"Sahib," Remo said. "Bwana Sahib."
"Well, Mr. Sahib, you'll be happy to know that Tyrone is doing just fine."
"I beg your pardon," Remo said.
"Tyrone Walker is doing just fine."
"Tyrone Walker is a living time bomb," Remo said. "It is just a matter of when he explodes and hurts someone. He is a functional illiterate, barely housebroken. How can he be doing fine?"
As he spoke, Remo had started to come up out of his chair and Shockley's hand moved slowly toward the Magnum. He relaxed as Remo sat back in the seat.
"It's all right here, Mr. Sahib. And computers never lie. Tyrone is at the top of his class in language arts, near the top in word graphic presentation, and in the top twentieth percentile in basic computational skills."
"Let me guess," Remo said. "That's reading, writing, and arithmetic."
Shockley smiled a small smile. "Well, in the old days, it was called that. Before we moved into new relevant areas of education."
"Name one," Remo said.
"It's all right here in one of my books," Shockley said. He waved his left hand toward a shelf of books directly behind his left shoulder. "Adventures in Education-An Answer to the Question of Racism in the Classroom."
"You wrote that?" Remo asked.
"I've written all these books, Mr. Sahib," Shockley said. "Racism on Trial, Inequality in the Classroom, The Black Cultural Experience and its Effect on Learning, Street English-A Historical Imperative."
"Have you written anything about how to teach kids to read and write?"
"Yes. My masterwork is considered Street English, A Historial Imperative. It tells how the true English was the black man's English and the white power structure changed it into something it was never meant to be, thereby setting ghetto children at a disadvantage."
"That's idiotic," Remo said.
"Is it? Did you know that the word 'algebra' is itself an Arabic word? And the Arabs are, of course, black."
"They'd be interested in hearing that," Remo said. "What's your answer to this disadvantage of ghetto children in learning English?"
"Let us return to the true basic form of English, Street English. Black English, if you will."
"In other words, because these bunnies can't talk right, make their stupidity the standard by which you judge everybody else?"
"That is racist, Mr. Sahib," Shockley said indignantly.
"I notice you don't speak this Street English," Remo said. "If it's so pure, why don't you?"
"I have my educational doctorate from Harvard," Shockley said. His nostrils pinched tighter together as he said it.
"That's no answer. Are you saying you don't speak Street English because you're smart enough not to?"
"Street English is quite capable of being understood on the streets."
"What if they want to get off the streets? What if they need to know something more than 127 different ways to shake hands? What happens when they go into the real world where most people talk real English? They'll sound as stupid and backward as that clerk of yours out there." Remo waved toward the door, outside which he could still imagine the woman sitting at the desk, worrying to death the seven words on the cover of Essential Magazine, the Journal of Black Beauty.
"Clerk?" said Shockley. His eyes raised in a pair of question marks.
"Yes. That woman out there."
Shockley chuckled. "Oh. You must mean Doctor Bengazi."
"No, I don't mean Doctor anybody. I mean that woman out there who can't read."
"Tall woman?"
Remo nodded.
"Big frizzy do?" Shockley surrounded his hair with his hands.
Remo nodded.
Shockley nodded back. "Doctor Bengazi. Our principal."
"God help us all."
Remo and Shockley looked at each other for long seconds without speaking.
Finally Remo said, "Seeing as how nobody wants to teach these kids to read or write, why not teach them trades? To be plumbers or carpenters or truckdrivers or something."
"How quick you all are to consign these children to the scrap heap. Why should they not have a full opportunity to share in the riches of American life?"
"Then why the hell don't you prepare them for that full opportunity?" Remo asked. "Teach them to read, for Christ's sake. You ever leave a kid back?"
"Leave a child back? What does that mean?"
"You know. Fail to promote him because his work isn't good enough."
"We have done away with those vestigial traces of racism. IQ tests, examinations, report cards, promotions. Every child advances with his or her peer group, socially adept, with the basic skills of community interaction attuned to the higher meaning of the ethnic experience."
"But they can't read," Remo yelled.
"I think you overstate the case somewhat," Shockley said, with the satisfied smile of a man trying to impress the drunken stranger on the next bar stool.
"I just saw your salutatorian. He can't even color inside the lines."
"Shabazz is a very bright boy. He has indigenous advancement attitudes."
"He's a frigging armed robber."
"To err is human. To forgive divine," Shockley said.
"Why didn't you forgive him then and change the date of graduation for him?" Remo asked.
"I couldn't. I just changed it to another date and I couldn't make any more changes."
"Why'd you change it the first time?"
"For the valedictorian."
"What's he going up for?" Remo asked.
"It is a she, Mr. Sahib. And no, she is not going to jail. However, she is going to enjoy the meaningful experience of giving birth."
"And you moved up the graduation so she wouldn't foal on the stage?"
"That's crude," Shockley said.
"Did you ever think, Mr. Shockley…"
"Doctor Shockley. Doctor."
"Did you ever think, Doctor Shockley, that perhaps it's your policies that reduce you to this?"
"To what?"
"To sitting here, barricaded in your office behind a metal fence, a gun in your hand. Did it ever occur to you that if you treated your kids as humans, with rights and responsibilities, they might act like humans?"
"And you think I could do this by 'leaving them, back,' as you so quaintly put it?"
"For a start, yeah. Maybe if the others see that they've got to work, they'll work. Demand something from them."
"By leaving them back? Now I'll give you an example. Each September, we take one hundred children into the first grade. Now suppose I was to leave back all one hundred because they were unable to perform satisfactorily on some arbitrary test of learning experience…"
"Like going to the bathroom," Remo interrupted.
"If I were to leave back all hundred, then next September I would have two hundred children in the first grade and the September after that, three hundred children. It would never stop and after a few years I would be running a school in which everyone was in the first grade."
Remo shook his head. "That presupposes that all of them would be left back. You really don't believe that these kids can be taught to read or write, do you?"
"They can be taught the beauty of black culture, the richness of their experience in America, and how they overcame degradation and the white man's slavery, they can be taught…"
"You don't believe that they can be taught to learn anything," Remo said again. He stood up. "Shockley, you're a racist, you know that? You're the worst racist I ever met. You'll accept anything, any garbage, from these kids because you don't think they're capable of doing any better."
"I? A racist?" Shockley chuckled and pointed to the wall. "There is my award for promoting the ideals of brotherhood, equality, and black excellence, presented to me on behalf of a grateful community by the Black Ministry Council. So much for racism."
"Where does that computer say Tyrone is now?"
Shockley checked the small screen, then punched another button on its keyboard. "Room 127, Advanced Communications."