REVISITING A 1987 CONVERSATION WITH A SELF-PROCLAIMED EXTRATERRESTRIAL

by Kevin P. Murphy

Twenty-four years ago, I transcribed some notes from a conversation I had just completed with a — friend, I guess — although it's an unusual friendship, as you will see if you read further. Life got in the way and I never published that account. I rediscovered that conversation this week, during the Wisconsin "Kill-the-unions, humiliate-the-serfs!" debacle. Suddenly, it seemed to be timely, again. There's a certain irony in the notion of "timely" in this discussion, as you will no doubt discover. The following is the text of the 1987 conversation.

 

Spaceman: Chicago's Schools from an Alien Perspective

 

I have an acquaintance, named Joe, who is a truly interesting person.  I've known him for many years.

Sometimes, months will pass, and I won't see Joe.  But, then, something interesting will happen, and Joe will show up, ready to discuss the event into the wee hours of the morning.  He's a curious guy, Joe, and I guess he thinks of me as his interpreter, his guide to understanding people, which I find interesting because I think Joe understands people about as well as anyone can.  Maybe he's just lonesome, as any castaway might be in a strange land.  You see, Joe isn't from the neighborhood.  If he can be believed, Joe isn't local talent anywhere in the world.  This world.

Joe says that he is from another world, and that he's been stuck here for hundreds of years, waiting for a response to his distress call, a message that may never have been received back at his home base.  (Quality control was a problem where he came from, too, he said.)

Joe's kind of an ordinary looking guy—you wouldn't notice him in a crowd.  It's hard to guess his real age, but he looks like what we call "middle aged."  But he has the curiosity of a 3-year old when something excites his interest.  And that's when Joe visits.  Like yesterday.

"You Earth people are funny, you know what I mean?"

I didn't, except in sort of a generic way.  "Like what, Joe?  What is it this time?"

"Well, like the way you approach problems.  You really create obstacles that stand in the way of your dealing with problems.  You know what I mean, kid?"  (That's probably one of the reasons I like Joe.  I'll never see 50 again.)

"I'm not sure, Joe.  What happened?"

"Well, I went to a meeting Monday, at Marina Towers.  Some of your state legislators were conducting an inquiry into the "real world" of Chicago teachers.  (That's some building, by the way—reminded me of home–-almost makes me hope that they didn't get my distress call.  Almost.)  Anyway, here they were, these legislators, there to listen to teachers, right?  And they had authorized 5 minutes per signed-up speaker so that they'd be able to get a lot of testimony in the 4 hours they had scheduled for the hearing.  And in an hour they heard only 3 speakers.  So that was a problem-in-front-of-the-problem, already.  They heard three people, one of whom wasn't a teacher, and the legislators were trying to learn about the real world of teaching.  Things were off to a bad start."

"You'd have done things better back home, right?"

"Oh, yeah!  No doubt about it!  Five minutes we say, five minutes it is.  Make your key points, cut the rhetoric, and be ready for some tight questions—whole thing, 7 minutes per person, max!  But then, the last time we had a major problem in the schools was about 60 thousand years ago—that was when we defined the essential purpose of our schools.  Once the ancient ones decided that baby-sitting and favoring of social elites weren't what it was all about, they were on their way.  Then, when they settled on the notion that the major purpose was to educate all—what your folks would probably call, Centauran—children to the maximum of their abilities, they really got down to business."

"The schools ran smoothly after that, huh?"

"Yeah.  Generally.  Oh, there'd be occasional problems, when some new discipline was forming and the debate would heat up about whether or not it was essential to the development of our children, but that was about it."

"Funding was never a problem?"

"No.  We figured that the youth of our world were our greatest resource, always.  Nobody ever argued about the intelligence of investing in our greatest resource.  And it paid off."

"Race of the kids never entered into it?"

"What race?  We were all creatures of the same ancestors.  So what if a kid was of the so-called green subspecies, or my color [Joe looks a lot like my family]—or even the striped?  They were all our kids.  That's another thing about you Earth people—you really have screwy ways of defining one another. There were several so-called 'black' legislators there at that meeting, and several so-called 'white' legislators there and, in fact, there were no black, and no white legislators there.  There were some gradations of brown, and some gradations of pinkish cream, and maybe some variations of saffron, but most of 'em fervently thought of themselves as black or white.  No wonder you guys have problems.

"Anyway, you could see it in operation.  This one 'black' legislator had his back up toward one so-called 'white' administrator who testified.  He seemed to be upset that the guy was a principal in charge of a school with mostly poor black kids in it.  It looked like he was trying hard to find some way to demonstrate that a white person just ought not to be in such a position.  Can you imagine it?  Why, on Alpha, if some idiot suggested that only greens could teach greens, or creams were the only ones to teach creams, or stripers were essential for stripers, they'd get laughed past our third moon!  The question with us would have been, 'Can this person teach the children well?'  Period.

"Anyway, back to the Monday meeting.  There was a group of hecklers there.  Every time someone implied that teachers might be human, too, they seemed to get a little upset.  It made me glad that I'm not a Chicago school teacher when I sensed some of the attitudes that were held by some of those people, and by some of the legislators.  You know, I spent years teaching back on Alpha, and I was considered pretty innovative, and highly effective with students.  But, if I had been hearing that kind of stuff from my fellow—Centaurans—I think I'd have felt very threatened."

"Well, people are concerned about the quality of persons that teach their children, Joe.  It's only natural."

"And long overdue, too, if you ask me!  But it does no good to go at it like the Inquisition.  Or even like the broadcast media, if that's a fresher image for you.  They shouldn't be trying to remove tonsils with a chain saw, you know what I mean?  You had a bunch of lawyers at this meeting, ready to jump in and judge teachers, but that same group of lawyers would hate like fury to have a bunch of teachers telling them how to do their jobs; you had a bunch of parents ready to tar and feather a few teachers—without the slightest idea who is or isn't good at teaching—and those same parents would—and do—strenuously resist any suggestions from teachers on the proper rearing of their kids.  But all these people are anxious to get in there and mess with the teachers.  And why do they all roll over and play dead when anyone labeled 'administrator' makes some idiotic statement about what's needed in a classroom situation that he never experienced, or bailed out of as fast as possible?  You know, you've got one overhead person for every seven teachers in the system—that's a ridiculous waste of money, buddy!  And, if you give them the slightest opportunity, they'll add more overhead!"

"All right, Joe.  I get the picture, but what's your answer?"

"First, you must have a way to change things effectively.  Then, you have to understand how it will work, and finally, you must have the patience and wisdom to let it work."

"For instance?"

"Okay.  Number one, you don't bring about lasting change in a democratic society at the point of a gun.  Just as the lawyers and parents will resist the teachers telling them how to do their thing so, too, will the teachers resist the imposition of arbitrary change from non-members of their profession.  Does Cardinal George tell Ozzie Guillen how to run his pitching staff?  Does Guillen tell George how to enhance spirituality among his clergy?"

"Well, I . . ."

"Of course not!  Same thing with the teachers.  They have to be encouraged, however, to do things themselves to heighten professionalism within their ranks.  That's legitimate.  You had a great lady educator—Myra Bradwell—here in Chicago a little bit more than a century ago.  She did a lot to heighten professionalism within the legal field.  But, she was considered a lawyer even before the sexist code of the day permitted women to hold such a profession.  She published a prestigious legal periodical, and she knew what she was about—and where women should be going.  So, she could do things for the profession that an outsider would not have been able to do.  She also was a nice person.

"Her husband, James, was a pretty fine guy, too.  I remember one time when we . . ."

"Joe.  Back to today, and teachers."

"Oh, yeah.  Sorry, kid.  Memories.  You know------ Okay.  So we decide that teachers need time, and procedures that will enable them to help one another to do the best possible job they can do in their own classrooms."

"You want to bring back the master teachers . . ."

"No!  No, I don't want to do that. But some of the alleged benefits of that approach could be achieved by what I envision.

"Instead, we bring the teachers together in manageable groups--on prescribed school time that no administator can interfere with, say an allocated two hour time block per week--in a dedicated meeting space—with 12-15 participants, max—and we help them to develop their problem-defining skills with respect to their own classes.

"They then help each other to define the things that prevent their students from achieving as well as they should be able to achieve.  They help each other to formulate strategies for overcoming those obstacles, and for measuring the effectiveness of their new strategies.  They encourage each other to try new approaches, to persist in pursuing educationally worthwhile objectives, and they provide a support network for one another to overcome the sometimes-stultifying effect of working in isolation for extended periods of time.

"These are the things I would set in motion. And I'd nurture the teachers.  And I'd try like crazy to keep from interfering with them once they got underway, unless they asked for some kind of support that only I could give them. And, I'd expect this all to take time. You know, you Earth people are really funny.  You take a problem that you've diligently turned into an institutionalized nightmare over a period of hundreds of years, and you expect any solution you come up with to solve it in less than an year!  If it wasn't so sad, it'd be hilarious.

"If the rescue ship ever does come for me, I think I'll urge you to come with me, kid. I like you too much to want to leave you in this nut-house."

Shaking his head, Joe left. But I'm sure he'll be back. There's more to ponder "in this nut-house . . ."

 

******

So, today, when I rediscovered that conversation, I thought about Joe—haven't seen him for a while—and I'll bet that he'll be stopping by any time now, to update that conversation in light of the Neo-Feudalism being contemplated by several governors across the United States, as they hold their breath to see how much Wisconsin Governor Walker can get away with.  

I can't wait to hear what Joe will have to say about that—provided that his long-awaited repair droid hasn't freed him from "this nut-house" planet.