ABSTRACT
The American-Hip-High-School-Teacher enters the classroom for the first time. The disaffected adolescents sneer at him and chew their gum but he is somehow different; he sits for a moment on the edge of the desk, he looks at them with patient humour, he has perhaps a small earring. He writes DEMOCRACY in huge capitals on the board and, intrigued despite themselves, the drug dealers, muggers and amateur prostitutes who make up his first-ever class begin to offer thoughts on DEMOCRACY as it relates to their inner-city lives. Soon, they will give up drug-dealing, mugging and amateur prostitution and form a close-harmony choir which will come second in a prestigious inter-state competition.
