The bell to end lunch rang, right when there was about to be a big reveal in the Bollywood. Mr. Webb hit the pause button, causing all the kids watching it to go, “Awww! Just one more minute?”

“You’ll get your minute tomorrow. Time to get to class.” The film fans filed out as the AP Economics kids shuffled back in. Before Mr. Webb could get back to the tunes to shuffle into class by, one of his AP students, the very art-student-y Michele Barta, asked as she entered, “How come you’re not teaching AP Government anymore?”

It was the first day of school and all the books had been handed out… why not give her an honest answer? It would kill off the rest of the period, but what the heck, right?

“I don’t teach AP Government anymore because the material tested on has no connection to reality anymore, and there’s not enough time to cover reality in addition to teaching the stuff you have to know for the test. AP Economics is also divorced from reality, but it’s not as complete as in AP Government, and I also have enough time in AP Eco to cover what’s actually going on. Rather than choose between teaching propaganda and getting good test scores, teaching the truth and getting ripped up one side and down the other by administration for a poor passing rate, and not teaching it at all, I choose to not teach it at all.”

“What do you mean it’s not connected to reality anymore?”

“Well, Michele, it’s like this… AP Government is about how things are supposed to work, with a few considerations for some issues, for lack of a stronger word, that face the system. It’s a curriculum that, at the end of the day, holds a view that the system is functional and that our votes matter and make a difference in every election. I don’t think that’s the case anymore, and that it hasn’t been that way for over a hundred years.”

“A hundred years? What?”

Some other students had come in and were standing beside Michele, as outraged as she was. They didn’t know exactly why, but they were anticipating something huge. Mr. Webb had a reputation for being right, a reputation Mr. Webb himself promoted and reinforced with his “told you so!”-style commentaries on current events.

“Have a seat, ladies and germs, and I’ll spill the beans on the whole government caper.”

They took their seats and got ready for the big answer to Michele’s question. Pretty much everyone was back, except for Isaac Feknes, one of the guys that seemed to be without sufficient clues to make it through the year. Oh well, this stuff wasn’t on the test. He could miss it and still live to see another day.

Mr. Webb displayed a one-page document on the overhead for everyone to read, then zoomed in on the text so that everyone could really read it and not just nod their head at fuzzy-looking letters. The document read:

The Control of Political Machinery
The American government,—city, state and nation—is in almost the same position as the schools, newspapers and churches. It does not turn out tangible, economic products. It depends, for its support, upon taxes which are levied, in the first instance, upon property. Who are the owners of this property? The business interests. Who, therefore, pay the bills of the government? The business interests.
Nowhere has the issue been stated more clearly or more emphatically than by Woodrow Wilson in certain passages of his “New Freedom.” As a student of politics and government—particularly the American Government—he sees the power which those who control economic life are able to exercise over public affairs, and realizes that their influence has grown, until it overtops that of the political world so completely that the machinery of politics is under the domination of the organizers and directors of industry.
“We know,” writes Mr. Wilson in “The New Freedom,” “that something intervenes between the people of the United States and the control of their own affairs at Washington. It is not the people who have been ruling there of late” (p. 28). “The masters of the government of the United States are the combined capitalists and manufacturers of the United States…. Suppose you go to Washington and try to get at your government. You will always find that while you are politely listened to, the men really consulted are the men who have the biggest stakes—the big bankers, the big manufacturers, the big masters of commerce, the heads of railroad corporations and of steamship corporations…. Every time it has come to a critical question, these gentlemen have been yielded to and their demands have been treated as the demands that should be followed as a matter of course. The government of the United States at present is a foster-child of the special interests” (p. 57-58). “The organization of business has become more centralized, vastly more centralized, than the political organization of the country itself” (p. 187). “An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy” (p. 35). “We are all caught in a great economic system which is heartless” (p. 10).
This is the direct control exercised by the plutocracy over the machinery of government. Its indirect control is no less important, and is exercised in exactly the same way as in the case of the channels of public opinion.
Lawyers receive preferment and fees from business—there is no other large source of support for lawyers. Judges are chosen from among these same lawyers. Usually they are lawyers who have won preferment and emolument. Legislators are lawyers and business men, or the representatives of lawyers and business men. The result is as logical as it is inevitable.
The wealth owners control the machinery of government because they pay the taxes and provide the campaign funds. They control public officials because they have been, are, or hope to be, on the payrolls, or participants in the profits of industrial enterprises.

– Scott Nearing, The American Empire (1921)

This excerpt details the connection between interest groups and political influence, including the “revolving door” phenomenon described at the end. Another strong connection between interest groups and government is the “iron triangle” where interest groups, government bureaucracies, and congressional committees all work together to create legislation and regulation regimes that ultimately work to the benefit of the parties involved, even at the cost of uninvolved groups.

“The last paragraph is mine, and Wilson’s comments come from his 1912 presidential campaign. That’s where I get the 100-year figure. Stuff like this was obvious even back then, and it’s much more pervasive and powerful now. I can’t in good conscience teach that politicians vote according to the dictates of their conscience, not all the time. These guys in Congress spend well over half their time in office raising money in phone banks organized by the party and big fancy dinners.”

“Half their time?”

“At least.”

“So when do they meet in session?”

“Not often.” Mr. Webb’s assessment brought out a frown on everyone’s face but one: Jerome Hudl had fallen asleep already.

The bell rang for people tardy to the second half of 4th period after B lunch. Still no Isaac Feknes.

Matt Woyzeck raised his hand. “Do they still get paid if they don’t show up to vote or meet?”

“Yes. Their salary is something like $174K a year. Nice work, if you can get it. But they get sweeter bonuses with the information they have from being in Congress. What’s insider trading for you and me is Congressional privilege for Senators and Congressmen. They make out like bandits, literally. Only the honest Congressmen die poor. Looking at the net wealth of the average Congressman, there aren’t many honest ones in either house.”

Chas Carson chuckled from the thrones. “Hey, go big or go home. My dad’s a lobbyist, and he’s always complaining about politicians calling him up, begging him for money, promising votes on this or that if he comes across with a donation.”

“There you go.” Mr. Webb pointed at Chas. “I can’t teach a course that ignores stuff like that. Therefore, I can’t teach AP Government any more. I mean, if we have time at the end of some classes, I can show you stuff that I put together over the years, but it’s way too cynical for the test. Way way way way way too cynical.”

Stan Keller, another throne man, asked, “Like… how cynical?”

“Cynical like this.” Mr. Webb fired up another document, Notes.pdf, and the page that came up read as follows:

How a Politician Gets Elected

1. If the politician is an incumbent and didn’t make any interest groups angry while he served his term of office, he gets re-elected.
2. If the incumbent dies, makes an interest group mad at him, or gets caught in a major scandal, someone else must fill his seat. There will be a for-reals election.
3. All politicians that are neither Democrats or Republicans are free to contest the election, but they will lose. They need to have a job to fall back on after November.
4. The Democrats and Republicans will hold primaries to determine who will represent them in the November election. Whichever persons appeal most to the radical, goofball, and raving lunatic sections of each party will win the primary.
5. Once nominated, each candidate will claim that they will run a clean campaign, then they will set about mudslinging and negative campaigning. Whichever candidate runs the most negative campaign stands a good chance of winning.
6. If neither candidate runs a negative campaign, or the campaigns are equally negative, whichever candidate looks the best will have a good chance of winning. Ugly candidates can ask good-looking people to campaign for them.
7. If a candidate lost a primary election, he can run as an independent to keep the guy that beat him in the primary from winning the November election.
8. If both candidates are equally negative and equally ugly, whichever one gets mentioned the most has a good chance of winning. Getting mentioned involves spending money on advertising, so whoever can raise the most money stands a really good chance of winning the election.
9. Raising money involves going to people and interest groups and grovelling. Whoever can grovel the best will raise the most money.
10. Often, interest groups will give money to a candidate on the condition that he will prostitute his vote for them. This is known as a “reciprocally beneficial relationship.” Prostitutes prefer the latter term, as it means they won’t be compared with objectionable politicians.
11. If a candidate looks like he’ll lose the election if it is contested fairly, he can try to win it by engaging in criminal activities. Criminal activities include the following activities, but are not limited to them: bribery, acceptance of cash from illegal donors, blackmail, whisper campaigns, vote tampering, vote fraud, vote count tampering, threats of violence, assassination, burglary, vandalism, “clearing” of voter records.
12. Whoever counts the votes has ultimate say on who the winner of the election is and if the election will be fair.
13. Whoever gets the most votes, wins. This usually means the best-looking candidate with the most money raised and connections to interest groups that has a sympathetic election judge and no “independent” challenger to deal with will win. Provided he doesn’t get caught for any dirty tricks…
14. In a 2-man race, a majority of votes wins. In a 3-man (or more) race, a plurality wins.

“Daaaaaaamn, that’s cynical.” Stan let his jaw hang open after saying that.

Michele looked like she was about to cry. “I want to puke.”

Chas laughed. Mr. Webb figured that he probably knew that it was worse than what was in the notes. Optimists always know things can be worse, which is why they find it so easy to laugh.

Everyone else was in shock, except for Hudl, who slept on. Isaac Feknes walked back in.

“Where the hell have you been, Feknes?” Mr. Webb wasn’t happy with the break in the revelations, but the rest of the class was glad for the comic relief.

“I didn’t know lunch was over.”

“How long have you been a student here?”

“This is my fourth year.”

“And you didn’t know how we roll with B lunch? Are you an idiot or something?”

“No.” Isaac’s back stiffened at the insinuation that he might be an idiot.

“Then you admit you’re lying about not knowing lunch was over. What were you doing, making out with your girlfriend that has C lunch?” Mr. Webb didn’t know for sure, but it was an educated guess that was what was going on.

Isaac went from indignant to shocked.

Chas, Stan, and the third throne man, Sean Ortiz, shouted in unison, “Called it! Boom!”

Mr. Webb broke out in laughter and decided, then and there, that these three guys were going to do just fine in his class. They had the right attitude and weren’t afraid to participate. Isaac Feknes, on the other hand, seemed likeliest to join Mr. Hudl in making this time of day his little nap-time.

Mr. Webb cut his laughter off, suddenly and completely, and fixed a cold glare on Isaac. “Don’t you dare come in late to my class like that again, Mr. Feknes. Do you understand me?”

Isaac nodded, but it was the unenthusiastic nod of a person that had no intention of keeping his word.

Mr. Webb kept mental note of that reaction and pointed at a chair. “Have a seat. Try and keep up. We’re talking about the near-complete control major corporations and interest groups have on the government.”

Michele groaned and pitched forward, her face almost hitting the table.

Mr. Webb put a picture of baby otters on the overhead. Michele looked up and smiled. All the girls and most of the boys said, “Awwww!” Only sleeping Hudl and clueless Feknes had no reaction.

Mr. Webb minimized the picture so the cruel assessment of the election process was back in view. “Uhhhh…” Michele was sad again.

“I’ll have more happy pictures before we leave, OK?”

Michele perked up a little. “OK.”

Matt asked, “So, there’s nothing we can do about this?”

“Not unless you have a few million dollars, and then you become part of this with that kind of money.”

“What about a revolution?”

“Not likely. We’re much more likely to see a suspension of liberties and the imposition of an authoritarian regime that has the trappings and procedures of democracy, but actual power concentrated in the hands of a few. And liberties have been steadily eroded for quite some time, now, so what’s in the Bill of Rights is only so much window dressing, when it all comes down to it. You have the rights the government allows you to have. If the government calls you a terrorist and chucks you into a prison somewhere in Egypt or Poland, how are you going to let your lawyer know that your rights are being violated? You won’t. Heck, you don’t even have to leave the country. There are federal medical institutions where people can be involuntarily committed without access to lawyers or due process. Medical incarceration is an old KGB trick, by the way. But if you’re in one of those holes, how do you get out?”

Matt had no fire left in him for the revolution. “You don’t.”

“You don’t, that’s right, which is why I’m making a study of life under authoritarian regimes. I want to be ready for the future. It’s not all that bad, really. Some freedoms, they don’t care if you have or not.”

Feknes was already asleep. Wanda Ngo pointed at him and Hudl with a questioning look, as if to ask what to do about them.

“Let ’em sleep. Don’t do anything mean to them, but don’t wake them up. If they can’t stay awake here, they seriously need to consider dropping the course.”

Wanda looked confused. “But you can’t drop an AP course in the first six weeks.”

“You can if you’re about to fail and your parents demand that you get out of there, which is what’s going to happen to them both if the counselor won’t listen to reason.”

The bell was about to ring, so Mr. Webb put up a picture of a baby girl in a swing decorated with brightly-colored primary color beads. The baby girl was holding a sleeping kitty.

“Awwww!”

The bell rang and Feknes and Hudl woke up. Mr. Webb called them to his desk. “You guys need to drop this class and get into regular.”

Without saying a word the two almost nodded and shuffled out. Mr. Webb played Foghat’s “Slow Ride” as they exited the room.

And then the bell rang to dismiss everyone for B Lunch, smack in the middle of 4th period. 28 minutes of either standing in a cafeteria line to buy something that could be wolfed down in the time remaining after purchase, or of warming up something in a microwave… and wolfing it down in the time remaining after warming up.

Mr. Webb was now to the point where he’d eat soup straight out of a can, just to save time. Travel in Russia had taught him that there were times when food was fuel, nothing more, and that it wasn’t necessary to have a culinary delight at every meal. As long as he had a spot of something sweet to chase the rough lunch, that would be all that would matter. If dessert was to be had, it wasn’t necessary to have the most flavorful or palatable lunch. Time was of the essence in the high school lunch game.

When he did microwave something, he preferred simplicity. None of this, “put a slit in the film above the pasta and cook on high for three minutes, then remove the film and cook on high for an additional minute and a half”. How about just cut the film and cook four minutes? Or better still, get something that heats up in a minute? That’s more like it. Who’s got time for putting slits in the film, anyway?

Eating in the teachers’ lounge was totally out of the question. First off, it was a three-minute walk to the lounge. That meant a trip to the lounge would leave a guy with just 22 minutes for lunch… and a line at the microwave, behind every teacher whose classroom was closer to the lounge. Minutes would burn as other teachers dutifully put slits in their films.

Worse, though, was the poison in the air. True, dealing with idiots always requires a certain amount of venting in order to cope with the ordeal. But the purpose of the venting was to ascertain in your peers a hope that not all humanity was doomed, that there was at least one other person that had decent sense and at least rudimentary problem-solving skills: in the lounge, there were those that vented because they were, at heart, complainers. They didn’t want to see things get better. They just wanted to wallow in the mire of self-pity and enjoy the sickening chemical releases in the brain that went along with such activities. They were teaching because of some deep masochistic streak in their core. They would always have something to complain about.
Being around those kinds of teachers was a vampiric experience. Lunch would be a net drain on the soul, after being in a room with those guys for 22 minutes, in addition to the grind of standing in a line just as frustrating as the one the kids had to endure.

A Lunch came early in the day, but there was always plenty to be had in A Lunch. The cafeteria lines were well-stocked and if someone had put goodies in the teachers’ lounge, there were plenty to be had. B Lunch was all right. It came at the right time of day for lunch and there were still some decent scraps to be had after the A Lunch crowd had had its fill. C Lunch was often an exercise in compromise and being philosophical. Many was the day that the pizza or burger line ran out in the cafeteria by C Lunch and no teachers’ lounge treat survived past B Lunch, not even the nasty stuff. If you wanted to eat well in C Lunch, you had to bring your own food.

Or, you could have it brought to you. Although the office had stopped accepting bags of fast food dropped off by parents in the middle of the day, kids in the know could still have a friend hold open an exit while they ran to the parking lot to get a sack of burgers or tacos from mom. There wasn’t really enough time to get out to a lunch place and get back in time, unless one had both a car and the luxury of not having a class scheduled during third period. It was most unusual to have a gap in the middle of the day, but not impossible for the seniors signed up for just the right classes.

There was also the boon of a lenient 4th period teacher. If someone mentioned a trip to the egg roll factory from Bistro V, lenience could be had for two or three egg rolls in Mr. Webb’s room. Nicky Tran knew how to bargain her way through the system last year: “The egg rolls are four for a dollar, and they’re the best in town.”

Mr. Webb had but one question: “Are they Vietnamese?”

“Of course. I wouldn’t even bother to ask if they weren’t.”

Ladies and gentlemen, Vietnamese egg rolls are the best in the world. One does not pass up on an opportunity to savour the delights. Mr. Webb let other kids chip in their dollars, and Nicky would take the hit on tax and Mr. Webb’s share. The trip would take maybe five minutes more than what everyone had allotted for lunch, so all Nicky needed was to be able to leave a little early and for someone to be ready to let her in when she showed up with the hot, steaming, delicious delights from cooks that had once known the streets of old Saigon.

Oh, it was worth it, all right. The second half of fourth period always went well when it was cushioned with an actual decent lunch that could be eaten somewhat leisurely. It was a basic human dignity denied to everyone else in the building without knowledge of or access to the amazing egg rolls of Bistro V, but Mr. Webb saw the need to carve out an exception to the rules to make way for something that was good for his students.

And though there were times when Nicky Tran abused the privilege, she was never arrogant about it. And though there were times when students got a little rebellious, they never threatened blackmail over the egg roll express. It was too important, too transcendent an institution to be petty about. It cemented the loyalty of the class, as they combined against the inhumanity of a damnable 28-minute lunch.

There was always the chance that Mr. Webb would be caught and found out in this scheme, but he had a card in his hand that he was ready to play if it led to anything more than a “don’t do that again.” State law required all teachers to have a 30-minute, duty-free lunch. Not 28 minutes. 30. As in two more than the high school allowed. One headline would follow another: “Teacher Fired in Egg Roll Incident”, then “Principal Sued Over Lack of Lunchtime”. Mr. Webb’s legal experiences in the EDCISD had taught him to never sue the district, always sue the individual. Always.

There were other campuses with smaller enrollments that had 45-minute, or even hour-long lunches. Teller was just too big and its cafeteria too small to accommodate such basic decencies. The full-size fridge and two microwaves in Mr. Webb’s room were not just for his own use: they were for everyone. Lunch demanded humanization when it was only 28 minutes long.

Which was why, as some students filed in to watch the Bollywood, Mr. Webb finished off his can of soup. More time for the kids to use the microwaves, that way, and that meant that much more kindness and mercy in their lives.

“What movie are we starting with this year?” A regular from the last two years popped her head into the room.

“Kal Ho Naa Ho.”

“Oh my gosh, I love that one!” Before you could say, “Naina kaash mein tumhe bataa sakta”, she and three friends had already moved into the front seats, ready to cry their eyes out.

Fourth period, AP Economics, the smallest of the classes. Thanks, scheduling mess-up.

Mr. Webb didn’t really blame any person – setting up a schedule for a high school as big as Teller wasn’t a job Mr. Webb was about to assume that he could do a better job of than those involved in the process. Each year had its own idiosyncracies. And, as small as 12 this semester and 9 the next seemed, it was nothing like the 5th period of 2008.

In 2008, Mr. Webb actually had an AP Economics class with only 2 students in it.

2 students, and both of them were pretty sharp, so covering the material for the day sometimes amounted to 10 minutes of discussion, 10 minutes of doing an exercise and grading it and then… 25 minutes of… huh… not anything in particular, really.

Both of those guys also left after 5th period, so the tempation for them to leave early was very strong. The temptation was even stronger once they’d both taken the AP exam in early May and had nothing to do for three weeks after that. Many was the day they asked to go see Mr. Whatshisname about a project and left after checking in. That was fine with Mr. Webb. Telling two people that were done with a class that they had to stay there just because they had to stay there was ridiculous. By rights, they should have been able to enjoy that time, and Mr. Webb was happy to have given them that gift.

And if it meant that Mr. Webb could take a nap in the middle of the day, so much the better. Naps were awesome things to have. Why was it that kindergarteners got to take naps and high school kids couldn’t? The kindergarteners didn’t want them and the high school kids did… it made no sense.

Then again, if something made sense, Mr. Webb knew it was a matter of time before someone in the state legislature or an administration somewhere would make a rule requiring that it be replaced with something that didn’t make sense. Watching the parade of nonsense was always a disenheartening experience, but if one focused more on the victims of the nonsense, one could always try and do something to keep it from ruining lives.

To a point, that is. The nonsense in ECISD in 1995 had gotten to the point where Mr. Webb couldn’t stand it anymore, what with the corruption, criminality, and general paranoia and all that. Mr. Webb did not want to go back to that again, ever. If things in Garson ISD ever got that bad, no, if they ever got close to being that bad, Mr. Webb had zero plans of sticking around to see a second time through that wringer.

But 12 kids… that wasn’t such a bad number. There were enough of them to where there could be a conversation and not just an echo chamber. That made the class fun. As long as they were all up to speed, or close to it, good class discussions made everyone’s day. And if there were kids that weren’t up to speed, discussions would reveal that lack of speed.

There were kids that liked to hang back and use other students to advance their fortunes. “Scholastic dishonesty” was the fancy, multi-syllable expression that was fashionable instead of “cheating.” Whatever it was, there were a million ways to do it, and only a few ways to expose it. Class discussion was one of those ways.

Homework could be copied – easily – so checking homework only revealed people that didn’t like doing homework, not cheaters. Tests… true, greenhorns would copy perfectly or copy weird stuff, making spelling mistakes that only people who had no clue about what was going on would make, like writing cleprcssiom instead of depression… but truly experienced test-cheaters would know enough to copy carefully, check for spelling mistakes, and then change a few answers so that their papers wouldn’t be the same as the ones they copied. Research papers were a joke: the same Internet that produced full research papers would betray them to any teacher that cared to run a Google search on sentences that simply rang far too scholastic-sounding for high school seniors. Assigning research papers would reveal cheaters, all right, but with a grade that was almost always too highly weighted to allow anyone with a zero on it to pass, and taken too late in the grading period to allow anyone with a zero on it to recover.

Class discussion, though, that was the ticket. People who knew the answers could not only give the answers, but talk about them, discuss them, ask about what they didn’t understand, the works. Those that didn’t know the answers, they’d hem, they’d haw, and they’d fall flat. The falling flat would be early enough in the game and with little enough of a penalty so that anyone who fell victim to a bad run of discussion could always recover in time to where they didn’t have such a bad run again – and to where they’d know things well enough that they wouldn’t need to cheat.

That, or they’d stay clueless enough to where they’d realize that they needed to get out of the AP class if they wanted a chance of passing the course and graduating high school on time.

Class discussion covered all kinds of things, not just correct answers. Good questions were just as good as good answers. Good attempts to answer problems were just as good as attempts that went awry. Didn’t want to talk in class? Then see Mr. Webb before or after school, or during his conference period, and he’d discuss things there. Some kids were so afraid of speaking in front of others that they would do just that… only to realize that they knew things well enough that they didn’t feel bad about speaking in front of others. If they knew that they weren’t going to sound like idiots, they had no fear about sounding like idiots. Funny how that worked out… but anyone could have 100% in class participation just for showing up sober and participating in some way.

And that participation made kids really understand the stuff. For the last four years, Mr. Webb had graded AP exams, and every year, the graders there said that getting kids to be able to discuss the material with knowledge and confidence was the way to go. They were right. The kids with the best class participation grades were the ones that came back with the best scores on the AP exam. So, Mr. Webb made class participation 50% of his grade, with 25% coming from tests and 25% from classroom quizzes.

He had the same grading system in his regular classes, but allowed for notes to cover a big chunk of class participation points. For AP, though, it was vital to stress the need for quality class participation. And so, on that first day, he’d show his AP students clips from “The Paper Chase”, scenes with John Houseman as Professor Kingsfield, grilling his students like cheese sandwiches.

“Loudly, Mr. Hart! Fill this room with your intelligence!”

Mr. Webb had those Houseman scenes memorized so well, one year he was able to reproduce them, word for word, on a student that had missed the first day. Her responses were practically identical to those of the hapless Mr. Hart, to the amazement and delight of her fellow students. They let her know that that’s what they had seen the day before, but she had lived through it.

“How long are you gentlemen planning to stay?”

“Three days.”

“THAT’s how you should study for the AP exam!” Mr. Webb basked at the dedication of the law students as they checked into a hotel, chucked out the teevee, and threatened blackmail on the manager if he threw them out in order to study for their exam. “With dedication like that, how can you fail?”

The students got the message, if such messages could reach them, and class participation went very well after seeing the clips from “The Paper Chase.” Better still, whenever Mr. Webb wanted to spur answers and give his students an adrenaline boost, all he had to do was say, “Fill the room with your intelligence!” and fill it, they would.

Nine of the twelve students in fourth period were talkative enough after the clips, but three of them just smiled like idiots. Smiling like an idiot was often a good sign that an idiot was involved in the smiling process. OK, idiot wasn’t a fair word… but smiles like that were nevertheless signs that the persons making those smiles were out of their league and that they didn’t even know that they were in over their heads.

These three even looked like that they would be at a loss in a regular class. Something about the emptiness in their expressions betrayed the blankness in their minds. They weren’t lazy, but no amount of hard work could compensate for a lack of sufficient neuronic connections necessary to put two and two together. Guys like that could make it out of high school alive, but not if the path took them through an honest class that demanded more of its participants than they were able to deliver.

Maybe Mr. Webb was wrong in his first impressions, but class discussion in the next few days would see whether or not he was right.

Third period. Same routine, different names. Teaching involves a great deal of repetition, but with different variables of human interaction affecting the outcomes. The same lesson plan can be repeated four, five, six times a day, once a year or semester for many, many years, and still nobody can guarantee that everyone learns that lesson.

Absences, tardies, of course those can affect things. Kids in class drunk, or high, or just deprived of sleep from working all last night – there goes the attention span. Text messages, websites, breakups, hookups, emotional confusion – even before cell phones, the last three things were enough to distract many a mind.

The biggest killer of them all, however, was the perceived pointlessness of it all. “How do I use this in real life?”

A highly compelling argument, that one. Mr. Webb’s answer typically went, “If you don’t learn it, there’s no way you can use it in real life, should the need arise,” but did that cover all the bases? No, it did not. While Mr. Webb went out of his way to use what he had learned in real life, not everyone was as diligent or as dedicated to lifelong learning. Some folks just wanted to take a mental holiday.

Honestly, forcing people to learn things was analogous to to trying to teach a pig to dance: complete lack of success and it only annoys the pig and the teacher. Some people saw a value, any value, in completing high school economics – even if only to get a degree – and so, those people could be reasoned with to cooperate with the learning process, to participate in it and to not disrupt the flow of the class.

But then, there were those that never saw any value in what was being taught. Such was the case of Ali Gaber, Adam Robertson, and Efraim Zapata, three young men in Mr. Webb’s third period that sat together, towards the side and towards the back.

Mr. Webb was familiar with the Gaber name: the father owned a car dealership, and the family had plenty of cash, which the Gaber boys consumed conspicuously. There were four of them, and Ali was the youngest. Mr. Webb had taught two of them before, and they were completely useless in class. They were completely self-centered, and Ali didn’t seem to be any different.

He was fine, as were all the kids, filling out the yellow textbook forms and taking care of the administrative functions like that. But as soon as Mr. Webb asked, “So, what is scarcity?”, Ali groaned aloud and cursed.

“You’re seriously not giving us notes on the first day?”

“Yes, I am, and you’re not going to talk that way.”

“It’s the first day of school. Nobody’s getting written up, and the police won’t ticket you anymore for cussing out a teacher.” One had to commend young Ali for keeping up on current events, even if he had an aversion to developing his technical vocabulary.

“Coach Sheppard reads his emails.” Ali was on the varsity squad, a starter, and didn’t want to lose his place. The threat carried weight.

Ali was no pushover, though. “You would do me like that, on the very first day? You would punk me like that?”

Adam had to jump in, now. “Man, we got a punk for a teacher.” Ali’s motion was seconded.

“Damn. A punk.” Efraim carried the motion.

Mr. Webb quietly typed out an email. Then, he looked back at Ali. Mr. Webb’s voice ran cold. “You got your future in your hands, Ali. You apologize, even if it sounds sarcastic and without meaning, and I don’t punch the send button. You don’t apologize, and then we got us a war. For me, war does not end until one party or the other is completely disengaged or destroyed. You apologize, and then we can keep the negotiations open and I don’t have to complain about how you showed up drunk in my class.”

“Drunk? What the hell? I’m not drunk!” Ali’s face betrayed an angry panic.

Mr. Webb kept his sangfroid demeanor. He’d seen this dance, before. “You acted out, you cursed at me, you argued, you disrupted class. Classic signs. Counselors and student resource police officers always tell us to watch out for those signs of substance abuse in our students.”

“Smell my breath, I don’t have any liquor on it.”

“That can be masked. Your behavior doesn’t lie. That’s what I go by. You act drunk, I gotta call it the way I see it.”

“But I’m not drunk!”

At this point, Adam and Efraim were tapping Ali on his shoulders, trying to calm him down, whispering, “Just say you’re sorry, dude.”

Ali relented. “I’m sorry! Geez!”

Mr. Webb let a thin smile appear. “I accept your apology. And don’t forget to show up sober every day in here. It’s one of my pet peeves, kids showing up drunk or high or both.”

“Man, I’m an athlete. I don’t do any of that stuff.” Ali was already acting like he was cool again. Good. It meant he could be reasoned with, after a fashion.

For his part, Mr. Webb knew not to press too far. “I’m glad to hear that. I hope you set a fine example as a scholar-athlete.” Ali, Adam, and Efraim laughed at that one. So be it. Nobody looked surprised that those three acted the way they did.

Veronica Carranza raised her hand. Mr. Webb nodded at her. She said, “Scarcity is the foundation of economics. It is the problem of unlimited wants and limited resources. Scarcity refers to how there are insufficient productive resources to fulfill all wants and needs.”

“Nice reading, Veronica. What does that mean in your own words?”

Veronica grinned. “Ahh… ahh… I don’t know?”

Celina Castillo, who sat next to Veronica at a table with Maria Cardenas and Victor De Leon, raised her hand. “It means that there’s not enough to go around.”

Ali re-engaged with a self-promotion. “There’s plenty of me to go around.”

Mr. Webb responded, “So, you’re saying that you’re entirely up for grabs? Free to anyone that asks?”

“Hell no! You got to pay to take your turn!”

“Can such payments be regulated and enforced?”

“My boys got my back on this one.” Seconded and carried, Adam and Efraim.

“Ah, then there is a scarcity of you. If there’s the ability to control access to you via a price structure, then you are scarce. If everyone had an Ali-”

“Barf!” Veronica said what everyone else was thinking.”

“If everyone had an Ali, then there truly would be plenty of you to go around, and there’d be no money in charging to get to you.”

Adam was ready with a betrayal. “Ali removal services would clean up, though.”

“Indeed they would, Adam.”

“Hey!” Ali looked like he was about to go all Three Stooges on Adam for realizing a business opportunity of that nature.

Annie Zhao and Janice Fung looked very confused. Ester Bakhoum looked like she was having trouble whispering an explanation of what happened to them.

Mr. Webb clicked on that arrangement. ESOL. They moved in groups like that, helping each other out. From looking at how they were dressed, Mr. Webb figured that Annie and Janice were intermediate in their English speaking and Ester was more advanced. ESOL kids betrayed their familiarity with the language with their clothing, more often than not. Simple dress: basic skills. A few accessories and makeup: intermediate. A brand-name t-shirt and evidence of hair care products in play? Advanced, my good friends. Advanced.

And if they acted like Ali? 100% American. Mr. Webb was betting that Ali didn’t speak a word of Arabic. To make sure Ali didn’t disrupt things as Mr. Webb re-explained scarcity to the Cantonese girls, he looked at Ali and, changing his voice to speak from right to left, said,

“أنت مجنون.”
Ali didn’t get mad until after both Ester and Saiful Islam Zogby laughed. “Hey, what was that?”

Saiful kept laughing. “It was nothing. He just said you were crazy.” That got the others to laugh.

“Well, maybe I am a little crazy.”

With Ali feeling pleased in his craziness and not wanting to explore his Arabic deficiencies any further, Mr. Webb took on the task of working the ESOL angle. “Scarcity…” Then he got up, and held up a box of pens. He stood to one side, faced the middle of the room and said, “多少?” Then, taking the other side of the transaction, Mr. Webb pressed a few buttons on a calculator and held them up to where he used to stand.

Annie said, “Oh!”, then turned to Janice and said, “ga dou chin!”

Janice smiled and repeated, “ga dou chin!” Mr. Webb didn’t speak a word of Cantonese, so it was good to have Annie around to translate from Mandarin to Cantonese. True, they were supposed to learn in English, but Mr. Webb knew that if he tried to speak a little bit of their language, it went a long way.

Many years ago, in his second year of teaching, Mr. Webb had a student that came to his class in the fifth six weeks. The counselor said, “Tran here doesn’t speak any English at all. Try and do what you can with him.” For an entire week, Mr. Webb pointed at pages in the book and, for the same entire week, Tran blazed through those problems, nothing doing.

Obviously, Tran was not getting challenging work. Mr. Webb wanted to test his skills, so he went to a group of Vietnamese kids that were in the Algebra class. He asked, “Hey, do you guys know Vietnamese well?”

Sure, they all said they did. So Mr. Webb asked, “How do you say ‘solve this equation for x’ in Vietnamese?”

That was a stumper. “Mister, we don’t know how to teach math in Vietnamese.”

“Well, could you ask your moms and dads for me?”

The next day, they had an answer. They also said that, since there was no x in Vietnamese, that the statement should be about solving for y. Later that day, Mr. Webb handed a sheet of 20 introductory Algebra problems and said to Tran, “Làm mai bài đó để tìm hiểu ý.”

Tran blazed through the problems, handed in his worksheet, and said, in perfect California-accented English, “Here ya go, mister. They were easy.”

Everyone, Mr. Webb included, could not believe their ears. Tran spoke English, and plenty of it!

A few days later, Tran was in an Algebra class and making great grades.

Mr. Webb had two theories to explain Tran’s sudden revelation of his English skills. The first was that, by going out of his way to speak a little Vietnamese, Tran would meet him half-way and speak a little English. By speaking a little Vietnamese, Mr. Webb would have shown Tran to not be afraid of testing out his knowledge.

The second theory was that Mr. Webb’s Vietnamese was so bad, there was no way that Tran’s English would sound worse by comparison and that, in order to not have his ears bleed from overmuch linguistic slaughter of his native tongue, Tran would resort to as much English as possible to keep Mr. Webb from subjecting Vietnamese to any further tortures.

In weighing the theories, Mr. Webb gave more precedence to the latter one. It would always be easier for a student to try and speak English than for Mr. Webb to try and learn a student’s native language, and that’s how things went.

Truth be told, though, there was some comfort in hearing familiar-ish tones, even if they weren’t perfectly put. And for a big white guy to be making an effort with their language instead of yelling at them to learn English, well, such gestures were welcome, indeed. Teller High was a multicultural place, and every welcome gesture counted.

Back to the scarcity issue, Mr. Webb explained, “If you have to pay for something, it is scarce. If there is no cost for it, it is not scarce. Do you understand?”

They all nodded, even kids that spoke good English, but who were just a little slow. Victor De Leon asked, “Can you say those every time, mister? Your definitions are better than the ones in the book. They’re shorter.”

“Well, ideally, they’ll be what you’re able to say. I have never liked copying definitions out of a book except as a form of torture. I want you to learn, so I want you to take the words from the book and translate them into words of your own, words that you can use and understand.”

Victor nodded like he was pretending to understand. Then he looked at Celina’s notes to see what she put down.

Nigel Jackson, who sat in a low, comfortable chair in the front, raised his hand. “Say, do we have to copy down all these notes?”

Mr. Webb said, “Only if you want to. I give a certain amount of class participation points for having notes. If you think you know them well enough to make useful comments in class, then I give you points for the good comments, and you won’t need to show me notes, if that’s how you want to roll.”

“Good.” Nigel shut his book and capped his pen. “I’d rather answer questions than write notes.”

“Just make sure your comments are appropriate for class. When you make an inappropriate comment or cause a disruption, I take away points.”

Ali piped up. “Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa. When does this start?”

“Already has. I suppose I should tell Coach Sheppard that you’re already failing my class with a negative five.”

“Mister, I’m sorry. Really. I didn’t know. Give me another chance.” The desperation in Ali’s voice was hilarious to all who heard it.

“Ha. You did know, you were just banking on the general lax enforcement of rules here in the first two weeks to get away with as much as you could, Ali. You’ll get your chance when you earn it. What’s a shortage, Ali? And don’t read it to me from the book. Your own words.”

“Mister, how about I just do my notes and show you at the end of class?”

“I do notebook checks on Friday, not before. Your only way out of the hole you dug with your mouth is with that same tool. What’s a shortage?”

“Umm… the opposite of surplus. How do I make that shorter?”

“Start by explaining what a surplus is.”

“Umm… uhh… It’s, ahh…” Ali read the definition to himself. “It’s, ahh… when there’s more stuff than what people need.”

“And the opposite?”

“When there’s not enough stuff.”

“Right. And now you’re not failing.”

“Can you tell Coach Sheppard now?”

“I didn’t tell him anything yet, and no news is good news to him. But back to a shortage. It’s when there’s not enough of something to satisfy everyone’s needs. It’s when the price goes up very quickly, because there’s not enough of it.”

Nigel had a connection. “Like in an auction, when there’s something really rare.”

“Right. Bidding goes up on that.”

Ali found a way to earn points and glorify himself at the same time. “So since there’s only one of me, there’s not plenty to go around. There’s a shortage of me, right? So let the bidding commence.”

“That’s only if more than one person is willing to bid on you.”

Ali made an appeal to the ladies of the class. “Well? Any takers? I promise the best homecoming, ever.”

Silence.

Mr. Webb brought it back to the topic at hand. “So it would seem there’s a surplus of you at this time.”

“Wait until they get to know me.”

“We shall see.”

They talked a little more about Economics, but time ran out for the period, so Mr. Webb put on some Jay Chou, causing Annie and Janice to start laughing excitedly. Ester joined in the fan reaction: obviously, she shared more than just an ESOL class with her friends. Then Mr. Webb put on “Ay Te Dejo en San Antonio” by Flaco Jimenez and all the Mexican kids fell over, laughing.

Efraim said, “Mister, that’s old people music. You got anything, like, from this century?”

Olga Tañón’s “Me Cambio Por Ella” was Mr. Webb’s musical response. Efraim smirked, not happy with the song’s utter lack of gangsta rap, but Maria, Veronica, and Celina were singing along as Victor danced an expert merengue with an imaginary partner.

But Mr. Webb won everyone over when he fired up War’s “Low Rider”. Efraim gave him a fist bump on the way out and everyone was smiling.

So far, so good. Mr. Webb added Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” to the playlist and went back out into the hallway to guide in his fourth period.