Chapter 21

It was Saturday morning and the big day had come for meeting the couple whom Tom and Lynette had begun to think of as the Coris superstars. Once again they were able to hitch a ride to Amelia’s house with Harry and Julie and arrived there, to be met by Elliot Hadad, Amelia’s father.

“Hi there, Julie, Harry,” he greeted them. “And that large guy there is Tom, isn’t it?” He laughed. “I’m bad with names but how could I forget Tom and Lynette? Welcome. Amelia isn’t home yet but she’s on the way as we speak.”

He began to show them into the house, but then Simon and Roberta arrived, so he greeted them too and then they all went inside.

“Amelia’s not here just yet; she stayed over at Jeremy’s last night; Denise and Kevin went straight to the U.S. embassy when they arrived yesterday and we all had dinner with them and the Porters—myself, my wife Janet, Amelia, and the Corises. Even the PM stopped in briefly to say hello. She was joking that she came to check to be sure that Denise wasn’t planning some further nefarious acts on her government.”

They all laughed as Janet walked up to them. “Honey, I don’t think that the PM was just joking. Every time Denise—or anyone in our strange extended family—does something which involves any state function, Whitehall puts up the barricades and her whole government hunkers down and trembles.”

Now everyone was roaring with laughter; they were familiar with Denise’s record here.

“Oh, you’re so right, my dear,” Elliot choked as he wiped his eyes.

Janet grinned at him and turned to the others. “So welcome; good to see you all again. Amelia’s so excited she can’t stop quivering. Kevin and Denise, to her, are like the brother and sister she never had. She can’t wait for you to meet them, too. And she and Jeremy will soon be off to uni with them in the States—such changes coming for her! Please, come to the sitting room; we’ve put out some snacks for all of you.”

They walked to the sitting room, all chatting together, and about ten minutes later they heard a minor commotion at the front door as four people entered, trundling a bunch of luggage along with them. Everyone got up to go meet the newcomers.

“We’re here,” sang out Amelia as she ran up to her dad and hugged him. Then she gave Janet a hug and kiss and grabbed Lynette’s, Roberta’s, and Julie’s hands and dragged them over to meet Kevin and Denise.

The others watched, bemused, as they wondered how, with only two hands, she managed to pull off the feat of dragging three people along with her, but there she went, the three laughing girls in tow, to meet the Corises. Kevin and Denise were vastly amused at Amelia’s enthusiasm as she introduced her girlfriends to them. But she was talking so fast as she pushed one girl, then another, at them, that Kevin’s head was whirling in an effort to follow her.

“Okay, Amelia, slow down!” he interjected into her excited monologue. “Give them a chance! Give us a chance! Let’s all sit down, calm down, and just get acquainted, okay?”

Amelia giggled, then blushed. “Oh my. I guess I got carried away, didn’t I?”

Denise chuckled. “I’ll say. That was no way for a knighted Lady of the realm to carry on. You’re supposed to be all stoic and dour, don’cha know.”

Laughter.

Then Elliot spoke. “Just leave the bags there, we’ll get them sorted later. C’mon, plenty of seats in the sitting room and we’ll get acquainted or re-acquainted as the instance demands.”

After everyone was settled, refreshments at hand, the introductions of Amelia’s and Jeremy’s friends were made. Amelia had already told the Corises a little about Lynette and Tom, especially about Tom and how he hadn’t been able to do the Avery Program. Tom had previously told her that she could share that story with them. After the introductions and polite chatter were completed, Janet and Elliot rose.

“We’ll let you guys take care of your business now,” Janet said, but Kevin got up to embrace her, Denise following.

“You might think that you’re just my honorary aunt,” he said, “but Amelia considers Denise and me to be her sister and brother. So that really makes you my mom, right?” he asked with a chuckle.

Janet looked at him and then hugged him back. “You always had a special place in my heart, Kevin. I’d be proud if you thought of me like that,” she said, her eyes tearing. “I get Denise with the package too, right?” She hugged Denise.

“Awww,” a few of the others in the room sighed and Amelia ran over to hug them all.

“Welcome to the family, Kevin and Denise too,” Amelia said to them.

Elliot and Janet left as Amelia, holding hands with Kevin and Denise, returned to her seat with them.

“Okay now,” Amelia began, “Kevin and Denise have already seen some government people; we were at the embassy yesterday and this morning. Even the PM came by...”

Harry interrupted, “Oi, your dad told us that she was looking to stop any more colonial rebellions.”

Laughter.

“Yeah, well, she told us that everyone in her cabinet was ready to help us if we needed something.”

Simon got his jab in then. “She was warning them to watch out for Denise, actually.”

More laughter.

Amelia pouted, “Grrr. You’re not gonna let me talk, are you? Okay, let Denise tell you what’s up with her visit.”

Denise grinned at her. “Still totally irrepressible, aren’t you, sweetheart?

“Okay, about Kevin’s and my visit here. I don’t know how much Amelia told you all, and I don’t know how much of this I mentioned to her when I told her we were coming to London, but frankly, it doesn’t matter anyway. I’ll tell you what’s going on with your officials, but first, some background. When Kevin and I got back to the States, we got together with Cindy to discuss how we had adapted the Avery Program for the schools here in the U.K. She was surprised...”

Lynette interrupted, “Um, sorry? ... Who’s Cindy?”

Denise shook her head and laughed. “Ugh. Guess I need to back up even further. Okay. There was a bunch of gals and guys, they were all students at Avery University and Georgia Polytech in Atlanta, who were involved in studies which put the final nails in the Naked in School’s coffin back in the States. Y’all hear about that?”

Everyone nodded agreement. “Good. So Cindy, that’s Cynthia Denison—now Doctor Denison, became the lead designer of the Avery Program. Its official name is actually the ‘Avery-Denison Program.’”

Denise looked at Lynette. “All good now?”

Lynette nodded.

Denise grinned at her and continued. “So Cindy was surprised when I told her that the version of the Avery Program which we helped set up here was designed as a formal class and would have mandatory student participation, just like the Naked in School Program had been made mandatory. She strongly felt that doing that was wrong; I asked her why. She told me that fewer than two dozen school districts in the States had adopted it so far. In the U.S. there had been so much extremely negative public opinion about the Naked in School Program that very few school districts wanted to adopt anything like it. Many states had even passed laws limiting any mandatory school social programs that resembled anything like the Naked in School Program, even remotely.

“Cindy told me that the way that the curriculum developers at Avery University were designing the program, it will be part of the P.E. classes. Actually that’s exactly how it was set up when we first conceived it. And it isn’t mandatory in any of the schools which have adopted it. She told me that in the long run, making it mandatory would be counter-productive and would eventually fail because there would always be a number of kids who are reluctant or refuse to participate. They aren’t touch-shy, I mean clinically, but they don’t like participating in public intimacy for whatever reason. Tom, Amelia told me about your experience with the program and I assure you that you’re definitely not alone. Just like you, in many cases these kids feel that even holding another person’s hand is a degree of intimacy that makes them uncomfortable.

“I explained to her about the adaptation we made here with the mentors to try to deal with the cases of touch-shy students that we encountered and how our version of using the mentors had resulted in a virtual 100 percent acceptance. She laughed and told me that’s exactly what she would have expected, since according to her, English people have this ‘stiff upper lip’ mind-set and appear to be mostly willing to do whatever the government tells them.”

Laughter and nods of agreement.

“Back in the States, the mind-set is just the opposite; while the Avery Program has had a lot of great successes, the data from your first pilot classes here seem like Polyanna. Cindy and I have the theory that this is a local phenomenon. Everything around London is government-centric and people living here seem to be conditioned to be more suggestible. When Kevin and I were living here last year, we saw this first hand; the Naked in School Programs in London seemed to have more parental acceptance than it did in schools in suburban and rural areas. So when you begin introducing the Avery Program in rural schools, we suspect that you’ll see many more cases which resemble Tom’s reluctance. Then the mandatory program requirement becomes very difficult to manage, wouldn’t it?”

There were nods of agreement around the room.

Denise went on, “I told Cindy why we had set up the Avery Program like a class—it was because we urgently needed to replace that naked program with something that had formal, measurable outcomes like proper educational programs require, or else it wouldn’t get immediate support of the authorities here and we wouldn’t get easy access to grant funds. She immediately saw that we were correct in taking that approach, but suggested that we try to move the U.K. version away from being mandatory. That’ll be one of my objectives here.”

“So Denise,” Jeremy commented, “last night, you were telling us what you think the DfE expects you to do with the curriculum group at the university. Amelia and I spent several months last fall trying to get a psychologist to consult with the curriculum planners. They kept putting us off, blaming funding, personnel issues, no proof of need, that kinda rot. Tell the group what your plans are to break that logjam.”

“Yes, logjam it is. The government brought me here because they think I can simply wave my hands and fix the structural problem they created in pushing this program into the curriculum in a way that it doesn’t appear to fit. The Naked in School Program simply involved having kids be naked. That’s all it did, besides all of the objectionable corollaries. The Avery Program involves scheduled class sessions; that’s a major difference, even though both programs have basically the same objectives. That’s what the Avery pilot program was for—to gather data to see if the program would meet the social objectives the government was aiming for. The program’s structural problem is simple; there are just too many players involved.

“The government, that’s the first player, has decided it wants to run a social program in the schools which has certain objectives, but hasn’t provided the necessary resources to ensure proper implementation. The next player is the developer of that program, and in this case the developer is also the implementator—um, that’s probably not a word but who cares. Implementor? That player is the university, whose faculty is involved in designing curricula and training teachers. The third player is the user, that’s the schools, where the curricula and teachers put the social program into practice. Each of these players has their own agenda, budget, resources, and capabilities. Guess what?—seldom do they align.”

Everyone in the room was listening to Denise raptly. They could see from her intensity how she had managed to accomplish so much, so quickly. She was continuing.

“What I think I’m supposed to do is to recommend how these three players are to be made to cooperate more effectively. But that’s where the difficulty lies. The government part seems to me to be very amorphous. There’s nowhere to push the ministry to get anything significant done; it’s like pushing on a block of Jell-O. You push, it jiggles a bit but returns to where it was. The DfE is in charge of the U.K.’s primary and secondary public education system; they evaluate school performance and oversee institutions of higher learning in their education and training missions. That’s from the blurb they sent me. The closest office that they seem to have which has a direct curriculum-setting function is the old Program Committee which had oversight of the Naked in School Program. Even that office was never staffed; it was composed of consultants drawn from other government offices, universities, and schools, but it’s moribund now with only a chairperson remaining. All its former functions have been absorbed into other offices in the ministry. The only resource they have committed to provide is some undefined amount of funding; there was no promise of personnel, even if I could identify someone with appropriate qualifications.

“I could do the same analysis of the university and school players too but won’t bore you with details. It seems that there are several limitations here; Amelia identified one. Writing curricula isn’t a career building occupation. Another is that few psychologists appear to have much interest in consulting; the Avery program doesn’t appear to be an interesting topic. At least it isn’t in the States. Another is the bottleneck in training teachers.”

“So what are you going to do? What will you recommend?” asked Harry.

“Ha. Simply change everyone’s mind-set about the Avery Program, Harry. We’ll need to shift people’s idea of the Avery Program from a skill-building experience, which it seems like it’s become, to a cooperative activity experience. In a way, Kevin and I are to blame, but we were trying to shift the U.K. from one social program where nudity was the focus to another where building maturity, trust, and respect was the focus. We had to use the same format and structure of the Naked in School Program or else the whole idea of stopping it probably would have been rejected out of hand.”

Kevin broke into the discussion. “Hell, listen to her. Denise always complains that I get into lecture mode too much. Looks like I’ve had a bad influence on her.”

Laughter.

He went on, “I’m reminded about the beginnings of the Avery Program. It’s a fascinating story. It goes back to Cindy—Denise told you about her—and her brother Roger and when they began college. They were taking an elective ed class and their randomly assigned project involved the Naked in School Program, which at that point had been all but killed off by that time. So even though there no longer was an NiS Program to work with, the prof wouldn’t budge in changing the assignment. Their project was supposed to involve designing class curricula for kids participating in the NiS Program, and then demonstrating how the curricula would work in those classes, but no such classes existed anymore. Their ed school had a stupid faculty committee rule which didn’t allow the prof to make any changes to the approved projects; that’s why they couldn’t get a different project.

“So Cindy’s group had to come up with a set of replacement demonstration classes which incorporated the principles of the defunct Naked in School Program, and her group was adamant that there would be no nudity in their classes. What’s cool is that the demonstration classes that they developed were all based on their being part of the school’s P.E. program, actually, and the unintentional shift to a more formal setting happened only because of how wildly successful and popular the program became among the first group of teachers and school officials. Everyone involved at its beginning wanted to formalize the Avery Program, despite its original design as part of a P.E. class. We need to bring the program back to its roots.”

“So, Denise, can you work another miracle?” Amelia asked. “You want to collapse the whole Avery Program into being just a part of P.E. classes, right?”

“Exactly, Amelia,” she answered. “But it won’t be collapsing anything other than removing the exercises from its scheduled classes and moving them into a P.E. framework. But I assume that doing this will be more difficult than getting the Avery Program accepted to replace the NiS one. Now, I understand that you guys, mainly Amelia and her new friends—sorry, it’s, um, Tom and Lynette, right?—they did some prep work already that can help me advance the argument to make that change; is that right?”

Tom blushed. “Yeah, I’m Tom Armstrong, and my sister’s Lynette, Denise. We looked through some forum posts from Avery teachers.”

Amelia interrupted. “It was Tom’s idea to set up the forum, actually. And he and Lynette had the idea to audit some Avery sessions. I told you how they couldn’t deal with the bonding exercise part...”

“Right, I remember,” Denise said. “But you told me that the reason wasn’t something you could share; it was personal.”

Tom raised his hand. “We can tell you why. Lynette and I had already bonded for years before, while growing up, holding and caressing each other—just like the holding and caressing that we were told to do in those exercises. So we couldn’t do it with other kids.”

Tom went on to briefly describe his reaction to the bonding session and Julie’s subsequent attempt to help.

When Tom’s comments ended, Amelia interjected, “About a couple of months after they got out of their Avery class, and while working with Tom over something totally unrelated to the Avery problem, Jeremy and I discovered that these two blokes are empathic dynamos, Denise. You may have met your match in Lynette, actually,” she giggled. “Tom is strong too, but projects his aura kinda differently from hers.”

The siblings looked at each other and blushed as Denise stood up with an excited exclamation.

“Lynette, come here please!” she commanded, holding out her arms. “Let’s hold hands.”

Lynette shyly stood, went to Denise, and Denise took her hands and held them for a minute while she gazed into Lynette’s eyes. Then Lynette gave a little shiver and turned slightly, reaching for Tom with one arm. He rose and took her hand as Lynette whispered for him to take Denise’s free hand. Then the three stood silently, looking at each other. After a minute, Denise took a step back and shook her head.

“Amazing,” she muttered. “Lynette is strong; I actually could feel her across the room when we came in before. But joined with Tom, her aura is overpowering. And Tom has a kind of charisma ... unusually strong, by himself. Tom, Lynette—I’d really like to hear your impression of the Avery sessions you watched,” she told them.

Jeremy broke in, “First let them tell you what they found in the Avery teachers’ reports. It sounds like it might be useful for your consulting session next week.”

Denise went back to her seat while Tom sat and pulled out a paper. At Denise’s nod, he began to read it to the group.

“This is from that Avery forum. It really helped that the Avery teachers kept very good notes...”

“That was part of their training, Tom,” Amelia broke in. “Sorry, go on?”

“It was good that the teachers put their past class notes into the forum when it got set up. I guess they were told to do that too?” Amelia nodded. “Okay. There were reports from teachers at eight schools. Three had the Avery Program for a whole year and five for a half-year. The eight schools’ enrollment averaged 432 students and the size of each Avery class was 24. I calculated the total number of Avery sessions for all the schools together and that came to 87.

“Then Lynette and I read through the reports; there should have been 87 but some teachers put in more than one so there were 119 total. We only looked for reports of a kid not being able to do the bonding sessions and we found 19 like that. Based on 87 sessions, that’s over 20 percent—one out of five classes had a kid with a problem about participating!”

Everyone looked like they were eager to get a question in but Denise was fastest.

She didn’t look very surprised. “Hmm ... that’s about what Cindy told me happened in the States too. What were the reasons the teachers gave?”

Tom looked at Lynette. “You can help out too, you know,” he said with a chuckle.

“Okay. I know you don’t like to be the center of attention, bro.” He gave Lynette a mock glare as she answered. “The reasons were all over the map, but what we found most interesting was how the teachers dealt with the kids who couldn’t or wouldn’t do the bonding exercises. Okay. The reasons. Eight girls totally refused to do anything with a boy. The implied reason for five of them was that they considered themselves to be lesbians while three had experienced some kind of abuse in the past—sexual or another kind. Two boys refused touching girls but wouldn’t admit any gay tendencies; they wouldn’t do anything more intimate than casual handholding in a group, nothing closer.

“There were three kids where religion was involved. These were Muslims; two girls were seventeen and refused male contact, saying they were betrothed and one boy, who said he was taught that after he became age 16, it wasn’t proper to touch girls. The remaining six gave no particular reason other than saying that they didn’t think it was proper to do in public what they called an intimate act. But it appears, from teachers’ comments, that two of these kids were in committed relationships with a classmate, so Tom and I assumed those two were similar to our situation.”

Amelia jumped in, “You mentioned the teachers doing something when a kid wouldn’t participate?”

“Oh yeah,” Lynette answered. “In several cases, a teacher let a kid who stayed in the room during the bonding part but who refused to fully participate—it seems they stayed, went through the motions, but didn’t do much of the close physical contact—these kids, there were nine of them—were allowed to do most of the rest of the Avery Program. It appears they were okay with doing the rest of the Avery exercises but that’s just a guess because there was nothing written about them other than their mention in the bonding parts. That wouldn’t have been allowed in our school with Hanford as head, that’s for sure!” she finished to chuckles from her schoolmates.