Wiggins

Ripple Effect

Revisado: 09-14-20 El oyente recibió este título gratis

Aliens and jesters. An ox eyeball, octopus testicles, and Bunsen burners. Cigarettes and, if you know who to contact, a spliff (*WTH is a ‘spliff’? … google search … Oh, okay, spliff = joint; aka: wacky-tobacky*). So, where would one find these elements coexisting in one place? In high school of course! And, sadly, you’ll find politics as well. Yes, even in education there exists politics and its closest kin and allies: funding, cronyism, and hierarchy.

Teachers like main character Robert Jeffrey, “Mr. J”, and the myriad other novices who are still optimistic and starry-eyed, still pondering what makes a teacher great, commingle with veteran teachers who are now jaded after years of witnessing numerous stars in their eyes blink out or go supernova. Together they form a scholastic milieu of teachers, staff, and students, each trying to achieve the same goal at Birch Green high school: knowledge attained. But teachers and staff juxtaposed with students reveals the victories and failures of both, the resentments of both, and yet the necessity and ultimately the fruition of both. Some succeed and thrive with knowledge attained, others engage in a mano-a-mano battle of wills… students and teachers and staff alike.

“Where do bullies come from?” Personally, I think the better questions are: How are bullies made? How are they perpetuated? And what constitutes a bully? The definition of ‘bully’: "a person who hurts, frightens, or tyrannizes over those who are smaller or weaker." By this definition even teachers can be considered bullies. Preposterous, right? No, not really. It’s all relative depending on the viewpoint of the observer. A student may experience pain, fear, or tyranny at the hand of another student. So too can a student feel pain, fear, or tyranny under the command of a teacher. Teacher Robert Jeffrey is no exception to the technicalities governing the definition of bully: “As far as you’re concerned, we are the law,” Mr. J spouts the school’s ‘code-of-conduct’ dogma to his students. Certainly, at the very least, a few of his students view Mr. Jeffrey as an authoritarian fully capable and willing to induce fear among his ‘subjects’. Just as Mr. Jeffrey lumps a few of these very students in the same light.

While reading "So What! Stories or Whatever!" I was, on occasion, disturbed by the reactions from some of the teachers and administration in response to problematic, and sometimes illegal, matters. Unfortunately, this depiction of hot-button issues is all too often a reflection of reality. Perhaps that was author G J Griffiths’ intention, to spotlight these retrograde dilemmas in the hopes that we continue to progress from them and strive toward achieving better institutions of learning and find a way to retrieve those most vulnerable students – like those labeled ‘bully’, ‘dirty little madam’, ‘alien’, ‘jester’, ‘histrionic’ – and then lift them from the established breakdown of our communal and collective moral fiber.

Narrator David Smith was a delight, and I thought he read the story beautifully.

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