(Severe-looking
schoolmistress faces a family of four)
Schoolmistress:
Welcome to the Industrial Revolution Charter School. You made the right decision in enrolling with
us: our philosophy is that there will be no whiny, weak, sissy-baby children or
parents in any of the families who participate in our program. Any signs of cowardice or self-pity will be
drilled out of you with our regime of good old-fashioned backbreaking labor and
deprivation.
(Family of four
move to a two-room shack and sleep on the floor. At 4:00 a.m., Schoolmistress blows a whistle
by their ears)
Schoolmistress:
Rise and shine before the sun does, my lovelies! Move!
Move! Move!
(The family
rushes through their breakfast of cold gruel and walk five miles to school in
the pre-dawn hours, accompanied by Schoolmistress shouting encouragement from
her buggy)
Schoolmistress:
Literally uphill both ways! Ahahahahaha!
(The school is a
factory)
Schoolmistress:
Today, children, you will be using your wee fingers to run thread through
machines for 14 hours, while Mom and Dad will be using whichever developed
muscles they may or may not have to haul coal and work the assembly line of
whatever textile is being manufactured here.
There will be one 15-minute break for food, but you will then need to
make that time up at the end of the day.
Even though this is school, you technically are working so you will each
receive 12¢ by shift’s end – I suggest you spend it on food to fuel yourselves
for the next day of work.
(As the family
work in the factory, Schoolmistress issues orders through a bullhorn from the
upstairs office)
Schoolmistress:
Faster! No slackening the pace or you’ll
be terminated! Just push any creative or
lazy thoughts out of your mind and focus on the task at hand! You’re not being paid to dream on duty!
(At the end of
the day, the exhausted family walk home through coal dust for the full
effect. They collapse on the floor of
the shack’s main room)
Schoolmistress:
Just what do you think you’re doing? The
floors aren’t going to scrub themselves, that rug’s needed beating for hours,
dinner needs to be whipped up, clothes need to be wrung out, and lice need to
be searched for! On the double,
slackers!
(The family
members scatter to their chores; hours later, they collapse on the floor of
their shared bedroom)
Schoolmistress:
Right, you get five hours of sleep – don’t waste them.
(At the end of
the program)
Schoolmistress:
I have not heard one complaint from this family, and they will now be able to view
any so-called disaster as the mild-disturbance it really is. They have truer characters now than they ever
would have had they been allowed to continue the way they were behaving
previously 24/7.
(Previously)
Daughter: I
don’t wanna go to school!
Son: I don’t
wanna clean my room!
Mom: I don’t
wanna face my life of emptiness!
Dad: I don’t
wanna sit through another activity of middle-class comfort!
(Presently)
Family of Four:
[Silence of gratitude for their daily bread and rest]
Schoolmistress:
See? A sense of perspective always
silences entitled whining.
