over my head. But I was determined to help them get it. About halfway through the year, I felt familiar flames come to life in these kids. The revolutionary changes I had
seen in my Saturday scholars were happening here.

  By the end of class, their heads looked ready to explode. Mine was, too. “All right, scholars,” I would say, “that’s enough for the day.” Debating can be as physically tiring as it is mentally exhausting. We were all glad when lunch rolled around and the students gathered their belongings and lined up at the door.

  “You’re dismissed,” I’d say. “Enjoy your lunch.”

  The hallways were loud as they marched quickly to their meals. I’d sit down to enjoy a few moments of silence before joining them. In my leather reading chair, I’d lean back and prop my feet up. One day, my eyes were shut for only a few seconds before I heard a knock at the door.

  “Come in!” I yelled, feeling interrupted. Isaac cracked open the door and peeked his little bald head around the edge. “Come on in,” I repeated.

  “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Fleming,” he said, walking toward me.

  I responded, “It’s okay, buddy. What do you need?”

  He was standing next to the chair where my feet were braced.

  “We’re all philosophers here, right?” he said in a stern voice.

  “Yes,” I chuckled. “We’re all philosophers.”

  “Well, I have a question for you, then, if you don’t mind,” he said, stepping a little closer. His voice had grown harder and he was obviously serious.

  “Of course,” I said. “Go for it.”

  He clasped both hands behind his back, like a lawyer before a jury. I felt a little uneasy.

  “What is nothing?” he asked.

  I paused for a moment of clarity. “Excuse me?” I said.

  He leaned in and repeated himself. “What is nothing?”

  I knew what he was doing. He was testing me. In the same way that I tested their nimbleness during cross-examination. I could not delay. My wheels turned fast and I shot back a response that would keep him from ever having the nads to try me again. I sat upright and squared my shoulders.

  “The absence of something,” I said. “Nothing is the absence of something.”

  I sank back in my chair, confident in my answer.

  “Wrong,” he said.

  I leaned forward and said, “What?”

  “Wrong,” he repeated. “Nothing is the absence of the knowledge of something.”

  Before I could even process his words and retort, he wheeled back and walked slowly away, arms folded across his chest and one hand stroking his hairless chin. As he disappeared through the door, my jaw dropped. Did this little Negro just check me? Yes, he did. He checked his teacher. And I was proud.

  Keanen was undergoing similar changes. He was no longer a shy kid puking from anxiety and ready to crawl under the desk. He held on to debate like a sword and swung it like a warrior. Even when that was unwise.

  I was on the phone with Keanen’s mother one day when she said, “Mr. Fleming, you better get ’im. I’ma kill ’im.” She had come home from work and found his room a total mess.

  “Keanen!” she’d yelled. “Why didn’t you clean your room?”

  Keanen had decided it was time for target practice with syllogisms. I had taught them how to shift the burden of proof and bait their opponent into a contradiction. Unfortunately, he’d decided to try this on his mother.

  “Mom, if you don’t mind, I have a question,” he’d said calmly. “Does this room belong to me?” She answered yes.

  “Do the items in the room belong to me?” She answered yes again.

  Then he continued, “So if the room belongs to me, and the items in it belong to me, how do I not have the authority to determine the arrangement of those items?”

  I do not know what Mrs. Harris did to Keanen after that. But if I know what I know about Black mothers, some of those items he claimed to have owned might have taken flight across the room.

  “Let me tell you something,” she’d told him. “You better leave that debate stuff at school with Mr. Fleming.”

  Mrs. Harris was angry at first, mostly because he had bested her with a valid point. And he had asserted it with audacity. But then she thought about what had just happened and realized that her son exuded a confidence that she had never seen in him before. That’s when she realized that he was no longer the same kid who was once timid and soft-spoken. He was a debater now. And his evolution, she told me, made her smile with pride.

  Isaac and Keanen became debate ninjas. No one could have a pleasant, casual conversation with the boys because they always wanted to spar or flex their muscles. It even wore me down during lunch. I just wanted to eat, and at times I tried to hide from them. But they’d find me and fire a clip of questions at machine-gun speed. Everything from “Who created God?” to “Is water wet?”

  I needed a break, so I offered an alternative. It was logic that they were falling in love with. I had a glass chessboard in my classroom. I took it with us to our next lunch break and taught them how to play. After a week, kids from all over the cafeteria were piled on top of us. I ordered about twenty chess sets so more kids could learn. The lunchroom went from a rowdy cafeteria to a board-game battleground. “It’s just like debate,” I told them. “You don’t outfight. You outwit.”

  Logan loved sitting by my side to watch. He was a student in my eighth-grade political science class. He was an Italian American kid with dark, shaggy hair. He was bashful and reclusive. Logan was the type of student who did not speak until he knew he had the right answer. Then he would stand up and present his solution, never lifting his eyes from the floor. He was smart, but he did not want to be seen.

  Logan watched the game, but he never wanted to play. He just sat there on my hip, pencil and notebook in hand, doing homework as I defeated every student who tried to knock me from my championship pedestal. It never worked. Since learning how to play in college, I had never lost a single game of chess.

  I shared pictures on social media of my vanquished opponents, all of them middle schoolers. My posts reached a local chess champion who invited me to pick on someone my own size. I accepted the challenge. One day, she came to school during lunch for a public bout. Dozens of students hovered over us, waiting to see if their seemingly invincible teacher would be dethroned.

  “You can’t lose, Mr. Fleming,” Logan said. I leaned left and whispered in his ear, “Don’t worry, buddy. I got this.” I kept playing and he went back to his notebook to finish his homework.

  The game was tense and still underway when our thirty-minute lunch period ended. We took a picture of the board and resumed the next day. I was under pressure. She had the advantage but I wanted to maintain the illusion of control, so I cracked a smile as I moved my piece. She countered that move in seconds, as though I had fallen into her trap. She smiled back at me and added a chuckle.

  She almost had me. But she made another move and exclaimed, “Shit!” She clapped a hand over her mouth, remembering that we were surrounded by kids. Logan grinned at me, like he knew what move I was about to make. I made that move. And I won.

  The kids thought I was some sort of chess god. When we broke for lunch, they grabbed the folded chessboards from my closet and set them up in the lunchroom. They usually argued over who would get to play me, but on this particular day no one stepped up. After shutting down my computer and Smart Board, I went to the closet to retrieve my lucky glass set. The one that the kids were not allowed to touch without permission. But it was gone.

  I rushed to the cafeteria and scanned the rows of chessboards manned by students on both sides. I turned toward the spot where I usually sat. My lucky glass board was on the table, set up and ready for play. Logan was sitting with it, but not in his usual spot beside me. He was sitting across the board in the opponent’s seat, patiently waiting for my arrival, his pencil and notebook nestled at his side.

  “I’d like to play you,” he said as I sat down. I laughed in surprise, but his expression remained serious. He opened his notebook. Then he moved the first pawn.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s make th
is quick.” I entertained his challenge. But it did not go the way I expected.

  The game took three days. By the third day, other students abandoned their games to watch me struggle. It did not make sense. My best strategies were suddenly falling short. He anticipated every one of my moves. All of my tactics and tricks, he evaded. Only a few pieces remained on the board, and it looked like a stalemate. Or maybe I was hoping for a stalemate. But he checked his notebook, as he had done several other times during the game. He picked up a piece and gently slid mine off the checkered block. He looked up at me and met my eyes. He did not smile or smirk. He gave me a few seconds to examine the board and see what he had done. When I raised my eyes, he extended his hand across the board to shake mine, and those gut-wrenching words spilled from his mouth: “Checkmate.”

  I soon discovered that his notebook did not contain homework. It was filled with computations. He spent months by my side, documenting my every move, calculating counterattacks, and waiting like a black mamba to strike. When his victory came, he was calm. He’d expected it. He’d prepared for it. He’d earned it.

  Isaac was becoming an intellectual juggernaut. Keanen emerged as one of the biggest and most brilliant voices in the school. Logan had a mind that was pragmatic and prodigious. The three boys were coming into their own. They were becoming so good at debate that I knew they were ready to compete.

  I used debate as an instructional tool in class, but I’d never coached a competitive team. All year, I taught my students about case construction and cross-examination and rebuttals in our philosophy and political science classes. Instead of using conventional tests, I evaluated them using ballots from Lincoln-Douglas debate format. They became passionate debaters and often asked, “When can we compete against other schools?” I was nervous about it. The last time I’d stepped foot in the competitive debating circuit, I went out worse than Nate Robinson in his boxing debut. But that was before my renaissance. I was ready to try again—this time as a coach. We registered for our first tournament, organized by the national debate league. It was a statewide competition for Georgia middle schoolers and it was only a few weeks away. We practiced each day after school until the competition. There was one hiccup in our plans: at age twenty-four, I was considered too young by the school’s insurance company to drive the school van. My colleague Kenneth drove us to our first middle school competition, and we won. We went to our second competition, and we won again.