Evan Hunter: The blackboard jungle

The ladies present, of which there were four, smiled in a virginly, ears-unused-to-such-language manner, and the men chuckled a bit, and then Small cut the nonsense with a slicing wave of his hamlike hand.

“So here’s what I want. I want a well-disciplined school because we can’t teach a disorderly mob. That means obedience, instant obedience. That does not mean delayed obedience, or tomorrow obedience, or next-week obedience. It means instant obedience! It means orders obeyed on the button. The teacher is boss, remember that! And I’m sure I don’t have to remind a great many of you of that fact.”

He paused to consult his notes and then shouted, “Troublemakers? I want troublemakers squelched immediately! If a teacher can’t handle a troublemaker, I want him sent to the department head. That’s what department heads are for. And if the department head can’t handle a troublemaker, I want that damned troublemaker sent to either Mike or myself, and you can bet we’ll know how to take care of him, you can bet your life on that. I don’t want any troublemakers in my school. There are reform schools for troublemakers, and that’s where I’ll send them as sure as I’m standing here, as sure as I am Principal of North Manual Trades High School.”

Small nodded his head emphatically, and Mike Angelico unconsciously nodded his head simultaneously.

“So on Monday morning, we come here ready for trouble. If there’s no trouble, fine and dandy. If there is, we step on it immediately. We step on it the way we would step on a cockroach. I want no cockroaches in my school, the same way I want no cockroaches in my kitchen. Now as soon as this meeting is adjourned, and I promise you I will not keep you very much longer, there will be departmental meetings, at which time programs will be distributed. Now I do not wish to hear any complaints about programs. I’m an old hand at this game, and I know that free hours and lunch hours can be juggled, and I know there are desirable classes and undesirable classes, and I know all the little tricks, believe me.

“But our department heads and the head of the program committee have made these programs out fairly and honestly, and we’ve tried to combine the good with the bad, and where you get the dirty end of the stick in one spot, you get the mink-lined end of the stick in another spot. So no complaints about programs, please. It took a long time to figure out the schedule, and I can assure you no changes will be made at this late date, no matter how things used to be before.

“Now on Monday we will greet the students in the auditorium, at which time each teacher will call off the roll for his official class, and then lead them to the official room. I expect that this will consume the major part of the first two periods, if not the third period also.

“We are giving ourselves leeway, and saying that it will also consume the third period. At the end of the third period, the fire gong will be sounded twice. This is not a fire drill, and please warn your students beforehand so that we will not have a mad rush out of the building, an excuse they would readily seize upon. This is simply the signal for change of classes, and it will be the beginning of the fourth period. You had best make this clear to the students in your official class, or they’ll all head for the first period, and things will really get fouled up.

“I guess that’s all for now. I won’t bother to introduce everyone in the room to everyone else in the room because I’ve no doubt you will all know each other within a matter of days, and I know I can count on the older teachers here to lend whatever orientation assistance is needed to the newer teachers.

“If we’ll all go with our department heads now, we can get the routines set, distribute the programs, and then see that our rooms are all ready for Monday. Then we can all go home, except poor me,” and here he smiled briefly, “because Monday is the big day, and I want you to relax over the week end and forget all about Manual Trades and come in fresh and ready to handle anything that comes up. All right, now.”

He left the desk, and the teachers applauded, all but Solly Klein who watched Small walk to the back of the room and out of the library, followed by Mike Angelico, Miss Brady, and Hawkner.

Yay team! Solly thought.

And I’ll bet it’s me who got the crappy end of the stick.

Whether or not Solly Klein got the crappy end of the stick was not a matter of great importance. He had been teaching for twelve years at Manual Trades, and one more crappy end certainly wasn’t going to break him after all that time.

Richard Dadier, however, was a new teacher, a teacher of English in a vocational high school, and the end of the stick he grabbed might very well make or break him.

He examined his program with more than curious interest, and after he’d studied it he could not but admit it was a fair and a good one, in fact a better one than he had hoped for. He did not realize that he had received the crappiest end of the crappiest stick, and that his program was the worst one distributed in the English Department.

He had, of course, seen a good many programs of different shapes and form throughout his many years of schooling, the years that had prepared him for his present exalted position. It was an exalted position to him because, as short a time ago as June, when he had still been at Hunter College, he was a student and the other people were teachers. Now, he was a teacher, and the roles were reversed, and this reversal of roles made him feel damned fine.

As did the program.

The program was divided into eight forty-five minute periods. There was five minutes allowed between each period for change of classes, and fifteen minutes allowed at the beginning of the day for his official class. All told, he reported for work at 8:30 a.m. and his day ended at 3:25 p.m. A short day, even counting the lesson plans that would have to be prepared at night on his own time, and even counting the traveling time, and even allowing for the fact that he’d have to be at school by about 8:15 and wouldn’t leave, most likely, until 4:00. Even so, it was a short day.

His official room was Room 206, the room in which he would teach all day long. His official class was a second-term class. There happened to be nine second-term classes at North Manual Trades, and the official classes at the school were differentiated by numbers. The figure 2, then, designated the term, and any figure from 1 to 9 designated the specific official class in that term. His official class was officially titled 27, the term figure and the group figure wedded in holy matrimony. On his program, the appropriate spaces for the appropriate periods were filled in with a figure indicating the term he’d be teaching, another figure indicating the period in which he taught them, and then — because many teachers taught in several different rooms throughout the day — the number of the room in which he taught. In short, if he taught a second-term class during the second period, in Room 206 (which he did), the space on his program card would be filled with the numerals 22-206.

The program looked like this:

And that was it, and it looked good to him.

He did not realize that it was undesirable to have two English 2 classes. It was undesirable because I’s and 2’s at North Manual Trades followed a block program, a so-called exploratory course. This meant that they, unlike the upper term classes, did not follow individual programs. They traveled in a group, and that group was a well-knit, solidified thing. It was undesirable because 2’s are beginning to feel their oats, are beginning to feel familiar in the school, are beginning to know the score, their “exploration” being almost at an end. The I’s still haven’t cut their teeth, and they’ll take whatever you have to hand out. The 2’s have already cut their teeth, and those teeth are getting sharp now. They are just marking time until they’re sixteen and can get working papers and drop all this horse manure by going to continuation school while they’re out earning money. The 2’s are fourteen and fifteen, and you can’t smack around a fourteen-year-old without feeling like something of a tyrant. And 2’s, in short, simply do not give a damn about learning a trade and especially about learning English.