Schooled

When Capricorn begins attending the public school, he encounters a world that operates by different rules, and the school faces a compassionate and peaceful “threat” to the status quo. Who experiences more change—the school community when Capricorn’s influence inspires them, or Capricorn under the influence of the school? Explain your rationale with examples and refer to text details in your answer. These questions may serve as useful points in formulating a response.

• How does Capricorn feel when he first attends the school?
• Who first begins to be kind to Capricorn and why?
• Which characters shift their treatment of Capricorn the most and what causes those shifts?
• How does Capricorn feel about the school at the end of the novel?
• What lessons does Capricorn teach people at the school?

Teaching Suggestion: To begin, students might work with a partner or small group to define change and list ways people and schools can shift. They can look for scenes that reveal change and identify specific quotations that illustrate their ideas. One way to approach this topic could be to assign weights to how much both sides changed the other (Capricorn and the school), with the weights adding up to 100%. This could lead to more complex critical thinking, where students include qualifiers like mostly, somewhat, and slightly.