‘Oh, God,’ Pauline groaned. This was beginning to sound ominously familiar.
‘So much so that the teacher has had to exclude Pippa from the room on three occasions.’
Pauline nodded. ‘And when that’s happened three times they send for the parents.’
‘Correct.’
‘What period of history is the class studying?’
‘Several, but Pippa makes trouble when they talk about the Nazis.’
‘What does she say?’
‘It’s not the teacher’s interpretation of history that Pippa disputes. Her complaint is that the class is studying the wrong subjects. The curriculum suffers from racist bias, she says.’
‘I know where this is heading. But go on.’
‘I think we should get Pippa to take over the story now.’
‘Good idea.’
Pauline was about to get up and go in search of their daughter, but Gerry said: ‘Stay there. Take a minute. You’re the hardest-working person in America. I’ll find Pippa.’
‘Thanks.’
Gerry left.
He was considerate, Pauline thought gratefully. It was how he showed his love.
Pippa’s complaint had rung a bell with Pauline because she remembered challenging her teachers. Her beef, back then, had been that the lessons were all about men: male presidents, male generals, male writers, male musicians. Her teacher – a man – had foolishly argued that this was because women did not matter much in history. At that point the young Pauline had become superheated.
However, the older Pauline could not let love and empathy blur her vision. Pippa had to learn not to let an argument become a fight. Pauline had to steer her carefully. Like most political problems this could not be solved by brute force, only by finesse.
Gerry returned with Pippa. She was short for her age and slim, like Pauline. She was not conventionally pretty, having a wide mouth and a broad jaw, but a sunny personality shone out of that plain face, and Pauline felt swamped by love every time Pippa walked into the room. Her school outfit, a loose sweatshirt and blue jeans, made her look quite childish, but Pauline knew that underneath she was rapidly becoming a woman.
‘Come and sit by me, honey,’ Pauline said, and when Pippa sat down she put an arm round the girl’s small shoulders and hugged her. ‘You know how much we love you, and because of that we need to understand what’s happening at school.’
Pippa looked guarded. ‘What did Ms Judd say?’
‘Forget about Ms Judd for a minute. Just tell us what’s troubling you.’ Pippa was silent for a few moments, so Pauline prompted her. ‘It’s about history lessons, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tell us about it.’
‘We’re studying the Nazis, all about how many Jews were murdered. We’ve seen pictures of the camps and the gas chambers. We learn the names: Treblinka, Majdanek, Janowska. But what about the people wiped out by us? There were ten million Native Americans when Christopher Columbus landed, but by the end of the Indian Wars there were only a quarter of a million left. Isn’t that a holocaust? I asked when we would be studying the massacres at Tallushatchee, Sand Creek, Wounded Knee.’
Pippa was indignantly defensive. That was what Pauline expected. She did not think Pippa would crumble and apologize – not yet, anyway. ‘That sounds like a reasonable question,’ Pauline said. ‘How did the teacher answer?’
‘Mr Newbegin said he didn’t know when we’d be studying that. So I asked, isn’t it more important to know about atrocities committed by our own country than by other countries? I even think there’s something in the Bible about that.’
‘There is,’ said Gerry, who had had a religious upbringing. ‘It’s from the Sermon on the Mount. Before you try to take a speck out of your brother’s eye, make sure you don’t have a big piece of wood in your own eye, obstructing your vision, Jesus suggested. And he said, “Thou hypocrite”， so we know he was serious.’
Pauline said: ‘What did Mr Newbegin have to say about that?’
‘He said the curriculum was not set by the pupils.’
‘That’s a shame,’ said Pauline. ‘He chickened out.’
‘Exactly.’
‘How did you come to be excluded from the class?’
‘I kept asking, and he got fed up. He said that if I couldn’t sit and listen I should leave the room, so I did.’ Pippa shrugged, as if to say it was no big deal.
Gerry said: ‘But Ms Judd told me this had happened three times. What were the second and third arguments about?’