Kaspian Lost by Richard Grant

Author:Richard Grant [Grant, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci Fi & Fantasy
ISBN: 9780380799534
Google: YV6oPQAACAAJ
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2001-07-02T23:00:00+00:00

He saw Charity out in the field later that day, but she was with a couple of her girlfriends. Kaspian just stood and watched them from a distance, though he had been hoping to get a chance to talk to her. He wondered what Charity would think about Ver­non, all the drugs he was taking. He wasn't sure why this both­ered him so much—it was none of his business, actually—but his mind kept coming back to it. He kept thinking that he saw new things, different things, in Vernon's behavior, even his appearance—a different sort of roundness in the shape of his face. Maybe it was crazy. All in Kaspian's head. Like so much else. Though not everything. Damn it. Not everything. On the way back to his room he ran headlong into a parade of grown-ups, being drum-majored up the sidewalk by Jasper C. Winot himself. There were seven or eight of them in all, not instructors but older and better-dressed people who might have been business pals of Der Chef. A bunch of well-heeled go-getters. Kaspian hustled his butt out of their way before they flattened him.

"I try to impress upon all my people," Winot was saying, waving an arm that almost smacked Kaspian on the forehead, "the classroom is a marketplace, just like any other. The com­modity of value is knowledge. And if we can get the students to regard knowledge as a commodity—something they can ac­quire, add value to, and trade at a profit—then the whole process of education takes care of itself."

One of the others, a middle-aged woman in a red dress, said, "That sounds well and good, Chopper. But what does it mean to the teachers on the front line? You're going to have to spell it out persuasively if you want to move the fence-straddlers. We sit up there every day listening to finely tuned rhetoric, from both sides of the aisle, and let me tell you, the opposition is slicker than owl shit. They've got the studies. They've got the statistics. You need something a little more compelling than the genius of the marketplace."

Winot stopped walking, turned to face the woman in red and gave her an extraspecial smile. Kaspian could tell from hall a dozen paces away that the cattle baron was not going to let owl shit go unanswered.

"Ruby," he said, "you are a great American and a stellar Representative, but I wonder if you've been spending too much of your time up there on the Hill. Let me just throw an example your way. Down at our Richardson campus—"

"That's in Texas?" a man said.

"Texas." Winot nodded. "Down in Richardson, Texas, we've got a pilot program utilizing something we call Achieve­ment Points, or A-chiPs. Now, these A-chiPs are tokens, like real money, and students can earn them any number of ways. For instance by getting good grades on tests—three chips for an A, one for a B—or by doing an excellent science project, or by turning in an outstanding English report.

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