Canter Bridge

Roger Schank’s hilarious send-up of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Story has all manner of respect for Dickens and even for the original Scrooge. In fact, Schank dedicates the book to Dickens.

It is the practitioners of education-as-preparation-for-test-taking who absorb the blows of the author’s satire. The Yale University Admissions Department and the Educational Testing Service stand in for the broader industry.

Schank’s Scrooge, the businessman behind the Scrooge Testing Service, is forced to reckon with four nocturnal spirits. First comes the Ghost of John Dewey to illuminate the aged educational tester about the ordeal he must bear, then the Spirit of Education Past, the Spirit of Education Present, and the Spirit of Education Future. In real life one of America’s educational icons, Dewey had been Scrooge’s teacher at Columbia and had once lived in Scrooge’s apartment. But that was a long time ago and so very much forgotten.

I found myself chuckling throughout my reading at the turns Schank executes on his Dickensian framework. Satire achieves its success when it makes the status quo seem ludicrous. In this sense, Scrooge Meets Dick and Jane achieves its goal.

Satire becomes fun when it smartly juxtaposes an old and familiar reality with the new thing that is being ridiculed.

Dickens’ Scrooge awakens from his troubled sleep to throw open a window and announce by word and deed to the world below that he gone from being a curse upon it to a blessing. Schank’s Scrooge follows in stride. Let the remaking of a familiar scene stand in for the whole enterprise:

‘What’s happening today?’, cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy, who perhaps had loitered in to look about him.

‘Eh?’ returned the boy, with all his might of wonder.

‘What’s today, my fine fellow?’ said Scrooge.

‘Today?’ replied the boy. ‘Why today is the day when the SATs are administered.’

‘I haven’t missed it.’ said Scrooge to himself. ‘The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of course they can. Hallo, my fine fellow!’

‘Hallo!’ returned the boy.

‘Run to the school and tell them not to administer the exam,’ Scrooge replied.

‘What? Why would they listen to me? No one could stop the exam. Besides the exam is being given all over the country in every school,’ replied the lad.

‘An intelligent boy!’ said Scrooge. ‘A remarkable boy! You are absolutely correct! I must call the newspapers. I must post something on our web site. I must get on television!’

‘What will you tell them?’ returned the boy.

‘That there will be no more exams. Scrooge’s Testing Service is going out of business,’ said Scrooge. ‘It will be a pleasure to talk to them. Yes, my buck.’

‘But they will demand a replacement,’ replied the boy. ‘How will they know how I am doing in school? How will they know who is getting it and who is not?’

‘They will have to do what they did before there were testing services,’ said Scrooge. ‘They will have to pay attention to each individual child. Yale will have to interview its applicants and listen to the opinions of teachers. They will have to seek out original minds instead of good test takers!’

‘Surely you jest!’ exclaimed the boy.

It is principally educators who will pick up Scrooge Meets Dick and Jane. No matter their educational philosophy, they will find something of themselves in Roger Schank’s satire. It may even enliven discussion which all to often is dry, arcane, and a country mile from anything as imaginative as Charles Dickens and that other Scrooge story.