Free The Water Is Wide by Pat Conroy Page B

are going to listen to the news whether you like it or not. Let’s take a vote. Who does not want to listen to the news?” Every hand in the room shot up.
    â€œI am going to break every arm that is raised in the air after we take the next vote. Who does not want to listen to the news?”
    No one raised a single hand.
    â€œAh, excellent. Then it is unanimous, and I must say it is extremely gratifying that my students are sharing such a great concern for the rest of mankind.”
    I put the news on, as I would for the next four months. As the announcer listed the deliriously happy events which occurred on the preceding day, I would stand by the map of the world and pinpoint the countries mentioned. Every time he named a country, a new dimension or a new frame of reference was added to my class’s growing repertoire. They were geographically illiterate. The world map, pinned on the same spot probably for several years, could have been an anatomical chart of an earthworm for all they knew. When the announcer told the world that terrorists had abducted the American ambassador to Brazil, I put my finger on a big yellow blotch on the map and whispered, “This hunk of yellow on the map is the country of Brazil.” Tracing Brazil with my finger as the announcer gave the details, I told them that Brazil produced most of the world’s coffee. Then we learned of the latest border skirmishes between Egypt and Israel; Everett Dirksen dying in Illinois; Korean students rioting in Seoul. After the news, I showed them each country, gave them some juicy little fact about some of that country, and informed them that they would know something about that country from that time forward under pain of death.
    â€œNow what bright young scholar can tell me what product we drink from Brazil?”
    No one answered, naturally.
    â€œSome people drink it black. Some people drink it with cream. Some people drink it with sugar. And some people don’t drink it at all.”
    â€œCoke,” Richard yelled.
    â€œNo,” I answered.
    â€œCoffee!” some of them shouted.
    â€œWhat is it?” I shouted back.
    â€œCoffee,” all of them shouted.
    â€œWhere do they produce coffee?”
    â€œBrazil,” some of them answered.
    â€œWhere is it?” I asked again.
    â€œBrazil,” they shouted together.
    And it was in this way that the pep-rally method of education began on Yamacraw Island. For the next several weeks a certain part of the morning was set aside for a daily chant or incantation to the gods of basic knowledge. Eleven of the students displayed an interest in learning little morsels or fragments of information for no other reason than just to know them. I talked about rivers, the one that flowed by Yamacraw, rivers I had seen in Europe, and then told them of the three great rivers of the world, the Nile, the Amazon, and the Mississippi. I listed the continents, the planets, and the oceans. I also gave them a brief outline of American history: Columbus stumbling upon America, Magellan’s trip around the world, Balboa seeing the great Pacific, George Washington and the boys giving the British hell. Strange terms like the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence (which one of the kids kept calling the Decoration of Indianapolis), the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and the Emancipation Proclamation.
    None of these subjects did I touch in depth; I only gave a very general explanation of each one and tried to get the kids to look at history as a flow of events that somehow affects every person on earth. We used no books. It was oral history and oral geography. Nothing was written down. We talked and learned by talking and, soon enough for me, our pep rallies had evolved into wild chaotic exchanges of rote memory. I teased and cajoled them and expected them to fire back, to take no crap from me, just as I took no crap from them.
    â€œAll right, young cats. We are about to