THE TRUE COMMON CORE: Part 6 of 6

The following tale, The Animals That Went to School, is adapted from the original written by George Reavis in 1940. With this version, which extends the setting and ending, I have added my own twist.

Once upon a time a manicured park was cordoned off from a wild life refuge. Over time this caused subtle changes to the attitudes of the animals living in Central Park. A group of animal leaders in this mowed, trimmed, and edged park decided to start a school to produce a well-tamed park crew. The goal of the School Designers was to instill basic skills in park maintenance to be held in common by all the animal offspring and to effectively confine them to the park's parameters. There would be no more escaping of young animals into the neighboring wild life refuge.

The School Designers adopted a curriculum of running, climbing, swimming and flying.  The regime required all of the animals to take classes in all of the subjects in equal measure. That would guarantee that all had exactly the same education.

The duck was excellent at swimming.  In fact, he was better than his instructor.  However, he made only passing marks in flying and was very poor at running.  Since he was so slow in running, he had to do remedial running after school.  This caused his webbed feet to become sore and badly worn, meaning that he dropped to an average mark in swimming.  Fortunately, “average” was acceptable, therefore nobody worried about it – except the duck.

The rabbit started at the top of the class in running, but developed a nervous twitch in his leg muscles because he had so much make-up work to do in swimming.

The flying squirrel was excellent in climbing, but he encountered constant frustration in flying class because his teacher insisted that he learn to fly from the ground up instead of from the treetop down.  The squirrel became a poor climber and developed cramps from overexertion while trying to fly, so he ended up with a C in climbing and a D in flying.

The eagle was a real problem student and was severely disciplined for being a non-conformist.  In climbing class, he repeatedly beat all of the others to the top, only to briefly soar out of control!

Occasionally the duck, rabbit, squirrel or eagle glimpsed the neighboring natural habitat, the Wildlife Refuge, and experienced a deep yearning.

The wary leaders, who had become invested in the Animal School, provided motivational carrots and sticks, but when this didn’t work sufficiently they invented labels, such as ATC (Awkward Tree Climber), IAF (Inadequate Attention to Flying). After School Tutoring proliferated as anxious parents enrolled the children. The medical profession duly supplied drugs to suppress the children’s urge to do anything other than attend their lessons. A steady parade of labels, meds, and test scores was sufficient to enlist the parents’ concerned support to the keep the animals’ focus where it needed to be.

One day, despite all this pressure, something profound stirred in the heart of the duck, the rabbit and the squirrel as each witnessed the eagle simply fly away, never to return …