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❛ ᴏᴄᴇᴀɴ ᴇʏᴇꜱ​​​​​​​​​​. ❜ ° . ༄
- ͙۪۪˚   ▎❛ 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑 ❜   ▎˚ ͙۪۪̥◌
»»————- ꒰ ᴍᴇ & ᴍʀ. ᴊᴏᴀᴅ ꒱


❝ NO HOMEWORK,
MORE FREEDOM! ❞

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"Okay, we're talkin' about The Grapes of Wrath. Who can give us an overview of what we've read so far?" Cory raised his hand, causing Mr. Turner to look at him in disbelief. "Muscle spasm, Matthews?"

"No sir, I'd like to take a shot," he requested.

"Okay everybody, give him room."

"Alright, I think the conclusion of the book shows the Joad family's been pretty much destroyed by the greedy farm bosses but the author's telling us they still have their dignity and they're gonna fight on."

Juliet's eyes widened at the first-ever truly intelligent response she'd heard from her best friend. He'd actually read the book?

"What just happened?" Mr. Turner shared her shock.

"You're a disgrace to the entire back row," Shawn told him.

"Hey! I happen to be in the back row," the redhead exclaimed. "Good on you, Cor."

"Okay, this story about migrant farm workers in the 1930s shows us that powerful people will exploit the powerless until they organize and stand up for their rights," Mr. Turner explained until Cory raised his hand again. "Yes?"

"Yeah, the thing about the 1930s— will we have to know the dates for the test?"

"The date is not as important as understanding the historical context of the whole struggle for workers' rights."

"Excuse me, what page is the historical context on?" Shawn asked.

"Are you kidding me?" Juliet and Mr. Turner spoke at the same time. The redhead gave her best friend a incredulous stare.

"We need to know that for the test, right?"

"No, forget about the test. I want you to learn about this book to add to your personal knowledge, not to just pass a test. I don't wanna hear anymore about the test."

Cory raised his hand. "Uh, when is the test?"

"What did I just say?" Mr. Turner demanded.

"Okay, could I just ask one more question about the— y'know, the written thing you put a grade on that tells our parents we're idiots. There won't be any essays, will there?"

"Matthews, as long as you read the book and open your yap during the class discussion, no test. Okay? Now can we possibly return to what is important here?"

The bell rang and the class cheered. "No test!"

🌎🌎🌎

"Alright, class. In The Grapes of Wrath we see that the struggle to organize, to get justice for the migrant farm workers was long and difficult. Heads were broken. People were killed, a lot of blood."

"Sounds like Bingo night in my trailer park," Shawn commented.

Juliet gave a little nod. "I can hear it from my room sometimes."

"Now, like the Joads, we also find ourselves in the middle of a little struggle. We don't want tests. We think we can learn the material without 'em," Mr. Turner began to pass out papers.

"Right."

"Yeah. Now, the boss— or Mr. Feeny, in this case— doesn't believe us, so what we gotta do is prove to the boss that we can learn this book without taking a test."

"Right."

"Right, and to prove that, we're just gonna answer a few questions on this piece of paper," Mr. Turner finished.

Juliet accepted the paper from the girl in front of her and sighed, knowing that this was going to blow up in Mr. Turner's face. Still, she began to dutifully fill out her name and date as Cory (predictably) began to make a big deal about it.

"It's a test!"

"No, don't think of it as a test. It's a survey" Mr. Turner corrected him.

"Survey says—"

"Test!" the class replied.

"You gave us your word," Cory reminded him as he stood up.

"I even read the book," Shawn added, causing Juliet's head to jerk up and look at him. "Yeah, my head still hurts."

Maybe no tests were a good thing. She stopped filling out the paper and stood with the boys. "You said no test, Mr. Turner," she stated firmly.

"So, why don't we just talk about the book like you said?" Cory asked.

"Because I couldn't change the system overnight, Matthews. Come on, work with me here."

"I'm not taking this test," Cory responded as he marched to the front of the class room and handed his test back.

"You can do that?" Shawn wondered.

"I don't know."

When nothing happened, Shawn followed suit and handed his test to their teacher. "Me neither!"

Juliet followed her friends and gently placed her paper on the growing stack. "Sorry, Mr. Turner. I've been trying to get Shawn to read a book since kindergarten." She shrugged apologetically. "If this is what works. . ."

One by one, everyone handed their papers back. After they returned to their desks, Mr. Feeny walked in. "Good morning, Mr. Turner. Obviously I was wrong and your students were so prepared that they managed to finish the test two minutes after the bell has rung."

"Let me grade 'em and I'll get back to ya."

Mr. Feeny looked at their tests. "Well, that shouldn't take long considering that all of these papers are blank."

"I guess it'll kill that curve," Mr. Turner tried to joke.

"Do you mean to tell me that your students refuse to take the test?"

"That's the decision they seemed to have made."

Mr. Feeny walked away, taking their teacher with him. When they returned, the older teacher spoke to the class: "I realize that all you seventh-graders are delicate adolescent flowers just beginning your high school blooming and so I say this with the utmost sensitivity: take this test or die."

Cory stood up again and walked to the front of the classroom. "Is this fair?"

"No!" the class respondedv.

"Have we been tricked?"

"Yes!"

"Take this test or die?"

"Die!"

"Then we die together! Organized, like the people in the book should've done. The first student union!"

"Yeah!" the class cheered.

Cory began to march and sing: "'look for the union label.'" Shawn stood and followed him. "'If you're buying that coat, dress or blouse.'" With a sigh, Juliet joined her friends after rolling her eyes. "'Remember somewhere our union's sewing—'" The class followed them out of the classroom. "'Our wages are going to feed the kids and run the house. . .'"

🌎🌎🌎

"What are we?" Cory yelled.

"Kings!"

"And queens!" Juliet added.

"And what do kings and queens say?"

Their enthusiastic yells trailed off into murmurs at their uncertainty of what to cheer. Cory's face scrunched up as he tried to think of something. "They say 'no more macaroni!'"

"How about 'no more homework?'" Juliet suggested. "No homework, more freedom!"

"Yeah!" answering calls from their classmates supported her. "No homework, more freedom!"

Juliet joined Cory on the table. "No homework, more freedom!"

The class began chanting the line as the curly-haired boy gave her a surprised look. "I thought you liked homework."

"I like school, not homework," she corrected him easily before she continued the call: "no homework, more freedom!"

Mr. Feeny came in as their chanting grew louder. He used a megaphone to be heard above the noise: "alright, this is your warden speaking. So, you wanna play rough with George Feeny?" He laughed menacingly. "Fine. We'll take off the gloves."

Still feeling the excitement from their rebellion, Juliet exclaimed loudly, "they were never on anyway!"

Mr. Feeny gave her a surprised look which hardened a moment later. "I assure you, Miss Capelwood, you will know the difference. The seventh-grade dance is hereby cancelled."

She waited to feel disappointment before she shrugged. "Eh, doesn't affect me."

"You can't do that!" Shawn cried.

"I can do whatever I want. I have the megaphone. Here's a doozy: the entire football season. . . cancelled."

"Oh, no," she deadpanned.

"But that means—" Shawn began.

"Yes, Mr. Hunter. No cheerleaders."

"No!" Shawn wailed dramatically as he fell to his knees.

"Doesn't affect me," Juliet repeated before she turned to Cory. "We just gotta take the megaphone, that's his power."

"It's a strike, we have to make sacrifices," he answered. "Besides, we'd never get there in time."

"He's taking away my girls. Why can't we just sacrifice you?" Shawn demanded, his gaze more focused on Cory than Juliet.

"Now, I would prefer you go back to your classes and take the test but being a reasonable Joe, I am willing to offer you a one-minute window of amnesty beginning. . ." He checked his watch as Juliet helped pull Shawn to his feet. "Fifty-five seconds ago. You have five seconds, four, three. . ."

"Wait a minute, everybody," Cory protested. "He can't punish the seventh-grade class if there is no seventh-grade class. We're a union, remember? And I say starting right here, right now, our union is on strike. Let's go, everyone. We're walkin' out of school."

He began to march towards the doors. Juliet hesitated for a minute now that the stakes were higher but in the end she followed him as well after she'd grasped Shawn's wrist to pull him along.

"'Look for the union label, is anybody behind you, my Shawn?'" Cory sang at the doors.

"I gotta tell you, there's no one with us." Shawn matched his tone. "We're all alone here, I'm gonna bail."

Juliet's grasp on his wrist tightened. "You better not," she replied.

"Oh yes I am."

"Oh, no, no, no." Cory helped the redhead pull boy along.

"Yes, yes, yes."

"No, no, no." They continued to tug him towards the door.

🌎🌎🌎

After abandoning the seventh-grade class, the three of them went to Cory's house and were currently watching TV.

"How come there's nothing on the news about our walkout? I mean, why is every station covering that dumb missing bomb story?" Cory wanted to know.

"Maybe because it was only a three-person walkout," Juliet replied dryly.

"Young men and woman, we just got off the phone with your principal," Mrs. Matthews stated as she walked into the living room.

"You held a strike over a test?" Mr. Matthews asked, following his wife.

"You walked out of school?"

"What were you possibly thinking?"

"You know, I thought you were stronger than this, Juliet. Couldn't you have stopped them?" Mrs. Matthews questioned the redhead, causing her to sink into the couch. "You're smarter than both of them. Surely you didn't agree to this?"

"Well, thinking's not our strong suit," Cory tried.

"I'm not convinced."

"Maybe what we did wasn't smart, but at least we stood up for our principles," Shawn contributed.

"And what were your principles?"

He paused, thinking for a moment before he stood up eagerly and shouted: "no homework, more freedom!"

Juliet couldn't help but smile at his sudden enthusiasm and gently pulled on his shirt to make him sit down again. The doorbell rang and Mrs. Matthews walked over to answer it, smacking Shawn on the back of the head as she did so.

"Thank you."

"Yes?" Mrs. Matthews asked as she opened the door.

"Mrs. Matthews, Mr. Matthews, I'm Jonathan Turner. I'm Cory's English teacher," Mr. Turner introduced himself.

"You wear a helmet?"

"I fall off the desk a lot."

"You wanna talk to Hoffa and Costello?" Mr. Matthews asked.

"Yeah. I don't usually make house calls but this all started in my classroom so I thought I might step in and mediate."

"You're not gonna bust their heads, are you?"

"No."

"'Cause I'm okay with that," Mr. Matthews told him.

The three students followed Mr. Turner to the kitchen and sat down at the table. "Mr. Turner, all we did was read The Grapes of Wrath and you know what we learned? You have to fight for your rights. That's why we went on strike and that's why we're in trouble," Cory started.

"That'll teach me to read a book," Shawn muttered.

"It doesn't always turn out this way," Juliet tried, knowing her efforts were futile.

"I guess this is what happens when the little guys try to stand up to the bosses, huh?"

"No. Let me straighten you out, Matthews: you threw a hissy fit and you walked out."

"You compared Mr. Feeny to the bosses in The Grapes of Wrath," Juliet pointed out.

"That was oversight on my part," he allowed apologetically.

"We went on strike."

"You didn't go on strike because you didn't have the one thing you need to go on strike. You know what you didn't have?"

"Mob connections," Shawn ventured and flinched suddenly as Juliet poked him in the side.

"Jobs," Juliet offered quietly.

"A job," Mr. Turner agreed. "You're just kids, you're in school. Your parents make you lunch. You're not a migrant farm worker picking grapes. You're just kids, you sleep on sheets with little dinosaurs."

"Rocket ships," Cory corrected him immediately.

"Look, I messed up too. I should've taught you that you can only take action if you're prepared to take responsibility for those actions."

"Mr. Turner, put yourself in our position. If we had done to you what we had—"

"No, been there. Don't. . . look, you're just three kids playing way over their heads, okay? Now, you can decide that you're still students and get back in school where you're sheltered and protected and abide by the rules that go with that." He paused as Mr. and Mrs. Matthews came in.

"Or you can go out into the real world and get an immediate test called 'find a job or starve,'" Mr. Matthews continued. "Now, you wanna take that test or you wanna take his?"

"They got us surrounded," Shawn observed as they looked at the trio of adults.

"I guess we'd better talk to Mr. Feeny," Cory sighed.

"Yeah, I guess you'd better," Mrs. Matthews conceded.

"Face it, guys. Feeny's not gonna go away," Mr. Turner warned them. "I mean, he's gonna be all over your case. You turn around, he's gonna be there." Their teacher turned around and jumped. "Now that's scary. You know you got a principal living next door?"

"It's not something we brag about."

The four of them went outside to talk to Mr. Feeny. "George, you live next door to Matthews?"

"It's not something I brag about," he answered simply. "What are you doing here, Mr. Turner?"

"I came to talk to the kids. Turns out they have something to say to you."

"Look, Mr. Feeny, we got it all wrong because we read this book all the way to the beginning," Cory started.

"Really? And I don't suppose you learned anything from it?"

"Well, we learned that you're supposed to fight back against what you think is unfair," Juliet offered.

"And that's the parallel you drew from the Joad family?"

"They were out in the real world and they knew they had something big to fight for," Shawn added.

"And how do the Joads relate to you?"

"I guess they don't," the curly-haired boy admitted. "I mean, we're just kids."

"Yeah, we're not really out in the world yet."

"Unlike us they had nothing to eat, nowhere to live," Cory continued.

"All they knew was that they deserved a decent wage."

"And all we know is. . . nothing."

"Well, nothing about the real world," Juliet amended quickly.

"'And where there's a guy who don't know nothin', I'll be there,'" Shawn quoted the novel.

"Well said," Mr. Feeny told him.

"It's from the book. I actually read it."

"I believe you did and I'll take that into consideration. That'll be all, you can go."

As Juliet followed the boys back into the house, she glanced at Shawn. "Maybe now you'll read more books?"

He grinned at her. "Not a chance, Julie." 

[edited may 2022]