La Revolución
Last month Mary and I joined the American Society, a group of English speaking expatriates. We joined in order to meet other expats and so that I could attend Spanish classes there. At only $4 per meeting, it’s a real bargain compared to the $350 that the Vancouver School charges per semester.
The building that houses the American Society is like a clubhouse. There’s a small restaurant called “The Parrot Cage” where you can get a cup of coffee and sit around socializing before heading upstairs to class. There’s also a library with a couple of thousand books that members can check out. Mary usually hangs out there on Tuesday and Thursday morning, reading or chatting with whomever is present while I’m in class.
A couple of weeks ago we began hearing rumors that the Spanish classes at AmSoc were going to be changed. Some woman with a PhD in languages had decided that she was going to turn everything upside down. There were going to be four levels of Spanish classes from beginner to advanced this despite the fact that there were only four students in the class. We would have to buy new textbooks, never mind that we had just bought the ones we were using only four weeks earlier. This had all been decided with absolutely no input from us students.
We students talked about this and decided it wasn’t right. We all were quite happy with the class as it existed and we all genuinely liked our teacher. In fact, the class was going so good that we started going to lunch together after class. We socialized outside of class as well, eating and shopping together.
One of the class members was deputized to write a letter of protest to the AmSoc board. Copies of the letter were passed around in class one day and we all signed the letter. Then the copies were sent to the board.
At our very next class the president of AmSoc came in to the classroom to give us the reply to our letter. He told us that our class was being kicked out of the building. He said that allowing us to continue meeting in the building would “lead to chaos” because other groups would ask for special treatment too. The fact that they were changing the rules in the middle of the game meant nothing to him. The fact that we were members of AmSoc meant nothing. We students had no say in our education.
After he left, we all closed our books. There was no way we could concentrate on Spanish. We decided to continue our class in a private house. Then we all trooped downstairs and demanded a refund for the classes we had paid for, but would not now get. We got our refund, but when several of us decided to quit AmSoc entirely, and asked to have our membership dues refunded, they refused.
So as it stands now, we plan to meet outside of AmSoc. We even have plans to go to lunch together after class. The fight against AmSoc has drawn us even more together as a group. We are determined to continue our education despite AmSoc’s attempted rigid tyranny.
Why would someone try to kill off something so good? The only answer I can come up with is power, the human desire to dominate others. In this case it was a small evil, but in the larger scheme of things it is a major evil. And I guess it’s here to stay.