The School of Conversation. (excerpted from Teaching: the forgotten art by Frank Thing.) A staid, lonely building, clad in moss and hidden behind a profuse garden of sun-coloured shoulder-high wild flowers, the School Of Conversation exists to teach that rare art, too often left to chance in other schools - I refer, of course, to the art of conversation Where other educational institutions simply gather a group of similarly-aged children together in a classroom and hope that during their years together they will somehow learn to interact freely and meaningfully with the people around them (ignoring the fact that one is a bully, one is shy, one cannot pronounce the latter A without lisping and one is a kindly showoff who will dominate the group) the School of Conversation realises that verbalisation is a skill which deserves to be taught. The Headmaster of the school, Akira Frogmalkin, explains: "Would you leave an infant alone with a collection of compasses and paper, pens and prisms, and then complain when it does not become an expert mathematician? No, no, thrice and a thousand times no! You would hand it over to the best mathematician in the province, crying, "Take my child and teach it, else I shall not pay you! In fact, I shall beat you with a stick if my little one remains ignorant of basic equations by this time next year!" This is the way we deal with maths, but is it the way we deal with conversation, a far more useful talent than dull numbers? No, it is not! We entrust our childrens' societal development to their peers, to other children, children who are ignorant, children who know less than our child, children who are not infrequently as dumb as rocks. Bring your child to me! I will teach it the Art of the Pause, the Need for Reflection, the meaningful and exploratory Tactic of Questions, the best time to employ it. We will free them from stammering, from the Evil of Repitition, the Curse of Awkwardness, and the Fear of One's Own Stupidity." The headmaster claims that the school is there to enlighten, not to lay down didactic principles of how one must behave, but I have heard strange rumours about that place. They say the teachers play a nocturnal debating game in which the loser is forced to drink a tincture of drugged rosewater; and that secret classes exist in which select pupils are taught to use conversation as a weapon. Graduates of this class are said to have infiltrated the government, their minds set on a purpose no-one can guess, unless it be total domination of the country by excellent speakers.