Parable of the A Students

There was a group of students who were good in school. They did everything their teacher told them, attended classed without fail, did homework to the T, went on field trips to the various hot spots in town, even stayed out late to make sure they learn all the subject matter at the spot.

When the teacher told them to do bad things, they followed instructions to a T. They especially liked to do the opposite when the teacher told them good things. He told them this was called reverse psychology, so they loved to practice reverse psychology. If he told them to love, they hated. If he told them to appreciate life, they tried all in their power to self-destruct. If he told them to strive to be successful, they prayed to fail, or shoot themselves in the foot.

They truly enjoyed turning positive into negative, and they mastered the game of failure rather than success. The teacher couldn't pay them to succeed. If he told them to practice safe sex or even to restrain from sex for awhile, they did the opposite. They would have sex without a condom and would get infected with various STDs, including HIV/AIDS. And some of the girls who did the opposite of what the teacher said got pregnant.

Again, the teacher was using reverse psychology because he intended for them to fail. He had his plans for them to be failures. He was only following instructions from his boss so the youth would end up destroyed, and especially the boys who were programmed for the department of corrections so they could help the guards and other prison industry workers live the good life, buy nice homes, cars, boats, go on ship cruises, put their children through college. The teachers and other workers prayed together at church that the children would be A students in doing the opposite of what they taught them, and the children were true to the game played on them. Yes, they were A students. They failed at school, failed to discover their life mission, failed at having positive relationships with their boyfriends and girlfriends, and later their marriage partners, failed at raising their children. Yes, this group of students were a failure, and yet they carried the teacher's program out to a T. They got A's on their report cards.

--Marvin X

from The Wisdom of Plato Negro, parables/fables by Marvin X, Black Bird Press, Berkeley.