Schooled

“I remembered Rain. She was one of the founders of Garland, the queen bee of the place when I lived there. I was always afraid of her. I thought she was a witch.”

Mrs. Donnelly’s childhood experiences on Garland Farm seem to have had a lasting impact on her life. She resents the lack of preparation that the commune provided for “real life,” and she is determined to give Capricorn the opportunity to have experiences beyond the sheltered world that Rain has constructed for him. This represents the theme of Authoritarian Versus Experiential Education. This quote also shows how two people can experience the same thing, and come to completely different conclusions. While Capricorn’s interactions with Rain convinced him of her wisdom and goodness, Mrs. Donnelly viewed her as controlling and menacing.

“After two years of looking up to other people, I’d finally made it to the point where there was nobody to look up to but me.”

Zach is a true believer when it comes to the hierarchal structure of middle school. When he was a sixth- and then seventh-grader, he willingly deferred to the popular eighth graders, knowing that someday it would be his turn to rule the school. Zach is an institutionalist. He studies the existing set of norms and tries to succeed within them. He does not think outside the box or try to change the status quo. Capricorn, in not understanding and thereby ignoring social hierarchies, upends Zach’s world.

“‘Buttwipe wanted to know what jerkface was looking at, and jerkface wanted to know what buttwipe was looking at.’ I turned earnest eyes on the bloody and dirt-smeared brawlers. ‘You were barely three inches apart. Couldn’t you see you were both looking at each other?’”

Capricorn takes everything at face value. He has not learned how to use sarcasm and cynicism as a defense mechanism, the way the other students have had to in order to get through middle school. This highlights the theme of Spoken Versus Unspoken Rules. It shows that Capricorn is completely ignorant about the unspoken rules of mainstream society, such as not telling on other students. The teacher involved does not realize that Capricorn is being literal and assumes that he is trying to be funny. Capricorn is sent to Mr. Kasigi’s office as punishment.

“That crowd thinks they own the place. They think that because they do. Stay away from them. They’ll chop you up and press you into salami. Now, anyone you see hanging around their crew falls into one of two subgroups—the jocks and the wannabes. Stay away from both. And you definitely don’t want anything to do with goths, burnouts, skateboarders, hip-hop kids, environmentalists, or anybody who has a baseball cap on backward.”

While Hugh Winkleman resents being bullied by his intellectual inferiors, he also does not question the hierarchal system in place; instead, he just tries to survive it. He uses his intelligence to understand the natural laws of the school social environment and tries to operate accordingly.

“The road to Zach went straight through the new hippie kid.”

Naomi is willing to bully Capricorn in order to make romantic inroads with Zach. She figures that by helping Zach with his plans to humiliate the new kid, she can lure him away from Lena. But the more she gets to know Capricorn, the less interested she becomes in Zach.

“What’s really awful is that you’re a social worker—with power over kids’ lives—and you have no clue about what’s common knowledge at that school.”

The novel demonstrates that those in positions of authority over children are decades removed from the experience of being a child. Generational differences also serve as a barrier for adults trying to understand the experiences of middle-school students. Sophie is right in the fact that a peer is more likely to understand the pressures that an eighth grader faces, even if it is the adult who has more resources at their disposal to help the student.

“I was beginning to see that growing up knowing only one other person had some serious disadvantages.”

Until Capricorn leaves the farm, he has no reason to suspect that his sheltered upbringing has deprived him of anything. As he starts trying to function at a large middle school, he realizes that he has never had to learn the adaptive behaviors that most people have had to master to get by in society. This is the first time that Capricorn is in any way critical of the parenting choices that Rain has made.

“I wanted to drive. I needed a teacher. Even if it had to be the freakazoid. I did a lot of things I’d promised myself I’d never do. I got in the car with him. I listened to him and did what he told me to do. That idiotic Zen-hippie style of his turned out to be just right for a driving instructor. No matter what mistakes I made, it didn’t seem to faze Cap…”

Letting Capricorn teach Sophie how to drive is an act of last resort on Sophie’s part. However, she soon realizes that the traits she originally railed against are his most valuable qualities. His ability to stay calm in stressful situations makes him a natural teacher, and it is the first time Sophie starts appreciating Capricorn for all the things that make him different.

“Cap was weird, but there was more to it than that. There was something inside him that nobody else understood, something mysterious and strong. Not muscle strong or fighting strong—[it was] a kind of strength that gave him the self-control to meditate instead of falling apart, or to ignore what other people thought, and find meaning in a dead bird.”

Naomi goes through one of the strongest transformations of any character in the novel. In the beginning, she’s drawn to Zach’s outward appearance. But by getting to know Capricorn, she becomes aware of his inner qualities and starts to develop those qualities in herself.

“I was anonymous. That may not sound like much. But to me, it was my birthday, Christmas, and the Fourth of July all wrapped into one.”

Hugh is someone who has spent his entire school career trying to avoid harassment, so anonymity must seem like quite a reprieve from all of the pain and stress that the bullying brings down on him. It is hard not to empathize with Hugh, even though his reprieve is at the cost of someone else’s well-being.

“‘Cap, there’s something I need to tell you.’ I assumed she was going to give me directions to the journalism lab. Instead she said, ‘Watch out for Zach and Lena. Watch out for all of us. We’re not as nice as we pretend to be.’”

Naomi is aware that what she is doing is wrong, but she’s not at a point where she feels strong enough to stop her actions. She warns Capricorn about Zach, Lena, and even herself so that Capricorn can take the steps he needs to protect himself, even as she continues to assist Zach with his bullying.

“That was another advantage of having Dad around. Mom was not nice, so kind, so understanding that she made the rest of us seem like insensitive jerks. But Dad took one look at Cap Anderson and instantly understood my side of the story.”

One of the difficulties that her dad’s absence poses is that Sophie feels inadequate compared to her mother. Mrs. Donnelly is naturally empathetic and relatively non-judgmental, and Sophie sometimes feels unable to live up to her example. But when her dad is around, Sophie feels like there is someone who shares her shortcomings, and accepts her the way she is.

“That’s the real story, Cap—that we’ve allowed ourselves to be enslaved by our own laws.”

After Capricorn is arrested for driving without a license, Rain explains that mainstream society values rules over common sense. To both Rain and Capricorn, it seems inconceivable that a person would not do everything in their power to save another human being, even if it meant breaking a law. Even though Rain is correct in this situation, she is unable to accept that rules govern civilization, and without them, there would be chaos.

“My ex-husband is not a terrible person, but he doesn’t see things through. He rolls into town, gets everybody’s hopes up, and then he’s gone until the next time, when he does it all over again. I learned my lesson and got off the roller coaster. My daughter hasn’t figured it out yet.”

Mrs. Donnelly is frustrated by the fact that Sophie is continually let down by her father. Even though Mrs. Donnelly realized long ago that her ex-husband was not someone to be counted on, it is something that Sophie is going to have to figure out for herself. This highlights the theme of Authoritarian Versus Experiential Education. Mrs. Donnelly cannot save Sophie from the pain of loving someone who is unreliable; instead, she can only be there once Sophie is ready to accept her father’s limitations.

“I told myself I was protecting my daughter. But the truth is, I was protecting Cap from what Sophie would have done to him if he’d made a move on her.”

Mrs. Donnelly’s experiences on Garland Farm make it very easy for her to empathize with Capricorn. She loves her daughter more, but she has more in common with the naïve Capricorn than with her temperamental daughter.

“She rolled her eyes at me. ‘We just saw this episode two weeks ago. Lashonda flunks home ec and gets caught lending Troy’s letter jacket to that college guy she’s been dating on the side.’ I wish she hadn’t said that, because I wanted to be surprised again, even though I knew it was going to happen.”

Capricorn has the ability to suspend disbelief and live in the moment, highlighting the theme of Idealism Versus Realism. Sophie is never able to forget the fact that the teen drama they’re watching is all made up. Capricorn’s ability to find meaning in things that others are unable to is one of his strongest character traits.

“That should have been enough for me. It always had been before. The word of Zach Powers. He was the guy who convinced me I wasn’t as stupid as I think I probably am. Before Zach, school was pure torture for me. Imagine spending 180 days a year in a place that’s designed to take everything you’re not good at and make it important. Zach rewrote those rules for me.”

In the one chapter told from Darryl’s point of view, he articulates how bad leaders manipulate others into doing their dirty work for them. The leader convinces people who feel inadequate that their feelings of inadequacy are caused by something outside of themselves, such as another group of people or an institution. Darryl struggles with his classes, but instead of trying to help him improve his study skills or grades, Zach exploits Darryl’s frustrations and uses it in his goal of asserting control over the rest of the students.

“I’m just pulling your chain. I’m sure he lives on to be a total basket case just like everybody else on T & T. He doesn’t exist, remember? I’d say, ‘get a clue,’ but where you’re going, you’re probably better off without one.”

Sophie is joking, but there is some truth to the fact that the cynicism of the outside world is out of place on the farm that Capricorn grew up on and heads back to. If he is to make his life on the commune, the less he knows about how the outside world works, the better.

“Flora Donnelly was right. This was my fault. But not for her reasons. I had long suspected how the kids went about picking their eighth grade president. And when I chose to look the other way, I was sort of putting a stamp of approval on it. But I always knew that one day it would blow up in their faces. I just never thought it would blow up in mine.”

This quote is from Mr. Kasigi. In some ways, Mrs. Donnelly and Mr. Kasigi share a similar worldview. They both think that the real world, with all its pitfalls and pain, is better than an artificial existence, where obstacles and struggles are never encountered. This highlights the theme of Idealism Versus Realism. Mr. Kasigi knows that the eighth grade election is part of a hazing ritual, yet he does nothing to stop it. When Mrs. Donnelly finds out that Capricorn has been made eighth grade president as a prank, she still believes that “a genuine school, nasty and merciless as it could be, [is] still better than Garland Farm” (47).

“It was the ultimate barometer of my plummeting status. The only person willing to eat lunch with me was Hugh. If I could track Cap down using hippie LoJack, I wouldn’t know whether to haul him back or hide out with him. Part of me just wanted to disappear.”

Zach finally experiences what Hugh has endured since kindergarten: harassment. Just as Hugh had reveled in the anonymity he experienced when Capricorn “took the heat off” of him (71), Zach wants to be able to walk through the halls of C Average without being the target of everyone’s anger.

“Cap had bought the bracelet and had it engraved just so I wouldn’t feel bad about Dad blowing me off. He got absolutely nothing in return. He wasn’t my boyfriend; he wasn’t even my friend. He couldn’t expect so much as a thank-you, since the gift was supposed to be from someone else. He did this for no other reason than to make me happy.”

Not only is this the moment that Sophie finally understands what kind of person Capricorn is, but it is also the moment that she realizes that she values his qualities over the more superficial charms of her father. It is an important first step in her deciding what is important to her and what kind of person she wants to model herself after.

“My mind kept wandering back to the halls of C Average Middle School—the crash of locker doors, the babble of excited conversation. The ringing of cell phones, the beeping of Game Boys, the traces of far-off rap music escaping the ear buds of a hundred iPods. It was crowded, noisy, obnoxious, and even scary. But it had its own rhythm and urgency and life. And I missed it so much it was almost like an ache.”

Capricorn finds his place at Claverage Middle School, and the experience changes him. In his first break from Rain, he does not accept that the outside world is inherently evil. He realizes that mainstream society is different from the farm and that every place has its advantages and disadvantages. Before his grandmother’s accident, Capricorn did not feel like he was missing anything. But now that he has experienced life away from Rain, and as a part of mainstream society, he knows that there are experiences and people that he will not get to encounter once back on the commune, and he is unable to attain the same peace of mind he had before he ever stepped foot into a real school.

“‘Cap, when you left that school, that was the end. And a good thing too. You were only there for a couple of months, and see how much you’ve changed: you talk about television programs and waste your time staring at silly yearbooks. Thank goodness I was able to take you away before the contamination got any worse.’ Contamination. That was the word she kept using. Like I’d spent her recovery wallowing in a toxic waste dump. Sure, the Donnelly house and C Average weren’t much like the life Rain and I had built at Garland. But different didn’t automatically mean bad.”

Rain feels threatened by the outside world. Because she had felt the need to completely drop out of mainstream society in order to live by her own values, she underestimates Capricorn’s ability to process his experiences away from the farm, while still retaining everything she has tried to instill in him. Even though this is an extreme case, Rain’s concerns are universal. Parents often struggle with the influence that the outside world has on their children, and how that influence interferes with their own parenting goals.