Deadline by Chris Crutcher

Author:Chris Crutcher
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2007-07-09T06:00:00+00:00

Twelve

One class we don’t get a break on during football season is Coach’s. As intense as he is on the field, that’s how intense he is as a teacher. “Football is a game,” he says, “but your education is your life.” So we’re sitting in his Literature That Means Something class. It’s an elective and I think he created it partially to offset Current Events. Lambeer is a teacher who cares what you think. Coach cares how you think. The class focuses on fiction, but if you can make a case for the literary value of any non-fiction book, he’ll give you credit. Then you have to make a class presentation sometime during the quarter and the more discussion you generate, the better your grade. He warns you when you sign up that you’d better be serious.

“There are advantages to attending a small school,” he said a few months ago on the first day of class. “Small classes, lots of individual attention, all that. But subject material is necessarily limited and if you get a bad teacher for, say English, you’ve got him four years and there’s no escape. By the way, if you happen to think you got a bad teacher for English, I encourage you to keep it to yourself. The most important commodity you can take on to college with you is the ability to think logically, to organize your ideas and present them orally or on paper. Learn to do that and you’ll fool a lot of profs. I’m tempted to say you’ll thank me for putting you through what I’m going to put you through in this class, but you are teenagers, subhuman forms that don’t thank anyone for anything until it’s way too late. Just kidding.”

So today I have my hand in the air because I haven’t had a lot of luck getting my point of view across in Lambeer’s class. “I want to change my book to The Autobiography of Malcolm X.” There is a collective groan, not for any bias against Malcolm, I think, but for the repetition.

Coach smiles. “Like I told you earlier, I’ve heard about your obsession with Malcolm.”

“What? Where did you hear that? What obsession? It’s not an obsession. Malcolm is my life. I live and breathe Malcolm. But it’s not an obsession.”

“In the teachers’ lounge,” he says. “Mr. Lambeer tells me you’re trying to hijack the curriculum.”

“Well, it ain’t working,” I say, “so I’ll try here.”

“There is no curriculum here,” Coach says.

“Which makes it all the easier to hijack.”

“Might I remind you,” he says, “that The Autobiography of Malcolm X is close to five hundred pages? We’re over halfway through the semester. You’re going to have to read like the wind. What were you reading? David Sedaris, right? You sure you want to give that up?”

I don’t tell Coach I’m rereading Malcolm X so it won’t take that long. He’s right: I was reading Sedaris, because I consider him a true American. First of all he’s, like, as

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.