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THE EDUCATIONAL INTELLIGENT
ECONOMY
INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON
EDUCATION AND SOCIETY
Recent Volumes:
THE EDUCATIONAL
INTELLIGENT ECONOMY: BIG
DATA, ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE, MACHINE
LEARNING AND THE
INTERNET OF THINGS IN
EDUCATION
EDITED BY
TAVIS D. JULES
Loyola University Chicago, USA
and
FLORIN D. SALAJAN
North Dakota State University, USA
United Kingdom – North America – Japan
India – Malaysia – China
Emerald Publishing Limited
Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any
form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without
either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying
issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright
Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst
Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald
makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application
and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use.
PART I
(RE)CONCEPTUALIZING DATA IN
COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL
EDUCATION
PART II
REVISITING METHODOLOGIES
Chapter 3 The Perceptron: A Partial History of
Models and Minds in Data-driven Educational
Systems
Ryan Ziols
PART III
WORKFORCE PARTICIPATION,
TRANSFORMATION, AND INDUSTRY 4.0
Chapter 6 The Educational Intelligent
Economy – Lifelong Learning – A Vision for the
Future
Vasudha Chaudhari, Victoria Murphy and Allison
Littlejohn
Index
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
The private sector has not only made itself indispensable for
amassing data across national boundaries but also for interpreting it.
It does so for its greater project of an “intelligent education,” that is,
an education that is informed by what works and what does not
work. Needless to state, from the perspective of policy borrowing
research, it is cause for alarm that innovations are uncritically
transferred from one context to another thereby disempowering local
actors and local solutions.
In other words, datafication and digitalization per se are not the
problem. On the contrary, there are many positive uses that come to
mind. For example, one may use data for advocacy purposes
(registering the number of internally displaced out-of-school children
and youth) or for digitalizing knowledge products and making them
openly available for free. The issue is that the Fourth Industrial
Revolution is at the mercy of for-profit companies who control the
knowledge, means, and global networks to scale up digitalization
and datafication to keep themselves in business.
Gita Steiner-Khamsi
Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, USA
Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies,
Geneva, Switzerland
REFERENCES
Gillespie, T. (2014, 25 June). Algorithm. Culture Digitally. Retreived from
http://culturedigitally.org/2014/06/algorithm-draft-digitalkeyword/
Jules, T. (2019). Big “G” and Small “g”: The variable geometrics of educational governance
in an era of Big Data. In T. D. Jules & F. D. Salajan (Eds.), The educational intelligent
economy: Big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning and the internet of things in
education (pp. 1–12). Bingley: Emerald Publishers.
Lubienski, C. (2019). Advocacy networks and market models for education. In M. Parreira
do Amaral, G. Steiner-Khamsi, & C. Thompson (Eds.), Researching the global
education industry (pp. 69–86). New York, NY: Palgrave.
Ritzer, G., & Jurgenson, N. (2010). Production, consumption, prosumption: The nature of
capitalism in the age of the digital “Prosumer”. Journal of Consumer Culture, 10, 13–
36. doi:10.1177/1469540509354673
Salajan, F. D. (2019). Policy development for an educational intelligent economy in the
European Union: An illusory prospect? In T. D. Jules & F. D. Salajan (Eds.), The
educational intelligent economy: Big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning and
the internet of things in education (pp. 199–214). Bingley: Emerald Publishers.
Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2016). Standards are good (for) business: Standardised comparison
and the private sector in education. Globalisation, Societies, and Education, 14(2), pp.
161–182. doi:10.1080/14767724.2015.1014883
Steiner-Khamsi, G., & Draxler, A. (2018). Introduction. In G. Steiner-Khamsi & A. Draxler
(Eds.), The state, business, and education: Public-private partnerships revisited (pp. 1–
15). Cheltenham: E. Elgar.
UN Secretary General. (2019). The age of digital interdependence. Report of the UN
Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation, UN Secretary-General,
Geneva.
Williamson, B. (2016). Digital education governance: An introduction. European Educational
Research Journal, 15(1), pp. 3–13. doi:10.1177%2F1474904115616630
INTRODUCTION: THE EDUCATIONAL
INTELLIGENT ECONOMY, EDUCATIONAL
INTELLIGENCE, AND BIG DATA
Florin D. Salajan and Tavis D. Jules
The central tenet of this volume is that the world is witnessing the
steady and gradual transition from a knowledge economy or society
to an educational intelligent economy premised on the exponential
production of digital data to measure, analyze and predict
educational performance in comparative perspective. Furthermore,
the digitization and datafication of educational output in the “data-
driven, algorithm-mediated economy of the twenty-first century”
(Economist, 2019, p. 1) have intensified the processing and analysis
of data leading to the emergence of a form of digital education
governance through massive flows of “Big Data” (Williamson, 2017).
The shift in the massification of data storage and flows and the
algorithms generating foresight capabilities unimagined barely a
decade ago is of such magnitude that some have argued it
represents a quantum leap in offering solutions for social and
economic problems (Mayer-Schönberger & Cukier, 2013). In
describing the core features of Big Data as residing primarily in its
volume, velocity, and veracity but also in its exhaustiveness,
flexibility, and scalability, Kitchin (2014) considers Big Data a
disruptive innovation powerful enough that “a data revolution is
underway that has far-reaching consequences to how knowledge is
produced, business conducted, and governance enacted” (p. 2).
Given its perceived value and its potential to engender both progress
and pose unforeseen challenges, this type of data may be construed
as educational intelligence to be exchanged, exploited, and
leveraged for a multitude of purposes in the global educational
markets and worlds of policymaking. We posit that at the heart of
the intelligent economy is educational intelligence, which
encompasses both individual and system-level processes. This has
the real potential of unleashing the creative capacity of educational
systems to find innovative solutions in harnessing the learning
required to manage and steer data integration at the intersection of
Big Data, cloud computing, social media, mobile and automation
technologies, and scientific discoveries that continuously reshape the
way we live, work and learn.
The term educational intelligence appears to have a long history
and may be traced to the rise of data in education (Lawn, 2013). It
has been used under varying semantic connotations and with
diverging meanings over time. Thus, during the mid- to late-
nineteenth century, the Journal of Education for Upper Canada
(Department of Public Instruction for Upper Canada, 1848–1866)
construed educational intelligence as information collected from the
academic world as updates and news about individual scholarship
and institutional developments. Though no explicit definition was
provided, a section of the journal titled “Educational Intelligence”
was devoted to recording and disseminating such information,
suggesting an understanding of the term as a process of information
gathering with the purpose of building a shareable list of updates for
public consumption, not connoting an intent to gain advantage in an
adversarial, conflictual or competitive context.
More significantly for the field of comparative and international
education, Sir Michael Sadler’s take on educational intelligence at the
beginning of the twentieth century is illuminating for its foresight
and significance in steering educational research and reporting on
comparative analyses of educational systems. Having served for
eight years and accumulating a wealth of experience as Director of
the UK Office of Special Inquiries and Reports, Sadler suggested that
a change in the Department’s title was more fitting its then current
scope and purpose. Thus, in recounting his reflection on this matter,
Sadler opined:
The present title is too obscure, while that suggested in lieu of it would more clearly
denote the work of the branch, as the Intelligence Department of the Board of
Education. It would also more closely conform to the nomenclature adopted for the
Intelligence Divisions of the Admiralty, War Office and the Board of Trade. (as cited
in Sislian, 2004, p. 8)
CHAPTER OVERVIEWS
Given our framing of data as a form of educational intelligence
situated at the intersection of Big Data, AI, Machine Learning, and
the Internet of Things in education and new economic imperatives
driven by the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the
chapters in this volume are clustered under four main thematic
areas. The first theme attempts to reconceptualize the role of data in
comparative and international education in anticipation of the
marked transformations that Big Data are expected to usher in
education more generally and CIE in particular. The chapters
grouped under the second theme ponder the conceptual power and
limitations of methodologies designed for the governance of
education, as Big Data introduces novel or alters technologies of
measurement and design of education. The third theme addresses
the forces exerting balancing or imbalancing effects on education,
workforce participation and industry in the era of Big Data. Under
the final theme, several chapters offer unique case studies ranging
from policy formulation to historical legacies (re)interpreted in the
context of educational intelligence, each with a focus on a distinct
region of the world. As this thematic compartmentalization suggests,
the volume brings together a group of scholars from a rich set of
multidisciplinary perspectives employing a variety of analytical
approaches to the sui generis phenomenon embodied by Big Data in
education and its central role in shaping the contours of the
educational intelligent economy. The rest of this introduction
provides concise descriptions of these timely contributions to this
fascinating area of inquiry.
In Chapter 1, Tavis Jules chronicles the emergence of data as an
instrument of educational governance and comparison, under the
tutelage of increasingly more influential policy-informing entities,
such as the IEA, OECD and other similar bodies. He contends that
data in itself can be considered an assemblage exerting
(re)territorializing effects on educational governance as it interfaces
relationally with assemblages operating by virtue of their subsuming
and, at the same time, subordinated relationship to data.
Consequently, Jules argues that, at the dawn of the educational
intelligent economy driven by the Big Data paradigm and associated
technologies of predictive analytics, a new age of educational
governance with a “big G” emerges, characterized by the co-
evolution, coordination, and concurrence of steering mechanisms, in
the interstices of which data sources form the algorithms of
governance with a “small g.” The implications for the educational
intelligent economy rest in the manner in which these layers of
governance will continue to seek an equilibrium or struggle to
prevent disruption as educational intelligence becomes increasingly
commodified, consumed, and codified in algorithmic technologies of
educational managerialism.
In Chapter 2, Bjorn Nordtveit and Fadia Nordtveidt offer a critical
narrative problematizing the indiscriminate use of Big Data to further
reinforce colonial tools of dominance in research. They also point to
the pressing need for CIE researchers to be aware of the perils and
paths of Big Data utilization and pattern replication from the global
north to the global south. The discussion is tied to the emergence of
educational intelligence in the global economy and how this may
either ameliorate or, on the contrary, exacerbate the imbalanced
duality of research imperatives from the North to the South (and
vice-versa).
Ryan Ziols provides an intriguing discussion in Chapter 3 by
analyzing the discourses on assessment and categorizations of mind
capacities via multiple socio-, bio-, psycho-, demographic factors.
Tracing the history of cybernetics to elucidate large-scale assessment
assemblages, Ziols applies a novel lens to examine the measurement
of the socio-psychological at the interface of Big Data, learning
analytics, and artificial intelligence, through the perceptron metaphor
in a continually comparative-competitive educational environment.
Chapter 4 delivers Brent Edward’s critique of mainstream
evaluation methodologies employed by supranational organizations
increasingly involved in and steering the global governance of
education. He draws attention to the pitfalls of statistical and quasi-
experimental approaches embedded in large-scale impact
evaluations, such as PISA or TIMSS, and the ramifications such
undertakings have for policymaking. Thus, Edwards cautions that in
the absence of ensuring ideal conditions or contexts, something he
argues is a virtual impossibility, policy decisions in the era of Big
Data is fraught with the perils of replicating skewed assumptions
about educational systems’ performance in comparative perspective
on a scale of magnification of unprecedented and unpredictable
consequences.
In Chapter 5, Jason McGrath and John Fischetti engage in an
imaginative examination of schooling based on innovative urbanism
principles embodied in the design of cities in three different
countries. Through anticipative thinking models drawing on urban
planning techniques, they attempt to cast a vision of the school as a
novel concept in the new millennium and problematize its place at
the intersection of three fundamental ideas, that is, the role of the
teacher and learner, the design of a school, and the purpose of
compulsory schooling. These ideas are explored through foresight
analysis informed by three possible scenarios providing alternative
proposals for their transformations given the pressing needs for
sustainability, incorporation of new technologies and promotion of
innovative pedagogical principles. Via a contrasting content analysis
of school publications, the authors contend that, notwithstanding the
possibilities inherent in novel conceptualizations of schools, the
traditional thinking about school designs and schooling practice
prevails in current educational policy.
Vasudha Chaudhari, Victoria Murphy, and Allison Littlejohn offer a
relevant discussion in Chapter 6 on the role of lifelong learning for
an emerging educational intelligent economy, given the digital
transformations brought about by Big Data and AI. If offers a vision
of how the complexities of incorporating Big Data into formal and
informal systems of education may alter the way in which individuals
learn and develop flexible competences enabling to navigate
intelligent digital systems enmeshing the economy. The chapter
further points to the need for regulatory frameworks to steer
intelligent educational data gathering to safeguard individuals’
privacy and right for data ownership.
In Chapter 7, Elizabeth Roumell and Kevin Roessger construct a
coherent argument for the connection between adult education
policy in comparative perspective, highlighting the use of PIAAC
data, and its potential to interface with Big Data analytics to drive
economic policies for a more intelligent allocation of workforce
resources. They explore how these processes may feed the
economic trends toward the use of “intelligence” to monitor and
induce self-regulation in socio-economic and educational systems to
inculcate intelligent choices for education throughout individuals’
lifespans.
Chapter 8 contains Aleksei Malakhov’s description of data mining,
machine learning and predictive analytics and their role on both
formal educative processes especially related to monitoring and
tracking of student performance. He then extends that discussion
with a consideration of the ramifications such uses of data may have
on employability in the Canadian context, but also in comparison
with other labor markets.
In Chapter 9, Petrina Davidson, Elizabeth Bruce, and Lisa
Damaschke-Deitrick examine the role non-profit organizations
promoting educational programing and performance play in the
steering of educational governance in the transition from a
knowledge economy to an educational intelligent economy. They
posit that such organizations expand their reach in the educational
market and the governance of educational use of data by sustaining
and sponsoring data-driven measurement instruments that inform
policy production for subsequent stages of educational output. They
suggest that a whole network of similar organizations exert
increasing influence in educational governance in an educational
intelligent economy.
Chapter 10 offers Luis Alvarez León’s examination of the arrival of
AI in the automotive industry and the manner in which this will
create tensions and cleavages in training levels between various
categories of auto engineers and technologists. He then draws
inferences on how formal educational provision will be necessary to
meet the challenges of managing AI in the automotive industry at
the intersection of workforce development and educational policy
addressing the infiltration of AI through production processes. The
discussion hints at how educational systems or structures will be
impacted by the AI revolution in the car industry and which sectors
of formal education should address it. Alvarez Leon argues that
systemic changes are necessary in terms of curricular needs or
adjustments to provide future automotive engineers with the
competences needed to function in an AI-driven car manufacturing
world. The narrative places emphasis on and analyzes avenues in
which educational systems in various regions are beginning to
address this phenomenon. It cogently concludes that any exploration
of policy actions and governance in this realm need substantial
consideration if the AI revolution is to benefit the educational sector,
industry and society as a whole
In Chapter 11, Florin Salajan analyzes the fledgling policy
discourse arising in the EU in the realm of Big Data, currently
promoted under the guise of forging a “data economy”. Salajan
argues that a coordinated approach to managing and controlling the
advent of Big Data in education is slowly emerging at the EU
policymaking level, as the challenges posed by this new digital
revolution remain elusive and unpredictable. However, the EU’s
tested approach to consensus-seeking and its recent trend-setting
regulation on data privacy with worldwide ramifications indicates
that a policy domain regulating Big Data may be a palpable prospect
as the EU enters the educational intelligent economy.
Chapter 12 offers Christopher Kirchgasler’s illuminating narrative
on the way in which data-driven decisions are embedded in a
colonial residue, expressed today through algorithmic educational
governance models in the image of academies-in-the-box that
contribute to the rise of an educational intelligent economy.
Kirchgasler provides insight into how the making of difference in
formerly colonized territories of educational intervention evoke the
continued presence of data as conveyors of educational programing
imperatives in underdeveloped regions, from western perspective,
and how Big Data preserves inequalities rather than eliminates them.
As part of their discussion in Chapter 13, Euan Auld and Yun You
critique the over-promise of AI and the confidence expressed by
governing authorities in employing it to create a qualitative push in
education, in particular in China (which straddles ancient traditional
and new ethno-technological values, and blends them). Auld and
You expand on the trends observed in the context of the
multifaceted uses of educational intelligence effecting the
governance and surveillance of education and society by Chinese
authorities. Framed in the broader narrative of a utopian-dystopian
dialectic treatment of AI as either a force for good or a tool for
malevolent intent, the Chinese drive for the use of educational
intelligence and AI for societal control is juxtaposed over moral
imperatives steeped in ancient cultural traditions. Thus, Auld and
You draw attention to the risks of the absolutist approach to manage
societies in the name of a new modernizing rhetoric at the dawn of
AI and educational intelligence. Any meliorative effects these may
have on society, the authors argue, may be offset by a suppression
of individual liberties in order to forge a conformist society with the
ambitious goals of a self-declared emerging technological
superpower.
In the final chapter, Sean Mackney and Robin Shields deliver a
pertinent and timely discussion on the rise of learning analytics,
debating its influence on multiple categories of individual and
institutional users (LA). They link the growing attention given to
learning analytics by academics, universities and commercial entities
to the potentially cumulative effect of the Big Data paradigm on the
treatment of data for performativity and surveillance in the
educational realm. Mackney and Shields raise legitimate concerns
over the sensationalization and overconfidence with which
proponents of LA view it as a tool for increasing the quality and
reputation of academic institutions, heavily supported by vendors of
learning management systems eager to capitalize on the yet
unfulfilled promises of LA. By the same token, the authors do not
dismiss the collection of LA data as a futile endeavor, recognizing the
genuine potential of such educational intelligence to promote
improvements in learning and in the act of teaching. Nonetheless,
they do question the overall significance of LA in the context of an
emerging educational intelligent economy and its ramifications for
the future of education and society.
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H e hoped Cope would not yield. Perhaps the damage was done
already, but he would try to redeem himself if they did not bench
him.
Hutchinson was saying:
“What’s the use to keep him in, man alive? He’s lost the game
already.”
“If he’s lost the game,” returned the obstinate grocer, “what’s the
use to take him out? I don’t see no sense in that. Let him pitch some
more. He braced up t’other time; mebbe he will ag’in.”
Speechless with exasperation, Hutchinson turned back and
reseated himself on the bench. Seeing this, and understanding that
Locke would continue yet a while on the firing line, Stark ran to him,
grasped him with both hands, and spoke in swift, yet steady, tones:
“Pull yourself together, Lefty; you’ve got to do it, and you can.
Bangs is easy, and that man Murtel can’t hit a balloon. Put the ball
over, and take chances with them; we’re behind you. Don’t hurry,
and keep your head.”
Tom gave the disturbed captain a reassuring smile.
“I know I ought to be sent to the stable,” he said; “but I’ll do my
level best now. Watch me.”
Bingo Bangs was not much of a hitter, and the crowd saw Lefty
whip the ball through a single groove three times in succession, and
three times the Bullies’ catcher hammered the air. After the third
strike, the ball having been returned by Oulds, Locke caught a quick
signal from the backstop, and wheeled, to flash the sphere like a
shot into the hands of Labelle, who had dodged past the runner.
Labelle nailed Lisotte, and the two Canadians exchanged
courtesies in choice patois. This second swift putout awoke some of
the saddened Kingsbridgers, their sudden yells of satisfaction
mingling with the groans of the Bancrofters.
“Now we’re all right!” cried Larry Stark. “Take a fall out of old
Pinwheel, Lefty. We’ll make a game of this yet.”
Locke’s nerves were growing steadier. He had forced himself to
dismiss every thought of the girl who had treated him so shabbily,
and the man, her companion, who had flung him an insult and
escaped a thrashing. Until the last inning was over he would
concentrate his energies upon the work in hand.
As before, the Bancroft pitcher’s efforts to connect with Locke’s
slants were laughable; he could not touch the ball, even to foul it.
“Hold them down now, Craddock,” begged Fancy Dyke from the
bleachers. “They shut us out last time we was here; let’s return the
compliment to-day.”
Murtel grinned; thus far he had seen nothing that would lead him
to doubt his ability to hold the Kinks runless. Nor was he ruffled when
Anastace got a scratch hit from him in the last of the fifth; for the
three following batters were like putty in his hands.
On the part of Kingsbridge there was uncertainty and anxiety as
Locke returned to the slab, for now the head of Bancroft’s list, the
best hitters of the team, were coming up to face him, and they were
full of confidence. There were times, it seemed, when Lefty was
sadly erratic, and were he to slump again in this game the faith of his
admirers would be much impaired.
Never had Tom Locke put more brains into his pitching. He had a
speed ball that smoked, and his curves broke as sharply keen as a
razor’s edge; furthermore, he “mixed them up” cleverly, his change of
pace proving most baffling, and his slow ball always seeming to
come loafing over just when the hitter was looking for a whistler.
Harney snarled his annoyance after fanning; Trollop almost broke
his back bumping one of the slow ones into the clutches of Labelle;
Grady lifted a miserable foul back of first for Hinkey to gobble.
Hutchinson had temporarily deserted the bench, and the Kinks
came trotting in. Observing this, Locke grabbed Stark, and
whispered something in his ear, Larry listening and nodding.
“It won’t hurt to try it,” said the captain. “Here, Oulds.”
It was the catcher’s turn to lead off. He listened to Stark’s
repetition of Locke’s suggestion; then he stepped out to the plate,
slipped his hands up on the bat a bit as Murtel pitched, and bunted
the first ball.
The Bullies were taken by surprise. The ball rolled slowly down
just inside the third-base line, and Oulds, leaping away like a streak,
actually turned that bunt into a safe base hit, to the complaints of the
Bancroft spectators and the whooping merriment of the
Kingsbridgers.
Locke was promptly in position, and he followed with a bunt
toward first. Even as the bunt was made the bat seemed to fall from
his hands, and he was off like a shot toward the initial sack, leaping
over the rolling ball as he went. Only by the liveliest kind of hustling
did Murtel get the sphere up and snap it humming past the runner in
time to get an assist on Harney’s put-out.
Oulds was on second. Labelle, grinning, hopped into the batter’s
box, and astonished the spectators of the game, and the Bancroft
players, as well, by contributing the third bunt, which was so wholly
unexpected that he reached first by a narrow margin. And now the
Kingsbridge crowd was making all the noise, the Bancrofters
seeming stricken dumb with apprehension.
Murtel was angry, a fact he could not hide. For the first time he
seemed, with deliberate intent, to keep the first ball pitched beyond
the reach of the batter. Oulds, of course, had anchored temporarily
at third, and Labelle, taking a chance, tried to steal on that pitch.
Bangs made a line throw, but Lisotte, seeing Oulds dash off third,
cut it down, only to discover that the tricky Kingsbridge catcher had
bluffed. The Frenchman failed in an attempt to pin the runner before
he could dive back to the sack.
Locke had taken Crandall’s place on the coaching line back of
third, giving Reddy a chance to get his bat, as he was the hitter who
followed Stark; and it was the play to keep the ball rolling as fast as
possible. Tom was laughing and full of ginger, his words of
instruction to the runners sometimes sounding clear above the
uproar of the excited crowd.
“Keep it up! Keep it up!” he called. “Get off those cushions! Take a
lead, and score! Look out!” Murtel had made an attempt to catch
Labelle by a quick throw, but the little Canadian slid under
McGovern’s arm.
CHAPTER XLIII
A GAME WORTH WINNING
L ocke had forgotten the blue parasol and its owner; he had no
fleeting thought for Benton King; he was heart and soul in the
game.
With one out, it seemed an excellent time for Kingsbridge to keep
up the bunting, and attempt to score on it by the “squeeze,” so
Bancroft’s infield drew closer and the outfielders quickly came in.
At the plate, Stark gave a secret signal, changing the style of play,
and then he set the local crowd frantic by meeting Murtel’s high one
on the trade mark. With the outfielders playing in their usual places,
that line drive would have been good for a clean single, but while
they were chasing it down, Larry dug all the way round to third,
Oulds and Labelle romping over the rubber with the runs that tied the
score.
The whole Kingsbridge team was laughing, now, while Murtel,
enraged over being outguessed and deceived, was almost frenzied.
“It’s a great top piece you have, Lefty, old pal,” cried Larry Stark.
“That was the trick to get ’em going. Look at Pinwheel champ the
bit.”
But Hutchinson was back on the bench now, and he directed
Crandall to hit the ball out. Reddy, trying to respond manfully,
boosted an infield fly, and Stark was forced to remain on the sack
while it was caught. Had Anastace, coming next, taken a daring
chance and bunted, it is possible that the Bullies might have been
thrown into confusion again; but he had orders from Hutchinson to
hit, and in trying to do so he succumbed to Murtel’s strategy, expiring
in the box.
“Oh, this is some game, believe me!” shouted a Kingsbridger.
“Hold ’em where they are, Lefty. You’ve got the stuff to do it. We
depend on you.”
The Bancrofters who had wagered money on the tussle were not
as cocksure as they had been, and doubtless more than one,
Manager Riley included, regretted that matters had not been
privately arranged in advance so that it would not be necessary to
rely almost wholly on the prowess their new left-handed pitcher.
Surely their regrets became still more acute when, in the seventh,
Locke showed no let-up in form, and was not even ruffled when
McGovern reached first on an infield error, the other three batters to
face him going the way of all flesh.
“Oh, you Lefty!” was once more the rejoicing cry of the palpitating
Kingsbridgers.
Murtel came back with a shut-out, although Hinkey led off with a
scratch hit.
“Hold ’em, Lefty—hold ’em!” was the beseeching cry.
Bangs and Murtel faded like morning dew before a burning sun,
but Harney got into a speedy one and banged it for two hassocks,
setting the shaking Bancrofters off again in a tremendous uproar.
Nevertheless, the lucky batter remained at second, where Stark and
Labelle kept him dancing back and forth while Locke took Trollop’s
measure and put him away until the next game should be played.
With no one batting ahead of him, Locke advanced to the pan in
the last of the eighth without instructions. The first ball was too close,
but the second came slanting over, and he bunted. Again it was the
unexpected, and never had a prettier bunt been pulled off.
Nevertheless, it was only Tom’s wonderful knack of starting at high
speed with the first jump and covering the ground like a streak that
enabled him to reach the sack a gasping breath ahead of the ball.
“Safe!” cried the umpire.
The Bullies started to kick, nearly every man on the team taking
part in it. The crowd hooted and hissed, but it was only the nerve of
the umpire in pulling his watch which finally sent the Bancroft
players, growling, back to their positions. There was so much money
wagered on the game that they could not afford to lose it through
forfeiture; but henceforth they badgered the umpire on almost every
decision, even scoffing when he declared in their favor.
Labelle sacrificed Locke to second. Stark, thirsting for a hit,
hoisted a fly to center. Then, just as the visitors were breathing
easier, Crandall smashed a drive into right field.
Locke was on the way to third even before bat and ball met.
Sockamore, coaching, seeing Tom coming like the wind, took a
desperate chance, and, with a furious flourish of his arms, signaled
for him to keep on. Out in right field Mace got the sphere and poised
himself for a throw to the pan.
There was a choking hush. Staring, breathless, suffering with
suspense, the watchers waited.
“Slide!” yelled Sockamore, with a shriek like the blast of a
locomotive whistle.
Spikes first, Locke slid. The whistling ball spanked into Bangs’
clutches and he lunged to make the tag. But Tom’s feet had slipped
across the rubber, and the downward motion of the umpire’s open,
outspread hand declared him safe.
Again the Bullies protested, and again the umpire was compelled
to produce his watch. With difficulty the excited crowd was kept off
the field.
Laughing, Stark had helped Locke to rise, and made a show of
brushing some of the dust from him.
“It’s your game that wins to-day, if you can hold them down now,”
declared Larry. “It was bunting when they weren’t expecting it that
did the trick. Oh, say, there’ll be some sore heads in Bancroft to-
night!”
Henry Cope came bursting out of the crowd back of the bench to
shake hands with Locke.
“Sufferin’ Moses, whut a game!” he exclaimed. “If I ain’t under the
doctor’s care ter-morrer it’ll be queer. Keep ’em right where they be,
an’ we’ve won.”
“Lots of good that will do us when the game is counted out of the
series,” sneered Hutchinson.
“Even if they count it out,” returned the grocer, “folks round this
town’re goin’ to have a heap o’ Bancroft’s money t’ spend.”
Reddy Crandall did not score. He had done his part well, and he
uttered no complaint when Anastace failed to hit.
The Bullies had not given up. Savage, sarcastic, insolent, they
fought it out in the first of the ninth, bearing themselves, until the last
man was down, as if they still believed they would win. Locke,
however, had them at his mercy, refusing to prolong the agony by
letting a hitter reach first.
With some difficulty he fought off the delighted Kingsbridgers who
swarmed, cheering, around him, and would have lifted him to their
shoulders. When he finally managed to break clear of the throng he
thought suddenly of Janet, and looked round for her.
Benton King was driving toward the gate by which teams and
autos were admitted to the field. She had lowered her parasol, and,
before disappearing through the gate, she turned to gaze backward,
as if looking for some one in the midst of the still-cheering crowd that
covered the diamond.
CHAPTER XLIV
FACING HIS ACCUSERS