As long as there are people in education making excuses for

Host: The morning light crept through the cracked blinds of a small teacher’s lounge in an aging city school. The walls were faded, their paint the color of old paper, and the smell of coffee mixed with the distant echo of children’s laughter from the playground below. The clock ticked steadily, its hands dragging through the kind of silence that feels like surrender.

Jack sat slouched in a metal chair, his sleeves rolled up, the hint of a cigarette still lingering on his fingers. Jeeny stood by the window, her hair tied back, a stack of worn books pressed to her chest — Dickens, Plato, Austen, a stubborn collection of the “old canon.”

Outside, the sky was a washed-out grey. Inside, an argument waited to begin.

Jeeny: “Michael Gove was right about one thing, Jack. The battle does need to be joined. When teachers lower the bar, when they hand a child a comic instead of a classic and call it relevance, they’re not being kind — they’re stealing futures.”

Jack: “Stealing? That’s dramatic, Jeeny. Maybe they’re just being real. Not every kid wants Shakespeare. Not every kid can handle it. Some of them need Nemo before they can even dream of Hamlet.”

Jeeny: “That’s the excuse he was talking about. Making excuses for failure. You don’t build the ladder by shortening it — you teach them how to climb.”

Jack: “Easy for you to say. You grew up with books, with someone pushing you. Half these kids are fighting just to stay awake, hungry, tired, their parents working nights. And you want to drop Aristotle on their desks?”

Host: The coffee pot hissed and clicked, releasing a faint cloud of steam. Jeeny turned from the window, her eyes dark and steady. The light caught the faint lines on Jack’s face, traces of years in classrooms, battles fought with chalk instead of guns.

Jeeny: “Exactly, Jack. Because I know what happens when no one expects anything of you. You become exactly that — nothing. The poor stay poor, the lost stay lost. The world shrinks to what you’re told is ‘enough.’”

Jack: “And what’s wrong with enough, Jeeny? You can’t measure every child by the same ruler. You can’t force inspiration.”

Jeeny: “No. But you can offer it. You can open the door to something higher. That’s our job. Not to make them comfortable — to make them reach.”

Jack: “You talk about reaching like it’s free. But it costs, Jeeny. It costs energy, patience, hope. Teachers are breaking under that cost. Some days, I look at my class and wonder if the best thing I can give them is just a bit of peace.”

Jeeny: “Peace built on surrender isn’t peace, Jack. It’s decay.”

Host: Her voice trembled not from weakness but from conviction, the kind that shakes walls more than windows. Jack ran a hand through his hair, his jaw tight, his eyes shifting toward the floor, where a stray chalk line still marked yesterday’s lesson — half-erased equations, half-remembered effort.

Jack: “You sound like every politician who’s never set foot in a real classroom. Do you think Gove’s ever watched a fourteen-year-old try to spell his own name? Do you think he’s seen the look in a kid’s eyes when you hand them Dickens and they can’t read the first line?”

Jeeny: “And what did you do then, Jack? Hand them Nemo?”

Jack: “I handed them something they could hold onto. Something that wouldn’t make them feel like failures.”

Jeeny: “You think avoiding failure protects them? It doesn’t. It buries them in it. Look at history — look at the schools that demanded greatness. Scotland in the Enlightenment, Harlem in the Renaissance — people who had nothing but the will to learn everything. They weren’t afraid of difficult books or hard truths.”

Jack: “You can’t romanticize hardship, Jeeny. Some people drown in it.”

Jeeny: “Then teach them to swim.”

Host: The wind outside picked up, rattling the thin windowpanes. Dust swirled in the light, small ghosts of forgotten lessons. The room felt smaller now, the tension thick enough to taste — like the bitter coffee cooling in their cups.

Jack: “You ever think maybe the system itself is broken? Not the expectations, not the books — the whole thing. You can give them Plato, sure. But when their bellies are empty, when their homes are chaos, what good is a philosopher?”

Jeeny: “Then fix the hunger, but don’t starve their minds while you do it. The two aren’t opposites, Jack. They’re the same fight. You don’t heal poverty with ignorance.”

Jack: “You heal it with empathy. With connection. With meeting people where they are.”

Jeeny: “And then what? Leave them there because it’s ‘realistic’? You think compassion means never demanding more? That’s not kindness. That’s cowardice dressed as care.”

Host: The words hit like stones — sharp, deliberate. Jack’s fists clenched on the table, the faint sound of knuckles brushing wood. A bird outside shrieked, startled into flight.

Jack: “You ever wonder if maybe high expectations are just pride in disguise? Maybe we push kids not for them — but for ourselves. To prove we’re not wasting our lives teaching in forgotten schools. To pretend it still matters.”

Jeeny: “Maybe. But I’d rather be guilty of too much faith than too little. Because one day, one of those kids will read that book you believed they couldn’t — and they’ll find themselves in it. Isn’t that worth the fight?”

Jack: “You talk like every child is a seed waiting for rain. But some ground stays barren, no matter how much you water it.”

Jeeny: “Then plant anyway. You don’t measure a life by how easy it grows, Jack. You measure it by the courage to keep planting in stone.”

Host: The clock struck noon. A faint bell echoed from the playground — the end of recess. Children’s voices flooded the hallway, laughter and chaos spilling through the cracks of the old door. The sound felt like both hope and weight.

Jeeny: “You hear that, Jack? That’s what’s at stake. Every shout, every laugh — a chance for something better. And every time we say, ‘It’s too hard for them,’ we take that chance away.”

Jack: “And every time we say, ‘Try harder,’ we risk breaking them.”

Jeeny: “So what, we stop trying altogether?”

Jack: “No. But maybe we stop pretending that every kid can climb to the same height.”

Jeeny: “But we can still give them a mountain worth climbing.”

Host: The sunlight finally broke through the clouds, landing on Jeeny’s pile of books. The titles glowed faintly — words that had outlived centuries, battles, and revolutions. Jack looked at them, his expression softening just a little.

Jack: “You really believe in all this, don’t you? That words can save them.”

Jeeny: “I do. Because they saved me.”

Jack: “Then maybe the battle isn’t about books at all. Maybe it’s about believing anything can save anyone.”

Jeeny: “Belief is the first book we ever open.”

Host: The room fell into quiet. Jeeny placed the stack of books on the table, sliding one toward Jack — Great Expectations. He hesitated, then smiled, a crooked, weary thing, but real.

Jack: “Apt title.”

Jeeny: “Exactly.”

Host: Outside, the bell rang again, a clear, insistent sound. The children ran back to their classrooms, carrying their laughter and dreams. Jack and Jeeny lingered for a moment, caught between fatigue and faith.

The light warmed the room as if the world itself had exhaled. The battle, it seemed, wasn’t just for the students — it was for the teachers who refused to stop fighting for them.

And as the door swung open and the next lesson began, the dust settled gently over the books — tiny golden motes of history waiting, once again, to be read.