decides she wants to know them better.
After the go-around, Weick begins to teach. He’s a stunningly terrible teacher. Among the worst Judith has ever had — lecturing in a monotone from ragged yellowish notes, and hardly ever raising his eyes to look at the students, even though there are only twenty of them in the class. Furthermore, the material he’s droning on about is stuff she already knows backwards and forwards from her B.S.W. Weick is teaching Systems Theory, a theory that was revolutionary in the late 1960s and 1970s, but now is old and tired. It was already stale even thirteen years ago when she first learned it. This theory is past its expiration date, she thinks. If they put expiration dates on orange juice, why can’t they put them on theories?
Weick keeps droning on, and after twenty-five minutes — when it looks like even he is about to fall asleep from boredom — he, for the first time, asks the class a question: “Can anyone give me an example of a system?”
Nobody answers. The question is too stupid. Every student in the room, having done a B.S.W., has already written three, four, maybe five term papers related in one way or another to Systems Theory. He can’t possibly be asking them what he seems to be. It would be like asking, “Can someone give me an example of a fruit?”
At the front of the room he waits. The silence becomes awkward. Finally he answers his own question. Proudly, like a five-year-old triumphant at knowing the answer. “The solar system!” he cries, drawing on the board a big circle and some smaller surrounding ones. “The sun with the planets revolving around it —”
Judith nearly groans out loud. I can’t stand this, she thinks. I really can’t. I know I promised Daddy I’d do this M.S.W., but there’s no way I can take a year of this. I can’t stand even another half-hour. It’s unbearable. She doesn’t dare glance at Cindy, or even Pam or Aliza, for fear that if they make eye contact, she’ll roll her eyes, giving herself away. So she keeps her eyes lowered to the page, like an ox with its eyes glued to the ground as it circles endlessly with its yoke. But after a minute she picks up her pen, and on the blank page before her, writes: I can’t stand this. I can’t stand this. She continues writing this over and over, like a pupil being punished — which is exactly how she feels — and forced to copy the same phrase a hundred times. She isn’t counting, but she writes this many times, punctuating it now and again with Stupid stupid stupid or Fuck fuck fuck. Once she writes Weick is weak. Weick’s a freak. Then there’s the sound of chairs scraping the floor, and it’s over. Weick has dismissed them early because it’s the first day. She approaches Cindy, who introduces her to Pam and Aliza. They all chat together politely, waiting in line to get out of the classroom. But once in the hallway and safely out of hearing distance, the four of them, huddled together, explode.
“Do you fuckin’ believe it …?”
“Systems Theory?! Fuckin’ Systems Theory!”
“Not one new idea — not one — I didn’t already know.”
“God! So boring! I thought I’d die!”
They go on like this in joyful outrage as they leave the building and then cross the quadrangle toward the cafeteria.
“What if all the other classes are like this?” Aliza asks.
“They’d better not be, or I’ll quit this program,” says Pam. “Can you believe they’re still teaching Systems Theory? It’s shocking. Hasn’t anything new happened in social work in all these years?”
“Apparently not,” says Aliza.
“Anyway,” asks Cindy, “what is Systems Theory doing in a course on knowledge and values?”
“Well, theories are a part of knowledge,” says Aliza. “But it’s probably the only theory he knows — that’s why he’s teaching it.”
“Or maybe he doesn’t have any,” says Judith.
“Any what?”
“Knowledge. Or values.”
“Ooooh …”
They arrive at the cafeteria. Entering the door, they all agree this is a class to be merely survived, nothing more, and the one good thing about it is they’ll probably all get A’s. Soon they’re carrying their coffee and donuts to a small, square table.
For several minutes there’s silence: they just slurp, munch, and swallow. But soon they’re sharing how anxious they were about coming back to school after years spent out in the field, and how relieved they are to have at least one easy course, though they hope their other classes aren’t quite as vacuous as Weick’s. It turns out Pam and Aliza, like Judith, are feminists, and while Cindy listens, they talk about the deadly style of the traditional male lecturer — Weick being the perfect example — and then about men in general. Including their own men, past and present — except for Pam, who gets completely silent for once, making Judith wonder if she’s a lesbian. Then Aliza starts telling funny anecdotes. She’s almost like a comedienne, and for a while they just sit around and laugh as she entertains them. Judith flashbacks to how her father loved to just sit around and “chew the fat,” as he’d call it, listening to people tell funny or fascinating stories and throwing in some of his own. Without warning it’s back: that grief that’s always waiting, crouching and ready to pounce, like a cat hidden in the pit of her stomach. She sits, stunned and staring, for several minutes. Then it passes, and she’s back again. Aliza is now in the middle of telling a dirty joke — Judith missed the beginning, so doesn’t fully get it when Aliza delivers the punchline — but it has something to do with a leaning tower of penis. Pam has a high-pitched screech of a laugh, like a monkey’s, and this, with all the glee and giddiness from the others, makes Judith start laughing, too. Then Cindy says, “Look at the time! It’s five to eleven,” and they hurry back for their second class.
From eleven o’clock to one, it’s “Introduction to Social Justice” with Greg Smolan. Greg is short for Gregory — he’s named after the saint, he tells them with a grin — not that he believes in any of that stuff anymore. If he believes in any religion now, it’s the religion of social justice. This class is fun: a cross between a gossip column about the Canadian elite — the rich-and-famous (or the rich-and-infamous) — and a detective thriller built around a conspiracy. Greg, although he doesn’t use this exact word, sees everything as a conspiracy. For two hours he describes how the white, Christian, male elite of Canada uses its power, influence, and wealth to shape virtually all of Canada’s social and economic policies, which in turn help to maintain, and even extend, this same power, influence, and wealth. “Of course,” he explains, “these policies also maintain and extend the marginalization and oppression of those who are poor, old, female, ethnically diverse, GLBT, and/or disabled, physically, intellectually, or psychiatrically. This is just how things work.”
Sitting in Greg’s class on a wooden chair as hard as a pew, Judith listens to his succession of stories about the connections between government, business, inherited wealth, social celebrity, and the media. He describes as vividly as a scene from the movie Howard’s End how, even in Canada now in 2002 — no different, in fact, from the British upper classes in Victorian times — the rich and powerful intermingle familially, socially, professionally, and financially. At their golf games and formal dinners, fundraising galas, garden parties, and weddings, they interact and intermarry, thus keeping within their little circle all that wealth and power. It’s been ten years now since Judith left Canada and became active on the Israeli left, and in all this time she hasn’t had direct contact with any Canadian leftists. So it’s fascinating for her to now hear what their issues are. The left in Canada and Israel have certain obvious similarities, but here the concerns of the left have nothing to do with war and
