Excerpt from SPILL
Fred entered the world of high school teaching. His first choice of school was an unfortunate one, but, again this school needed a last-minute addition of a teacher, this time an English lit one, and he needed a job. It was a Christian academy in the suburbs where large religious right wing churches were flourishing. He was up front with the principal that he was a “non-denominational, anti-papist,” which, for an atheist, was a true statement. School was going to start the next day and the English lit teacher had eloped with a student who recently had turned 18. Fred was hired on the spot. The first thing he was given was a list of proscribed books, but he was free to choose from a list of acceptable books. The proscribed list included some of the great literature of the times and ages. He could understand why Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer” or William Burrough’s “Naked Lunch” would be on the list. But why in the world Conrad’s great “Heart of Darkness,” or Jack London’s “The Call of the Wild"? The books on the acceptable list were by a number of Christian writers he did not recognize. At least there was Crane’s “The Red Badge of Courage.” He could start with that.
The students were polite, well dressed and uniformly white. His first day at his first class he introduced himself and asked that they spend the hour writing him a biography about their lives that would not be graded. This way he wouldn’t have to do anything for the hour and, when done, he would have essays that he could read without having to grade, just comment on. Plus, it would give him an idea of the level of their grammar and writing skills. When they looked at him with confusion on their faces instead of bringing out paper and pen, he didn’t understand. One girl finally said, “Mr. Underwood. The prayer.”
“What prayer?”
“To start class. The teacher starts class with a prayer.”
Fred didn’t remember that being in his contract.
“Well, um, I believe in student participation. You say the prayer.”
This request turned her face vermilion, but she proceeded. She bowed her head and the class did likewise. “Dear Jesus, may this class lead us on the path to your love.”
So, for the rest of the classes that day he asked different students to start the class with a prayer. Most were benign. But when he asked a large boy to say the class-starting prayer, the goliath bowed his head and said: “Lord, give our team the strength Friday to crush Carver Academy,” and raised his head with a smile on his face at a few restrained laughs from his fellow students.
By the end of his first day he had 78 essays and when he took them out to read that night every one of them began: “I was reborn on…,” with a different date then given.
All of them had Christian parents, Christian siblings, and Christian ambitions. Many of the boys wanted to become preachers. All of the girls wanted to become good Christian housewives.
As he corrected mistakes on the papers, he couldn’t help but add a few comments. The football player, for example, received a note on his paper that asked, “What if a Carver player prays for victory? God can’t grant both prayer requests.” One essay by one of the girls was free of grammar, spelling or punctuation mistakes. He complimented her, adding, “Surely you must have ambitions other than becoming someone’s wife.”
The next day he handed back the essays and passed out copies of “The Red Badge of Courage” and asked them to start reading it during class. That way he didn’t have to do anything on his second day of class. At the end of the class containing the football player, the boy, who towered over Fred, waited until the other students had filed out of the room and approached him. “Sir, God will have granted the prayer request to the team that wins.”
“Well, that is logical isn’t it? What position do you play?”
“Center, Sir.” He said and listened to Fred respond in the most baffling way:
“Well young man. I shall pray that Carver wins the game because it seems God always does the opposite of what I want.”
Discussion about the first chapter of “The Red Badge of Courage” centered on whether or not Henry, the protagonist, was a good Christian.
“He went against his mother’s wishes by joining the Army so he wasn’t a good Christian,” argued one girl.
“But he went to serve his country,” countered a boy.
Fred had introduced “dilemma” into their vocabularies and thought processes.
He took to having students read the book aloud, but at one point a girl stopped in mid-sentence and told him. “I can’t say this word, sir.”
“You can’t pronounce it? What is it?”
“I can’t say it.”
“Well, spell it out.”
“I can’t do that either.”
“Why?”
“It would be taking the Lord’s name in vain.”
This got him up from his chair. He walked over and had the girl point to the word: “dern.”
“Dern? It’s just the way they said ‘damn.’”
The quiet room got quieter.
“Ah, I see. Well, when you hit one of those words, just say, oh, ‘the d-word’”
“That would be the same thing.”
“Okay. When you reach the word just say ‘blank.’”
“I’ll have to ask my pastor.”
On Friday, the school lost to Carver. On Sunday, the girl asked her pastor. On Monday, Fred was called into the principal’s office.
“’The Red Badge of Courage?’ That was on the approved list?” The principal asked.
“Yes, it is.”
“Let’s use the past tense. It WAS on the approved list. It isn’t anymore. Pick something else.”
Fred was not a person who often took extreme action. And he kept his temper intact. Crane’s novel, with its opening line: “The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting,” was, well, sacred to him. When classes began he informed the students that “The Red Badge of Courage” was now on the proscribed list of books. They had a choice of keeping the book as their own possession, since the school had no more use for it, or they could put them in the trash can beside his desk and he would burn them in the schoolyard at end of day.
“The football player held up his hand.”
“Yes.”
“What does proscribed mean?”
“Banned. Not to be read. It has now joined a long list of books you are not supposed to read, most of them, I might add, have been—and are—recognized as enduring literary classics.” Fred stopped and pondered the phrase. “Enduring literary classics,” he repeated. “How to express what that means?” he realized he was asking to himself as much as to the class. “It means that without these books Western culture and America would not be what it is today. But you can not even enter that debate because if you are good Christians, you will not read them because you are forbidden to read them!”
This caused a few extremely pious students to boldly walk to the trash can and dump therein their copies of “The Red Badge of Courage” and return to their seats glaring at those students who did not follow suit.
At end of day, the trash can was full of books. But many students had kept theirs. When the last student of the last class had left the room, Fred went to the blackboard and wrote in huge letters, “God Damn It, I Quit!” He picked up the trash can, carried it outside and lit the books on fire. At the edge of the field was a group of students he recognized as having kept, and who thus now possessed, their own red badges of courage. The football player came over to him.
“Thanks for teaching us, Mr. Underwood.” He knew Fred was through.
“Sorry you didn’t win your game.”
“God’s will be done. We weren’t very good anyway.”
Fred saw at the school’s front door the principal pointing him out to a campus security officer.
Thus endeth Fred’s short teaching career in Christian schools.
