THE PALE GREEN KEEGSTRA

24 February 2021Mr Neil Bryant

Mr Neil Bryant, fan of Dr Seuss, recently taught constitutional law through the case of James Keegstra. Below are his reflections on the learning process. Chiara was walking in the law class
And she saw nothing scary.
For she has never been afraid
Of anything. Not very.

The class was deep within Kennedy’s opening statements
When, suddenly, Maya espied him.
Dusya saw a pair of pale green teacher pants
With Keegstra the racist inside them!

Dylan wasn’t scared. But, yet, he stopped
What could this teacher be there for?
What could a Socials teacher in Alberta
Be standing angry in the class for?
And then he spoke? Those teacher pants!
They kind of started ranting.
And Tousaw’s ears, I must admit,
They kind of started sweating.

So Abi ran out. And Siri got out fast.
As fast as they could go, sir.
They wasn’t scared. But racist rants like that
Noone did not care for. No, sir.

Twenty years of teaching went by.
Then one dark night in Eck-vaele
(Damien had to do an errand there
And fetch some Eck-vaele ale).

Well, he had fetched the ale.
He was starting back through town
When that ranting teacher issued him a quiz
And he almost marked him down!

D kept his Eck-vaele ale
But his quiz mark he did really care.
He ran for court! Believe me,
He had really had a scare!
Now, reasonable students were never made
For pale green teachers to teach ‘em,
Especially racist pale green teachers
With nobody to correct ‘em!

And the NEXT night, Liam was writing
An essay about Roover River
When that teacher came with marking pen toward him!
Well, Liam started in to shiver.

And by now the entire class was SO frightened
That, I’ll tell you, but I hate to
They screamed and filed an s.2 suit and added
An s.1 defence, too!

Gabi ran and found a lawyer’s suit
Sajeev hid himself away.
Ramona got itches in her lawyerly britches
But they stayed in court anyway.

They stayed all day. The next day, too
They’d be there still, no doubt,
But they had to get an education
So, the next day, they went out.

Keegstra said, “I am not that racist
And have the right to express my truth.”
He said, and said, and said those words.
He said them. But he lied them.

Then he reached inside the Oakes defence
And the next thing that we knew,
We felt our arguments touch someone!
And I’ll bet that you know who.
And there Keegstra was! Caught in the fracas!
And in that dreadful place
Those dreadful legal tensions and the class
were standing face to face!

Keegstra yelled for help. He screamed. He shrieked.
He howled. He yowled. He cried,
“OH, SAVE ME FROM THESE HORRIBLE RESTRICTIONS
FROM WHICH I’D LIKE TO HIDE!”

But then a strange thing happened.
Why, those kids began to cry!
Those kids began to tremble.
They were just as scared as I!

Keegstra never heard such whimpering
And he began to see
That his ideas was just as strange to them
As theirs were strange to he!

So….

Now, the kids meet quite often,
Those legally educated kids and K.,
And they never shake or tremble,
They both smile and then say…”Hey!”

Mr Neil Bryant

Where Students Choose To Be