The chapter opens with the announcement that the birdman rally scheduled for today has been postponed until tomorrow. The narrator laments the fact that the public schools are so eager to teach the arts that they don't teach them well enough. He also laments that many of the students are too confident in their knowledge of the game of karuta to be able to compete with the best of the best. He wonders if the high schools are teaching the stu dents too well, and if they're just using the game as an excuse to hide their real weaknesses. He then goes on to criticize the high school teachers for not teaching the students enough about the game. He points out that the best players in the world are those who have been playing the game for a long time and have mastered it. He thinks that the current generation of high school students doesn't know how to play the game because they haven't been taught it in school, and that they've been taught to play it for the sake of the sport.