Daaaa de de da ts ts daaa de de da ts ts oh the star maker says it all ain’t so bad…
Oh, how wonderful a school this is! What an opportunity this is to hear the Spizzwinks acapella sing this wonderful song called Spaceman! Could it be just a coincidence that they invited this acapella group right on the date of my visit? Oh, how wonderfully they sing this song! The dees and daas and steady rhythmic beatboxing fill my ears with a wonderful steady stream of twinkle and sunshine! Oh, I just can’t stop a smile from infiltrating my face as I hear this wonderful music! Did I hear him correctly? Did he really just whisper, “Dude can the assembly just end alreadyyyy. It’s already ten forty fiveeeee.” Just like this wonderful song, attending this school must be such a wonderful experience!
This is the place I’ve been dreaming of all my life! This is the place where I can finally expand myself intellectually, where I can finally meet students that are actually interested in all the abstract theory like Kant’s categorical imperative that so interests me, where the modus operandi of learning is discussion and writing and reading and self-discovery, not those sluggish and oversimplified lectures enumerating all the organelles of a cell, not those hundreds of mind-numbing Quizlet flashcards that drive the nail of knowledge straight into your brain. Critical thinking! Creativity! Collaboration! Argumentation! All of which are so valued at this school. This is the school where leaders, intellectuals, inventors, and writers are made, where learned individuals aren’t given that contemptuous, all-purpose label “nerd”. Because unlike the North Allegheny Intermediate High School where I come from, this school is a LIBERAL ARTS school!
And it gets even better than that… This school is not just a place to learn but a COMMUNITY. It says it all on their website:
Our Guiding Principles of honesty, kindness, respect, responsibility and safety underpin everything we do, ensuring that our students become not only good scholars, but also good friends, good people and good citizens who give back to their communities
Oh, how great people everyone must be! Unlike those blasphemous students at North Allegheny, the students at this school live the SHADY SIDE WAY, not the North Allegheny way… To know that I would be warmly welcomed into this community of honest, kind, respectful, responsible, and safe people certainly is reassuring.
And everything I saw as I shadowed my student just so confirms this… Spanish class: all the students were working hard on their VHL language assignments, practicing their verb conjugations. Why are some of them pulling out iMessage on their laptops?? Trigonometry and introductory calculus class: students astutely paid attention to the teacher and took notes as she guided them to discover trigonometry identities. Why is this reminding me of those awful math lectures I had to go through at North Allegheny? Foundations of Literature and Writing class (It’s even in the name!—the intellectualism of this school that is… Of all the things schools could name their classes that teach students to read and write about stories and plays and poems, almost every goddamned school in the United States decided to name them English classes. How expressive! As if these classes were nothing more than the meticulous study of the syntax, morphology, phonetics, phonology, typology, and topology of random works of literature. But no, Shady Side Academy is different: they use the words LITERATURE and FOUNDATIONS, showing a clear respect for the grand ideas of the grand intellectuals. At this point, I’m already sold. Here I come, Shady Side Academy!): students diligently read aloud passages from Homer’s Odyssey and discussed their meaning around a Harkness table (Oh, how delightful these tables are! The sheer intellectualism they exude!). Where are the echos coming from? This can’t be an echo chamber… Chemistry class: students worked diligently on a quiz before performing an experiment to hydrate and dehydrate copper sulfate. Well that’s kind of odd… this class is almost a bit too nonchalant. Lunch period: the friends of the student I shadowed warmly welcomed me to their table and, oh, how a delightful time I had talking with them! These are truly intellectual, hard-working, honest, kind, respectful, responsible, and safe people.
I can’t wait to get my arts liberalized!
Here I am, in the second year of my life at the Academy, and I still love this school very much? How nice this school is to give out free ice cream, donuts, croissants, peanut butter chocolate wafers, and bagels on almost every occasion every week—it really demonstrates their guiding principle of kindness. At the beginning of the school year, the Parents Association distributed free ice cream—I got the quite sugary option: an ice cream sandwich with actual cookies in place of those soft disgusting brownie wafers that sandwich usually the cream. MMMmmmmm… what a delight it was! Apparently, this ice cream distribution was supposed to be part of something called an “ice cream social,” whatever that means. Why do you need to be social when you could enjoy these frosty delights instead??? I see that most students agree with me: we just pluck our sweet frosty treats from the iced cooler and skedaddle.
And every Tuesday, I see more distributors coming in: that army of students who have promised to bring some kind of delightful sweet treat for their entire Advisory group to enjoy between 10:00 and 10:30 AM. Occasionally on Thursdays, the Parent Association even brings in free bagels for the entire school to enjoy—and WITH cream cheese! What more could you ask for? Oh, and in my French class, the teacher stocks a box with a whole bunch of snacks like pretzels and oreos, which we enjoy together if it so happens that the class meets in temporal proximity of lunch. Sometimes, the school cafeteria even joins in this popular fat and sugar fad! They prepare for us some of the most delightful treats, unlike that mass-produced sugar slop served in public schools…
This one time, they served us a rather exotic dessert: brown slop! (No, this wasn’t just sugar slop, for it had some kind of brown-sugar crumble in it.) This one student enjoyed this delicacy so much he helped himself to three of those brown slops! (Along with one cake, which was served alongside the slop.) Of course, me being a gourmet connoisseur, I couldn’t resist trying at least one of those odd-looking exotic slops. When I scooped a large lump (with a piece of crumble) and slurped it into my mouth, I felt such a burst of sugar, as if all my taste buds simultaneously tongue-piercingly screamed “SUGAAARRR” at me, I almost choked—it was that good! Unfortunately, I couldn’t eat any more of it because of how transforming that gastronomical experience was…
Anyways, today I went down to the Robotics Room to see what the Robotics Club was doing, and, oh my, someone brought in a treasure trove of snacks! A giant bag of Oreos, rice crackers from that one Chinese company with the logo of a chubby baby, Multigrain Crispy Rolls, Shiroi Koibito cookies, Hershey and Mr. Goodbar bars, Skittles, Bakakukkīs, Merde-Gâteaus, Niàobǐnggān—you name it! Oh, we stuffed ourselves to death! We so quickly eviscerated everything down our gullets that, by the end of the club meeting, one of the members said, “How did we eat so many Oreos!?” How DID we eat so many oreos? It surprised me as well… We just laid in that rainbow battlefield of plastic and paper wrappers for a while after that…
I should really stop accepting these packets of sugar and fat every time someone hands one to me… Mnnnomnomnmmnn Perhaps I should limit them to once a week… Mnnommslmnlmnsl But I just can’t mnonnmonmm resist the soothing action of sugar and fat down the gullet…
Today is the big day: my Philosophy class is having its final discussion on Flowers for Algernon! I’ve been waiting for this day all my time at the Academy! This is finally the time for me to shine intellectually, because we are going to have a very intellectual and meaningful discussion about all the thematic lines in Flowers for Algernon—this is exactly what I came to the Academy for after all.
The previous discussions were quite nonchalant, and that’s kind of expected since we hadn’t yet finished reading the book. We were sort of pushed to read it in a miniscule two weeks, so it’s expected not everyone would be on the same page. But now that we all finished the book and the whole picture is in our heads, surely there will be some more interesting discussions going around… After all, isn’t this supposed to be a discussion class? It says it all in the syllabus:
Given the nature of a discussion-based class, it is essential that all members of the class are engaged and participate regularly (20%).
COME ON CHAPS! Get your move on! Active and meaningful participation in class discussions constitute 20% of our grade! Twenty whole percentage points! I better see some better performance today now that we are actually on the same page…
Anyways, it is 1:18 PM and it is time to enter the philosophy classroom. With overflowing giddy excitement and the book in hand, I enter the classroom, ready to pounce on the discussion. Oh, I’m so excited! It’s so hard to resist just jumping up and down and screaming with a high pitch, “EEeeEEEEEE.” The other students must be so prepared for this as well–
“Yo Maria, did you hear? The South Korean president just started a rebellion,” Rocco said.
“Yeah… gosh, this world is going crazy, like everything bad that can happen is happening right now.”
Odd… Well, I shouldn’t let this discourage me. What’s so wrong about talking about the geopolitical and economic state of the world right now anyways? Nothing but small talk—shows that they understand the book so well that they have nothing in the book to talk about before the discussion. I suppose knowing about what’s going on in this world is more important than this one book that we’ll probably all forget in a few years. Oh, there’s our teacher, Mr. Smith! Better get ready for our discussion guys–
Everyone starts pulling out their laptops.
Why do we need our laptops all of the sudden?? This is a BOOK discussion, not a laptop discussion… Well, I suppose they’re just taking notes on our discussion… After all, what we’re going to discuss is pretty important stuff that we would want to remember for the journals we need to write. And most of the time when a teacher asks a student to close their laptops during a lecture, they usually respond that they are “just taking notes”. Yeah, that must be it. What hard working students these are! Even without the teacher forcing them, they start taking notes!
The start of the discussion goes well. Mr. Smith starts it off by asking what everyone thinks about the way Norma treated Charlie during his reunion with his mother. We discuss our opinions on this question and soon reach a consensus that Norma was not acting completely altruistically toward Charlie.
Yes! This is the kind of discussion I’ve always been looking for, and I’m finally participating in one! I mean, I personally somewhat disagree with this consensus if you read and empathize with Norma’s dialogue on a deeper level, but we were nonetheless able to build a consensus—an immense feat compared to what we were able to achieve in those nonchalant discussions we had before. Those discussions must have merely been anomalies created from the stress of the high workloa–
“So why is this moment full circle for Charlie?” Mr. Smith asks the class. The class turns silent except for Avery and Ainsley’s furious typing—they must be taking such great notes! What hard workers, transcribing the entire discussion! The class stares dumbfoundedly at Mr. Smith until Ali speaks up:
“Why is this full circle?”
“Yeah,” Mr. Smith replies.
“I mean yeah, he’s mentally deteriorating.”
Not a bad answer… Whatever it takes to keep this discussion momentum going. Gosh, that silence almost frightened me to death: I almost thought the momentum was just gone—ran away and would never come back.
Mr. Smith continues guiding the discussion, “So who is the adult here? Who–”
“Who is the adult? Uhhhhhhh . . . ”
“Charlie?” Brynn interjects.
Phew, another crisis averted!
The discussion continues rather smoothly from there. We discuss how Charlie’s mom is not the adult because of her dementia and lack of emotional intelligence, which brings up a funny little story from Mr. Smith’s life about a helpless baby who grows up to be strong before aging into a feeble elder. We all listen intently, laughing and nodding here and there, as he tells this story. Well, I guess I really was wrong about everyone using their laptops for purposes other than note taking; they must all really be listeni–
“But what does it suggest about these things?” Mr. Smith asks. Silence. The silence impels him to propose the suggestion, “Like we come into the world as helpless as we exit this world?”
Rocco matter-of-factly adds to the discussion while looking at a map of Syria on his laptop, “Yeah, when you are born you get put into the world real helpless and then you come down, down and down–”
As if that adds anything to the discussion! You literally just repeated what Mr. Smith said! Gosh, no wonder I thought there were so many echos during that Foundations of Literature and Writing 1 discussion. And now you just killed off the discussion momentum! Thank you very much sir!
The discussion continues in this manner: Mr. Smith talks about findings in science about the different periods of life where people age the most and become feeble. He asks a question. The class stares blankly at him. He suggests an answer. The class nods. Mr. Smith talks about how Charlie forgives his mother because of this feebleness. He asks a question. The class stares blankly at him. He suggests an answer. The class nods. Mr. Smith talks more about how Charlie is the adult here due to being at the age where most people are at their prime. He asks a question. The class stares blankly at him. He suggests an answer. The class nods.
“So who can extrapolate the big picture?” Mr. Smith finally asks, expanding the scope of the discussion to the entire book.
Rocco answers as he pushes his glasses higher on his nose with his index finger, “Uhh, intelligence without appropriate EQ leads to negative results.”
How long did it take you to realize this!!?? Mr. Smith has literally been hammering this in yall’s skulls since the FIRST discussion we had on Flowers for Algernon… And not only that, you literally just restated what he’s been repeating a thousand times in literally the same words! How innovative! How helpful to our discussion! As if repeating the same things will lead to greater understanding! ;;;;.,...,;,..,.,;,.;,;,;,;lasdfahguiethuiwrtASDKJBAFO WHAT THE HECK.
I’m done.
What shams they are!—those students in my Philosophy class. Always pretending as if they understand and know what they’re talking about in discussions! Well, I can’t really blame them if they didn’t like to read and discuss Flowers for Algernon. After all, they were forced to do so by the whip of the grade and moreover in a very short amount of time. It should be expected that they would hate the book and not understand it that well. Or perhaps Academy students simply aren’t good at discussions… Whatever the case, discussions must just be an anomaly. Students still like academics, right? I mean, just look at how hard working they are!
For example: in my French class today, right when the teacher Ms. Schneider assigned the questions on pages 11-55 of Oscar et la Dame Rose, all the students simultaneously pulled out their laptops and immediately started typing. Complete silence except for typing and occasionally asking each other, in French, for French vocabulary and grammar and explanations of certain parts of the story. As one of the students explained to another how the story differentiates between physical and mental suffering, the other nodded along, listening very attentively, staring deeply into the eyes of the other student, almost as if they were listening to someone’s last words on their deathbed. Wow, they must be really engrossed in answering these questions, just like me. I mean, how can you not be engrossed in answering a question about such a profound and intellectual story? The story is like a very plump yet small grape bursting with so much intellectual sweetness. I take a bite, and out comes the philosophical ideas of life, death, faith, god, love, and mindfulness! And to know that these students are likewise as interested in these topics as me—oh, how wonderful a feeling it is to have my interests validated by others!
Ms. Schneider walks out of the room to conference with a student about their responses to a prev-
“Ugghh I CANNOT do this entire paragraph with the little French I have. Like the jump is sooo large,” Maanya complains.
“I knowww right? She should have introduced the material more gradually,” Sunny agrees.
“Like we went from filling in the blanks and doing crossword puzzles to this. Like I like the crossword puzzles but I feel like I’m improving so much more from this than I have in the previous years. Those crossword puzzles are so USELESS. UGHHH.”
“Yeah she’s just throwing so much at us so suddenly, like what are we supposed to do??? I’m literally writing the same thing over and over in my paragraph because I don’t know what to write anymore.”
What the hell did I just witness? Is this a theater or something?? An act?? Fundamentals of Theatre: Acting?? Les robots universels de Rossum?? Like flipping down a light switch, Ms. Schneider’s absence just flipped their personalities upside down. They went from hard working intellectuals to little kids complaining about literally everything that happens to them. Who are these people?? What trauma did these students have to live through to have such severe dissociative personality disorder????
And are you serious?? Ugghhh… You call such a wonderfully crafted, literary story mere “material,” as if it were no different from those mind-numbing fill-in-the-blank and crossword puzzle worksheets, which in all honesty should not be allowed at such an intellectual school as Shady Side Academy?? Where is all the intellectualism I so dreamed about before? I don’t know about you but something must be deeply wrong with the Academy—almost as if this place were Slouching Toward Actademy.
What shams they are!—those students in my French class. Always pretending as if they’re hard workers—as if they were actually interested in such a literary delight as Oscar et la Dame Rose! Well, I can’t really blame them if they hated the book. After all, it is a pretty difficult book to read. Despite my incredible language abilities, even I had to use Google Translate special language decoding abilities to fully understand what that goddamn Oscar was talking about. In fact it was so hard to read that by the end, I was thinking to myself: what the hell did I just read? Maybe that personality shift in French class is just an anomaly created by the stress of suddenly having to read something in a foreign language… Or perhaps students simply don’t like to learn French? Whatever the case, surely students don’t hate all forms of learning… Maybe students would like learning better if the content they learned related to something they liked outside of school like sports, TV shows, movies, scrolling on TikTok until 1 AM watching a sped-up hand dumping flour into a bowl, mixing water into the bowl, using a whisk to make whisked eggs, piping out icing onto a cake, adding strawberries to the cake, eating the cake, whatever it is.
And it just so happens that today at Assembly, a writer named Andrew Conte will be speaking about his book Colors of Sunday on the history of African Americans in the Steelers sports team! Oh, the hockey boys will surely like this one… As I watch them walk to the auditorium, I can just hear their beast-like chanting of STEELERS STEELERS STEELERS STEELER STEELERS during a Friday night gathering as they watch the Steelers pummel the Falcons 9-1, or however the scoring works in football. It must be such an exciting day to be alive for all the sports fans at the Academy! They are going to have such a field day hearing from THE author of THE book Colors of Sund-
“I hope this assembly is short,” someone mutters as I take my seat in the auditorium.
Huh? I mean I kind of wish this Assembly to be short as well—I have a lot of assignments due too, but give this speaker a chance. He’ll probably blow your mind with how much he knows about sports…
Assembly starts with JT Huff (THE sports guy by the way: Every time I see him on his laptop, sports. Every time I have a conversation with him, sports. This dude literally lives off sports.) introducing Andrew Conte:
“...Conte got his PhD from Point Park University and wrote the book Colors of Sunday on the role of African Americans in the Steelers football team. I personally liked the book because I like sports, so it was cool to see how the Steelers evolved over time…” he reads out loud from a piece of paper in front of him without looking up at the audience. After a long five minute monologue, he ends, “Please welcome Dr. Andrew Conte.” The audience claps.
Conte takes the stage and starts by talking about how he interviewed some young Steelers fans and asked them to write down three words that describe themselves. He asks the audience to take out their phones for a few seconds and jot down three words that describe them.
Wow. Integrating some audience engagement into the talk, ey? Those hockey boys will definitely like this, constantly talking about how teachers should integrate more interactivity into their teaching… But if there were three words to describe myself… I don’t know… Maybe creative, empathetic, and rebellious? Well, I personally couldn’t really care less about sports, so I’ll just use this opportunity to study some Organic Chemi–
Everyone was scrolling through Twitter, iMessages, emails, Instagram reels, and TikTok.
Guys… this isn’t hard… just give him a chance… he’ll talk about some interesting things about the sports teams I know you all like to watch for hours on end at home… God, this generation really is doomed… Those scientists were right when they said the new generations’ attention span is nearing that of a goldfish. Can’t you all just disconnect yourself from this brainrot for even a few seconds?
Conte continues, “All right, since I’m obligated to say this, please put your phones away now. Thank you. Alright, so we live in divisive times right now. Everything is trying to divide us and polarize us—can anyone name any examples?”
Nice reference to a modern trend! That’ll get the attention of the audience! I don’t know what it is but for some reason, students at the Academy just LOVE to hear about modern things in their classes. Like, it’s completely irrational: who would want to constantly hear 24 hours a day 7 days a week about the war in Ukraine and Syria and think to oneself how doomed the world is? And yet, students so love to hear about this stuff that one of the United States History teachers gives their students current events presentation assignments. And not only that, what a way to engage the audience! Just listen to the enthusiastic shouts of the audience as they inundate Conte with examples of societal polarization! I knew it! All students needed was a topic pertinent to their personal interests to spark their intellectual curiosi–
“But this was not the first time people were divided. The Steelers were divided too based on lines of race,” Conte transitions to the topic of his book.
“Oh shit, it’s not the first time?” someone mutters sarcastically.
Conte continues to talk about how the Pittsburgh Courier was the nation’s first black newspaper and how this newspaper reported on a brave black sailor who shot down Japanese planes during Pearl Harbor despite not being allowed to. He advances the slideshow to a photo of the newspaper he just described.
“Oh wow, that was good,” another person mutters unenthusiastically.
Conte goes through the rest of his speech, only managing to eek out one single laugh from the audience in a sea of pure silence: he talks about how the Rooney Brothers recruited Bill Nunn to help them recruit players for the Steelers team, how Nunn invited the first African Americans to play in football, and how he had a great legacy. He ends with a message of encouragement to the audience to set aside all the things that divide us and focus instead on the things that make us real.
“Are there any questions?” Conte asks at the end. Utter silence.
Mrs. Sabundayo finally goes up to the podium and breaks the silence, “Let’s give Dr. Andrew Conte a round of applause.” A roar of clapping inundated the auditorium, stopping abruptly to allow Mrs. Sabundayo dismiss the audience for third period.
I greet my Organic Chemistry classmate on my way to the class, who says to me, “Hey, how ya doing, did you sleep during the presentation?”
The FIRST thing you ask me is whether I slept during the presentation? As if you expected me to say yes or something? Just how pervasive is this Slouching Toward Actademy!?!?
What… onionites they are… everyone at the Academy… Intellectual onionites… What happened to the school’s mission to help students think expansively? What’s next? The guiding principles of honesty, kindness, respect, responsibility, and safety? Even if they might not be very intellectual people, surely the students still embody these princip–
Snickering, staring, sighing as I raise my hand for the second time to ask Dr. Bowen what exactly he means by industrialization as he goes over the societal response to the rapid industrialization of the 1860s-1900s. The other students give me looks as if I were doing some embarrassing trick in front of the class. They sigh and some of them even snicker as they surreptitiously whisper to someone next to them. Some students put their faces in their hands.
“I’m still not understanding this very well. You say that industrialization is merely the mechanization of production, but then you say that these people oppose industrialization even though they only oppose the effects of industrialization, so what exactly do you mean by industrialization?” I ask Dr. Bowen.
Vido raises his hand before Dr. Bowen could speak, sitting with a straight posture as if he were the model student of the class, and he asks enthusiastically, “Can we move on?”
Yet another boring day in Philosophy class… At this point, I’ve given up on pursuing intellectualism at this school… sigh What was all the hard work I saw in these students even for then? Grades? College?
Ainsley catches my eye. She’s a really nice person with smooth, lucious, curled dark hair and bony cheeks on a squarish face. Despite such sharp facial features, her soft smooth skin supplies her with an air of kindness. Every time I walk past her in the hallways, I always see a sweet smile on her face. What a fairy! What an angel! Always talking and laughing with friends as if her everyday was a thing to be savored like a warm bowl of chicken noo–
I notice something boiling up in her as she talks with Mr. Smith. She was exuding the aura of a pressure cooker about to explode.
“Are our conversations connecting? Are they making sense?” Mr. Smith asks Ainsley.
“I don’t know… I just can’t understand all this abstract THEORY. IT'S JUST. NOT. MAKING. SENSE,” Ainsley says with a strained voice while slamming the table as if she were being strangled. There goes the pressure cooker… “LIKE, WHAT IS THE POINT OF ALL THIS ABSTRACT 4TH DIMENSIONAL STUFF!? AND DON’T GET ME STARTED ON MULTI.” Ainsley forms an L-shape with her hands, resting the thumb below the cheekbone and the rest of her fingers on her temples as if she were massaging them. Her eyelids open wide to reveal the round spheres of her eyes that form a gaze of death. LIKE WHAT IS THE POINT OF KNOWING HOW TO INTEGRATE IN THE 4TH DIMENSION!? THIS IS SO USELESS. LIKE I GET LIN ALG. I GET THIS:” Ainsley holds up a graphing calculator. “IT’S USEFUL. IT HAS APPLICATIONS.” She points to the digital whiteboard. “BUT I DON’T GET HOW THE 4TH DIMENSION IS EVER USEFUL,” she says while waving her hand around like a politician making an impassioned speech. “IT HAS NO.” slam. “APPLI–” slam. “CATIONS.” slam. “AND MRS. YAM IS MY ADVISOR AND CALLS ME A COWARD IF I DON’T TAKE MULTI AGAIN. OH MY GODDDDDD.”
Oof… There it is again… The light switch of personality… Does everyone in this school just have a light switch on their backs? You flip it on and out comes the hard-working, intelligent, focused, light-hearted, kind, honest, respectful, responsible, and safe student. You flip it off and out comes the hating, tired, anxious, frustrated, unconfident, grudgeful, contemptuous student. And it’s so predictable, just like the predictability of a calculator or robot… These students are really just Rossum’s Universal Robots in more than one sense… Seriously, what kind of trauma did these students have to go through?
“So that’s how you get F sub XY of XY. How are we here? You all went from giddy to slumber-coasting,” Mrs. Yam says, perplexed by the aura of anxiety and exhaustion that filled the room, as she goes over the solution to problem 3 on the final review problem set one.
Oh, you don’t understand my depression right now… Woe I am! The tears of my mind rain down in my soul as I try to figure out whether the local linear approximation of f(x,y) under- or over-approximates the value at x=1 and y=4. Why does everyone in this school have to be such onionites? My dreams are all destroyed. I remember the happy days listening to the Spizzwinks sing at Assembly, the blissful days when I still thought there was a spirit of intellectualism and kindness at this school, and I only plunge deeper into the depths of dark waters.
“Mmmmm mmm mmm… All right… Oh! Would any of you like some candy? I got some Hichews and some other stuff,” Mrs. Yam suggests.
“Yeah!”
“Oooohh!”
“Yes!”
“All right, I’m going to get some and you are all going to become HYPER PRODUCTIVE!” Mrs. Yam exclaims with giddy excitement as she rapidly claps her hands together. She flees the room to retrieve her candy basket.
CANDY!!!!!!!!!!!! YOOHOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!! What a cretin I was to have been in such a depressive state! Intellectualism? Guiding principles? Who needs all of these things when you can have CANDY!?? Oh, the sheer bliss! My soul is filled with a rainbow field of roses and daisies and hydrangeas and bright green grass!
Mrs. Yam returns with the candy basket. I join the flock of students encroaching on the basket. The room is filled with an aura of bliss and energy.
So it turns out something CAN be done about all the onionism at this school! On a whim, I decided to join a Consulting Club meeting because I found that my Organic Chemistry friend John was in it, and I found out that they were trying to tackle the problem of low student engagement! I guess you could call it low student engagement, but, personally, I find the word onionism better: after all, the phrase “student engagement” doesn’t capture all the social and emotional depth that “onionism” does. This isn’t a mere one-dimensional issue of engagement; it is a three-dimensional social phenomenon involving many layers of attitudes and social dynamism and behavior.
And so it was that I became a member of Consulting Club… By the way, what a joy it is to be part of the club! The mere thought of helping to create an academy that values intellectual work—that is truly genuine in all its social interactions—fills my heart with so much excitement! Oh, the ideas explode in my mind like the 4th of July firework show finales!
The club members are going through a list of questions they brainstormed for a survey on student engagement, picking out certain ones to put on the survey and revising others. I notice many of the questions lack much direction, as if they were grappling toward some foggy, ambiguous object that they presume to be student engagement, so I ask them, “So, what do you think engagement means?”
“It means being married,” Keeran responds jokingly. Everyone laughs.
“No, like student engagement.”
“I don’t think that’s legal… I mean if it’s college students…”
“Yeah…” the club leader concurs. Everyone laughs.
Is it just me or are they avoiding this question? I mean, I would think it’s pretty important to know what student engagement is before trying to gauge the amount of it in the student body… Perhaps Keeran simply couldn’t help making a joke out of it—after all, it was pretty funny, even to me…
The club moves on to consider the question: “Are you learning-focused or grade-focused, or both?”
Anya explains, “So the issue behind this question is that teachers want students to be learning-focused, and that’s why they don’t want to have an open grade book. They feel that students would be too stressed over grades if they could always see them and lose the motivation to learn for the sake of learning. But the problem is that not seeing their grades makes students equally as stresse–”
Of course! Because students are stressed from not seeing their grades, they should be able to see their grades every day of the week, as if that doesn’t suggest just how grade-focused students are… Oh yes, let’s just place the grade-book candy jar in front of all the students and let them take out of it at will, and let them revel in the sweet pleasure of a good grade and be repulsed by the disgusting slop of a bad grade, as if that would lessen their addiction to gathering up A’s as if they were Pokemon trading cards. Let them constantly be goaded by the whip of the grade as if that would make them focus on the whip less. I’m sorry, but the lack of an open grade book is actually an INCENTIVE to be less grade-focused: if you don’t want to be so stressed out by grades, then maybe you should be less grade-focused.
After Consulting Club ends, I meet up with John and ask him about his motivations for joining the club: “Why did you join Consulting Club?”
“Because I’m either going into finance or consulting for my future career, so these clubs would be a good preparation for that. Also, there’s two seniors in Consulting Club, so I can get the leadership position next year,” John responds.
“Why do you want a leadership role?”
“Because… it looks good to colleges and it’s a good experience to have.”
“Would you still do Finance Club and Consulting Club if they didn’t help you get into college?”
“Consulting? No. But Finance? Yes, because I like money. I like to see those numbers go up.”
Really… Just where can I escape all this onionism?? Here I was thinking Consulting Club would be immune from it—after all, they seemed truly interested in raising student engagement—but it turns out that they were even more wrapped up in it than most other students… And here I thought I could finally do something about this onionism… And so as I remember how giddily excited I was to be in this club, I slap myself over and over for being such an IDIOT to think that there might be one pocket—just one social pocket—that wasn’t affected by onionism.
What am I going to school for at this point? It all really is just an actademy. What did I expect out of teenage students? For them to be actually motivated by themselves? For them to actually like all the learning and guiding principles that teachers and parents constantly force on them? For them to not be so stressed and anxious? I suppose I’m just an outlier… Boys will be boys, girls will be girls, and most importantly teenagers will be teenagers. I ride my morning bus in a drowsy depression. At least here I can separate myself from all the onionism at the Actademy. 30 minutes of peace everyday, where I don’t have to think about how a cretin I was to expect anything differ–
“Bro, why did you not go to DECA?” Faaris asks Vivan.
Vivan responds, “I mean I could have last year but like DECA is so unprestigious. Like the only people that go there are…”
“Yeah… I know… Dude, hot take, you don’t need to go to college.”
“Bro, that is literally the worst take ever. This is why no one ever listens to you…”
“Like I don’t need to go to college. I can just learn things on my own. You know, grab up a book or something.”
“Oh, at least you’re not one of those trade school people, like ‘Oh, I’m going to trade school to learn to be a plumber and earn a million dollars!’” Vivan laughs at the sheer absurdity of what he just said.
“Why do you want to go to college though?”
“The content.”
“No no, like why do you want to go there?”
“To be a computer science engineer.”
“No no, like why is college important?”
“Uhhmmm………… Like, people don’t need a reason to go to college. It gets you a good degree, you know, get an MBA for a good start to life.”
A short silence intervenes before they start talking about what English classes they were put into for the next semester.
“Dude. Just get me out of this American Poetry class. I will literally take Comic Books,” Faaris complains with a suppliant voice.
“Comic class is going to look so bad on your transcript. It’s like saying ‘oh, I watched movies in junior year’ to colleges,” Vivan responds, trying to discourage him from taking the Comic class. He laughs at the sheer absurdity of what he just said.
And so it is that I discovered that everyone in this Actademy were onionites. On the first outside layer, students were hard working, diligent, kind, obedient, and intelligent. They seem to be happy to be at this school to get a good education. But that layer had holes, and, occasionally, the outer layer sheds off, revealing a deeper truth about the students’ actual attitudes: they were anxious, stressed, unconfident, hating, and frustrated. They hated much of what they did, but they still did it for the grades and ultimately for college. And on the layer below the second was a deference to authority, conformation to societal pressures, and over-competitiveness. But further below that, there’s just nothing. Null. Void. Because the psyches of these students were not built upon a strong foundation of self-awareness: they were washed onto this foreign land called Shady Side Academy by the wave of social pressure with nothing but their wits, forced to survive the hostile environment before they could even find out why they were trying to survive.
It all starts with the kind of marketing that the school disseminates on their website: it portrays the school as this place where students are pushed past their limits to excel in academics, where certain values—hard-work, community, and the Guiding Principles—are highly valued and instilled within students, where teachers can give students the same kind of guidance and discipline that parents would have given if not for their jobs, and where, at the end of the day, students are molded into a kind of modern Renaissance Man (and Woman) who will go on to succeed and create a good legacy. This would generally be repulsive to most teenagers, but it nonetheless attracts a certain kind of parent: hard-working, disciplined, and often very strict. These parents desperately want their children to succeed and do something good for the world—to go to a good college, to get a good-paying job, to start a happy family, to leave a good legacy, etc., etc.—and so they resort to sending their children away to Shady Side Academy to receive a kind of education that they believe creates people capable of success and impact. And so it is that most students are not here by their own volition; many of them were forced by their parents, if not to attend specifically the Academy, at least to attend some kind of private school that has similar culture, values, and curriculum. As one Academy alumni said in a speech during Assembly, “I hated my parents for making me come here.”
And, oh boy, did these parents really force their children to attend this school—to get good grades and simply not get into trouble. The belt, spanking, scolding, shaming, taking away phones, taking away books, taking away the gaming console, no more hanging out with friends, no more sports, additional chores—almost every kind of goad they can get their hands on, of course within certain limits. What else could create such a pervasive, strong deference to authority across the student body despite students purportedly being in their rebellious years? In the collective unconscious of the student body, disobedience and rebelliousness always implies some kind of severe punishment, no matter if the disobedience was righteous or not. One student in the McCune Dining Hall had to wait in the extremely long line twice because he managed to get himself gaslighted by Mrs. Strafalace into believing that he cut the line in his high deference to authority. And my conversation with Kyle only confirmed this more:
“Hey Kyle! What did you think about your respect Assembly presentation?” I ask Kyle.
“It was really boring. Like, I was sitting up there with my phone. Like the other presentations were also kind of boring, but they were fine. I really liked the one with the lie detector. It was really funny,” he responds.
“Why did you do jeopardy then if you thought it was so boring?”
“It was what the student council voted for. Like we had another ideas but Mrs. Myers shot it down.”
“What was the other idea?”
“We were planning to do something like family feud, but we had to do jeopardy instead, and it was kind of bad because there were so many people in it. We tried to have less people, but Mrs. Myers wanted more.
“So you were kind of forced to do the assembly?”
“We were forced to do it. Like it wasn’t a choice. If we had the choice we would not have done it.”
“Why not?”
“Because the school emphasizes the guiding principles so much. Like we don’t need another assembly about it. And I don’t think a lot of students would want to sit through an entire assembly analyzing what respect was.”
Isn’t this supposed to be a student council member who should have had at least some power among teachers? And yet, he never tries to object to Mrs. Myers’s suggestions; instead, he just accepts them even though, deep down, he strongly objects to them. Sure, there might have not been a way to avoid doing an assembly on respect at all, but he should have at least had more power to control the contents of that assembly. The sheer deference to authority here!
And when this deference combines with wider societal pressures to conform to this image of the modern Renaissance Man, which are especially prevalent in the households of the Academy parents as many of them have themselves conformed to it—pressures coming from employers who look for this kind of man (and woman) to fill their open positions, numerous success stories that tell of how billionaires like Elon Musk made their fortune by having the character traits of this kind of man, and awards both within and outside the Academy that reward this kind of man—students manage to gaslight themselves into believing all the values that the Academy constantly propounds (and I mean constantly: on almost every wall sits a poster reminding students of these values; and at almost every Assembly, these values are rewarded or honored or disseminated in one way or another), at least on a conscious level. And the conscious level is where it stops.
Because deep down, students don’t even know why they believe in these values. They say they are good values to have, and then you ask why, and they say because they make you successful, but that’s really just the same thing as saying they make you a good person. They have none of that direct or vicarious experience that forms the basis of a solid belief system—that creates real dreams and aspirations. They believe in community, and yet many of them don’t know what it truly is and implies and how it exists in reality because they lack any direct (or vicarious) experience of a deep sense of community. They believe in kindness, and yet many of them don’t know what it is because many of them have not yet experienced true and genuine kindness for themselves. Like knocking on a hollow object, I knocked on the students’ attitudes toward the Guiding Principles and the school mission, asking them what they thought about the principles and mission, and out came the same, unenthusiastic, hollow sounds, “it’s cool,” or “it’s good,” or “it’s a good foundation.” And then I asked them to elaborate, and all the students unanimously failed to do so. Perhaps Academy students are simply very secretive about things, but more than likely, students simply don’t have anything behind their belief that “it’s good” to talk about in the first place. It’s all hollow—built out of nothing but cerebral matter. An interview with Rhyley, a student leader of the junior class, about her motivations for becoming a student leader further confirms this:
“Why did you become a class leader?” I ask Rhyley.
“Well, I’ve been at SSA for such a long time, and because of that, I decided I wanted to do something for the community. You know, plan fun things for the community so that people can destress,” she responds.
“Why do you want to help the community?”
“Like I said, I’ve been here so long, so I want to give back.”
“But what exactly about your experience here made you want to give back? Just because you spend a long time somewhere doesn’t mean you have to give back.”
“Uhmmm……… I don’t know……… I want to help because this school has been good to me and I’ve had good memories here. Of course, there are flaws in this school, but that’s exactly why I want to help: I want to fix those flaws.”
“What are those good memories or good things the school has done for you?”
“Uhmmmm………… Like……… The Parkin Fellowship… It has given me a good education… It has prepared me for my future.”
“What are some of those flaws you find in the school?”
“Uhhhh……… Honestly…… I don’t know…… It needs more community building… more balance between academics and fun… just overall needs to be more fun.”
Wow! What a throwback to those times when I was still entranced by the school’s marketing scheme! It’s almost as if she just echoed exactly what the marketing department put on the school’s website: “Our Guiding Principles… [ensure] that our students become… good people and good citizens who give back to their communities.” And this echo was just as hollow as what students thought about the principles and mission because when I dug deeper into her motivations, she was at a complete loss of words. “Because it has given me a good education.” As if that isn’t practically equivalent to saying “it’s given me good things.” “It needs more community building.” As if that isn’t practically equivalent to saying “the community has flaws.” “More balance between academics and fun.” Ok, I’ll accede on this one: it was likely informed by her own stress as a student. But otherwise, her argument was practically “it’s good because it’s good” and “it’s bad because it’s bad.” Good in what way though? Bad in what way? Where is the direct or vicarious experience that informs people what is good or bad? It’s almost as if someone just said to her that they were good or bad, and she simply believed it without much fuss… An interview with Laurence about his organization Everest further confirms the role of social pressure on student beliefs:
“Hey Laurence, I heard you started the Everest organization. Why did you start it?” I ask Laurence.
“I was always kind of interested in doing it, but I only started now. I guess I wanted to help people with financial literacy,” he responds.
“Why did you want to help people with financial literacy?”
“Uhh… Like, I wanted to have an organization but personal finance literacy was the most interesting to me.”
“Why did you want to make an organization?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t really have a reason. I just wanted to do something…”
“Well you should’ve had some reason, like people don’t do things for no reason.”
“Uhhh……… Well, I guess I did have a reason but it isn’t anything so specific. I just wanted to help educate people and do something important. Like I didn’t start an organization with this specific thing in mind.”
“Why did you want to educate people and do good things?”
“I feel like……… I mean…… Like, I……………… I don’t really know but it’s a good way to use my time. I just want to do something good for others. And it’s like……… it’s like a good experience to have in high school. Like, I don’t really know how many opportunities I will really have in the future when I get older.”
This really needs little explanation. He says he wants to help educate people but then he doesn’t know why. He says he wants to start an organization but then he doesn’t really know why. He says he wants to do good but then he doesn’t really know why. And then he says that he’ll only have opportunities in high school. Of course! People suddenly lose their ability to create organizations when they become an adult. It’s not as if most successful nonprofits are started and run by people older than 20 years of age! It’s almost as if he felt social pressure to do something good in high school to show how good of a person he is, so that, ultimately, he would be accepted by his parents and society.
Therein lies the roots of the onionism at the Academy. Therein lies the roots of the Slouching Toward Actademy. Students surround themselves with the thin onion skin of hard work, Guiding Principles, and everything that makes up the modern Renaissance Man to satisfy their parents and conform to societal expectations—to not get beaten by whatever kind of whip or goad their parents use. But deep inside, at the core of the onion, is just nothing—air, void. Nothing within supports the weight of the outer layers. And so when times are rough, when the weather is harsh, when no one is watching, or when you try to dig deeper, the onion implodes and the skin sheds off, revealing the students’ true natures.
Constantly under the pressure of parents and society who monitor them every hour of the day, no wonder students are so stressed… It was never the amount of work students had to do that stressed them: after all, when men and women follow their dreams, fatigue becomes irrelevant. It was social expectations—the thought that they might not be able to satisfy all the people that put demands on them, that they might have to undergo the shame, the embarrassment, the alienation and social isolation that naturally comes from breaking important promises. It was the biological alarm system that prevented our primate ancestors from separating from the safety of their tribes.
And under this high amount of stress, students naturally turn to sugar and fat to cope. Why else would student council and staff provide so many treats during finals week: bagels and graham crackers and icing during the previous week’s Thursday class meeting, cookies in French class on Monday and Tuesday, mini-donuts after Monday Assembly, hot chocolate in the Student Center on Tuesday, a crepe food truck at noon on Wednesday, and probably many more instances of sweet and fatty treats being passed around that I missed. And the intent of all these treats is so obviously clear, at least for the hot chocolate: “Happy end of the semester! We know finals week can be stressful, so to help brighten your day, the Student Council has arranged hot chocolate outside the Student Center during the advisory period on Tuesday,” the student council president wrote in a school-wide email.
In this manner shall students drown themselves out under the constant theater work of pleasing society, the constant stress of the fear that their onion skins were not as thick as they thought, and the hundreds of sugar and fat packets they consume to drown out the work and the stress. Like zombies, they shall toil and toil and toil unknowing of what they toil for. And they shall toil so much—toil around in circles, digging for the always disappearing diamond of parental and societal satisfaction—that by second semester senior year, when it’s all over, their minds shall lie blank, their bodies fatigued and feeble, so that they shall exit the Academy as empty as they entered it.
Thus I sit in the middle of a sea of onionites during Assembly, and an unease fills my heart as I watch Ethan being subjected to a lie detector test during a presentation on the guiding principle of honesty. The Spizzwinks acapella singing Spaceman overlay what I see on the stage, plunging my mind into ever deeper waters—helpless, lonely, sorrowful. The sadness in my heart travels up through my throat and up to my eyes, causing tears to gather and pave a way down my cheek. Is it really not so bad as the star maker says?
“Have you ever used ChatGPT?” Sam asks Ethan.
Ethan denies it. The lie detector reveals his answer to be a lie. The audience laughs. “I only used ChatGPT for information!” Ethan explains as he sinks his head in his hands in shame. The audience laughs.
“Have you ever been late to class?” Sam asks.
Ethan denies it. The lie detector reveals his answer to be a lie. The audience laughs. “The lunch line was so long!” Ethan explains as he sinks his head in his hands in shame. The audience laughs.
“Have you ever been out of dress code this week?” Sam asks.
Ethan denies it. The lie detector reveals his answer to be a lie. The audience laughs. “I thought it was bulldog dressdown day!” Ethan explains as he sinks his head in his hands in shame. The audience laughs.
Every laugh stings my heart with a pang of grief because the essence of this laughter is a recognition of the onionism that pervades this school. They laugh because every student has had to lie in one way or another to keep the onion skin intact in the face of strong social pressure. They laugh because they realize just how empty those onions are—how different the inner layers are from the outer skin.
And it all reminds me of how I once thought this school was the epitome of intellectualism—a community of the best people this world could offer. It reminds me of those days when I still thought this school could liberalize my arts. At the end of the assembly, the onion skin grows over my entire body as I clap insincerely along with the other students.
In the end, all it did was liberalize my acts.