Astrid is a highly gifted fifth grader, who is being smothered under
the lock-step conformist program of her teacher, Dr. Helton. In order
to intellectually survive, she has taken on the responsibility of
developing her own mind. She refuses to conform to the class schedule
that lags far behind her own. Learning is her key, and grades, credit
on paper, are important only as long as they are high enough to pass.
Dr. Helton is determined to break her, to make all the children in
his classroom conform, obey authority without question, and be
socialized according to his plan. Shortly, because Dr. Helton becomes
school principal, every child in the school is subjected to his
authoritarian principles, and at some level suffers, giving up
independent thought, choice, self-expression and the ability to
function at a personal level above Principal Helton's plan. Worse,
most of the parents have blind faith in this educational "expert" and
his authority. They have been blind-sided by years of trusting in
authority, for authority has meant rule by the "experts," and the
experts were believed to be inherently good and moral. It is up to
the school children to sound the wake up call to get their parents to
take their plight seriously. Kendall uses adult and children's
characters in comparison and contrast on multiple levels to get at
the heart of their moral choices. Heroes are honest minds who want to
do the right thing, and villains are motivated by their desire to
control others by faking, defrauding, bullying and physical force.
The Town Meeting, forced by the children and a handful of thinking
adults, is the forum at which the ideas behind the novel's conflict
are made explicit by civilized and impassioned individual
presentations, and an emotionally charged secret is revealed. A TURN
FOR DE WURST is a philosophical gem in which characters are
multidimensional, living, thinking, reacting human beings. It is a
first novel tour de force, clearly and beautifully written.
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