Little Johnny Slide-Along:

An Allegorical Type of Tale

After six years of teaching English at Huntington Park High School, I can’t help but become amused at all of the political rancor surrounding LA Unified and its “underperforming” high schools. Organizations and individuals with a financial stake in any one interpretation or set of solutions will shout their proposals from rooftops. Many of us on the front lines (so to speak) remain taciturn out of fears of petty recrimination. After six years, I have a story to tell. Like an English teacher, I will communicate with an extended metaphor. This story is about a medical hospital, but it isn’t really about a hospital. The hospital represents a high school. The medicine dispensed in it represents education in the forms of knowledge and the mental skills needed to use it. The other parallels are easily recognizable, especially to teachers who have been at the job for several years.

The story begins with little Johnny “Slide-Along.” Johnny’s parents are concerned that he isn’t functioning well and commit him to the care of “Horse’s Rear End Memorial Hospital.” The Doctors there performed a battery of diagnostic tests and prescribed a medicinal elixir which if taken daily will heal the ailment and allow little Johnny Slide-Along to function successfully in the future. This should be the end of the story, right?

Well, here’s the catch. Little Johnny must actually consume this medicine, more specifically, put it in his mouth and swallow it. It requires an act of human volition that only he can exercise. The doctors can’t do it for him outside of pinning him to a bed and stuffing a medicine filled turkey baster down his throat.

You see the problem comes into play in this way. Johnny doesn’t like the taste of the elixir. It isn’t pleasant to him, and Johnny is accustomed to only doing things that please him and please him immediately. In a world of internet porn, computer games, and MTV, Johnny cannot understand the concepts of long term benefits and delayed gratification. He only understands that the medicine “tastes nasty,” and he therefore doesn’t want to consume it. This is an easy problem to perceive and address appropriately, but not at Horse’s Rear End Memorial. Common sense is a bit elusive at that institution.

The administrators at Horse’s Rear End Memorial Hospital hired very expensive experts to examine the situation. These expensive experts claimed that the problem lay in the delivery of the medicine. They recommended very expensive training sessions in which they would train the doctors to use such delivery methods as, “Here Comes the Choo-Choo,” and “Open Wide for the Airplane.”

Johnny was humored by these games and played along with them mostly because he enjoyed watching the doctors make fools out of themselves. The medicine still tasted nasty, and Johnny simply waited for their backs to be turned so that he could spit it out into a sink or napkin. Johnny’s condition did not improve.

The Administrators were puzzled and decided to hire a new set of very expensive experts who informed them that the problem could be solved by turning the act of medicine taking into a cooperative effort. What the hospital needed to do was find all of the other children who were in a similar condition and put them together into a team of medicine takers with tasks assigned to each team member such as delivery handler, bottle pourer, spoon measurer etc. Johnny was thrilled with this idea. It was rollicking good fun. The adolescents ended up spitting the medicine out at each other and feeding it to the cat; but only one of the youngsters actually consumed it herself, and she ended up consuming everyone else’s allotment in her group in addition to her own. This girl got better, but Johnny’s condition did not improve. Even though he had great fun, the medicine still tasted nasty, and he wasn’t going to swallow it. 

The next group of very expensive experts hired by the administrators of Horse’s Rear End Memorial Hospital was a tad more intelligent than the previous ones had been. They asked Johnny what the problem was, and he told them. Their solution was to coat the medicine with a sugary substance in order to disguise the taste. This seemed to work. Johnny began to take the medicine, but the sugary substance chemically interacted with the medicine leaving it only minimally effective. After a while, Johnny decided that the taste was no longer nasty, but it still wasn’t good enough to swallow. He returned to his hide and spit evasion tactics. Perhaps he was just enjoying all of the fuss and worrying that centered around him. In any case, Johnny’s condition still did not improve.

Finally Johnny’s grandma got involved. Grandma was from a different generation, and she was utterly confused by all of the nonsense. She went to visit Johnny in the hospital. “Listen here, you little brat.” She whispered sweetly in his ear. “Remember that new ipod I promised you for your birthday? Well, you’re not getting it until I know you’ve been taking your medicine. I will be here every day to make sure you do.”

Grandma was true to her word. She came to the hospital every day. She spoon fed Johnny his medicine and then watched him to make sure that he swallowed it. For the first time, Johnny’s condition improved.

Johnny still didn’t like taking the nasty tasting medicine and he whined about it daily. Grandma ignored him. Mommy and Daddy were disturbed by Johnny’s apparent unhappiness. They didn’t want him to feel so bad, and pleaded with Grandma to just give Johnny the ipod because surely Johnny had learned his lesson by now. Grandma finally got annoyed enough with Johnny’s parents that she relented. She turned over the ipod and went back home, shaking her head. Johnny was happy again. He enthusiastically returned to his hide and spit evasion tactics, while his health began to deteriorate again.

So how does the story end? Well, that’s open to debate. There are a number of possible endings.

In one ending little Johnny dies. The parents sue the hospital, and the administrators fire all of the doctors since Johnny was under their care, and he was their responsibility. The administrators hire orderlies and candy stripers to replace the doctors. The replacements know very little about medical science, but they can be trained successfully in such as essentials as “Here Comes the Choo-Choo,” and “Open Wide for the Airplane.”

In another ending the doctors manage to get just enough medicine into Johnny’s system that he survives, but is unnecessarily crippled for life by his ailment. The administrators gloss over the situation and claim great success in curing little Johnny. We’ve all heard this kind of talk “The glass isn’t half empty. It’s half full.” Or more to the point:--“The high school exit exam doesn’t measure everything you need to know.”

It is also possible that Johnny’s parents could turn over the situation to Grandma. But Grandma will need another form of negative consequence. She gave Johnny the ipod already. An ending like that one wouldn’t be appreciated today anyway. Punishment is considered to be so 19^th century. We’ve made such advances as a society since the 19^th century. For instance, we all know how illiterate people were a hundred years ago.