"THE FUN THEY HAD" IS A STORY ABOUT
HOME SCHOOLING
BY
ISAAC ASIMOV
ASIMOV'S POSTCARD TO ME
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     To preface the story I must assert that home schooling has always seemed to me to be a horrible thing to do to children. I remember how excited I was to get old enough to go to school. To think that my parents would ever have told me "You're not going. Instead you're going to stay home. You see Mom and Dad are crackpot religious or some other species of utter lunatic and you don't get to go." I would have been devastated.

It's not the imaginary conspiracy-theory of public indoctrination that is the problem; it's the indoctrination of extremist parents—but that's just for starters. By example homeschooled children acquire the extremist views of their parents who are either overly religious or have some similar cultish conspiracy belief in an imaginary evil, shadowy "government." Perhaps those who homeschool their kids had a tough time in high school. It's hard to say. But their children's first lesson would seem to me to involve the adoption of a very unwholesome, suspicious, and fearful viewpoint of society and of people outside the family.


      These children are also taught by parents who are so deluded that they think they are up to the task of filling in for teachers who specialize in the subjects that they have spent their lives studying. Thus, instead of getting  a real history teacher, they get Mom or Dad who have just a passing knowledge (if even that) of the topic just as they do with math and chemistry and Foreign language, and English Literature and so on. It's a perfect recipe for a third-rate education.

      The children also miss out on all the sports and band practice and theater productions, etc. etc. They are denied every opportunity of that. They never interact with a real teacher—just mom and dad—and thus are denied the opportunity to really be students. They never have a real classmate—just perhaps sister Kate. 

And they very well might grow up about as socialized as Romulus and Remus—or their parents.

  Here is a reference to home schooling from my book Dung a Light Roasting of Frank Herbert's Dune:

Paulie Moab Utah was raised in a gated community and was home schooled. He thus grew up about as socialized as Romulus and Remus. He had a third string group of music and dance instructors who like his parents knew nothing and who wouldn’t have had the slightest idea of how to teach anybody anything even if they did. His parents took over his math studies, and afterwards their son enrolled in and graduated from Home School University in the add-on bedroom of the Castle Calamari, where he majored in long division. 

     Isaac Asimov was asked once to write a short story to encourage kids to have a positive attitude towards school. It's about two pages long. To his surprise, it became one of his best-selling short works. It has to do with home schooling and it is entitled "The Fun They Had."

    You can read it here in a couple of minutes. It's a good read.

"THE FUN THEY HAD"

Margie even wrote about it that night in her diary. On the page headed May 17, 2157, she wrote, “Today Tommy found a real book!”

It was a very old book. Margie’s grandfather once said that when he was a little boy, his grandfather told him that there was a time when all stories were printed on paper.

They turned the pages, which were yellow and crinkly, and it was awfully funny to read words that stood still instead of moving the way they were supposed to—on a screen, you know. And then, when they turned back to the page before, it had the same words on it that it had when they read it the first time.

“Gee,” said Tommy, “what a waste. When you’re through with the book, you just throw it away, I guess. Our television screen must have had a million books on it and it’s good for plenty more. I wouldn’t throw it away.” “Same with mine,” said Margie. She was eleven and hadn’t seen as many telebooks as Tommy had. He was thirteen.

She said, “Where did you find it?”

“In my house.” He pointed without looking, because he was busy reading. “In the attic.”

“What’s it about?”

“School.”

Margie was scornful.

“School? What’s there to write about school? I hate school.”

Margie always hated school, but now she hated it more than ever. The mechanical teacher had been giving her test after test in geography, and she had been doing worse and worse until her mother had shaken her head sorrowfully and sent for the county inspector.

He was a round little man with a red face and a whole box of tools with dials and wires. He smiled at her and gave her an apple, then took the teacher apart. Margie had hoped he wouldn’t know how to put it together again, but he knew how all right, and after an hour or so, there it was again, large and ugly, with a big screen on which all the lessons were shown and the questions were asked. That wasn’t so bad. The part she hated most was the slot where she had to put homework and test papers. She always had to write them out in a punch code they made her learn when she was six years old, and the mechanical teacher calculated the mark in no time.

The inspector had smiled after he was finished and patted her head. He said to her mother, “It’s not the little girl’s fault, Mrs. Jones. I think the geography sectorwas geared a little too quick. Those things happen sometimes. I’ve slowed it up to an average ten-year level. Actually, the overall pattern of her progress is quite satisfactory.” And he patted Margie’s head again. Margie was disappointed. She had been hoping they would take the teacher away altogether. They had once taken Tommy’s teacher away for nearly a month because the history sector had blanked out completely. So she said to Tommy, “Why would anyone write about school?”

Tommy looked at her with very superior eyes, “Because it’s not our kind of school, stupid. This is the old kind of school that they had hundreds and hundreds of years ago.” He added loftily, pronouncing the word carefully,

“Centuries ago.”

Margie was hurt. “Well, I don’t know what kind of school they had all that time ago.” She read the book over his shoulder for a while, then said, “Anyway, they had a teacher.”

“Sure they had a teacher, but it wasn’t a regular teacher. It was a man.”

“A man? How could a man be a teacher?”

“Well, he just told the boys and girls things and gave them homework and asked them questions.”

“A man isn’t smart enough.”

“Sure he is. My father knows as much as my teacher.”

“He can’t. A man can’t know as much as a teacher.”

“He knows almost as much I betcha.”

Margie wasn’t prepared to dispute that. She said, “I wouldn’t want a strange man in my house to teach me.”

Tommy screamed with laughter. “You don’t know much, Margie. The teachers didn’t live in the house. They had a special building and all the kids went there.”

“And all the kids learned the same thing?”

“Sure, if they were all the same age.”

“But my mother says a teacher has to be adjusted to fit the mind of each boy and girl it teaches and that each kid has to be taught differently.”

“Just the same, they didn’t do it that way then. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to read the book.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t like it,” Margie said quickly. She wanted to read about those funny schools.

They weren’t even half finished when Margie’s mother called, “Margie! School!”

Margie looked up. “Not yet, Mamma.”

“Now,” said Mrs. Jones. “And it’s probably time for Tommy, too.”

Margie said to Tommy, “Can I read the book some more with you after school?”

“Maybe,” he said, nonchalantly. He walked away whistling, the dusty old book tucked beneath his arm.

Margie went into the schoolroom. It was right next to her bedroom, and the mechanical teacher was on and waiting for her. It was always on at the same time every day except Saturday and Sunday, because her mother said little girls learned better if they learned at regular hours.

The screen was lit up, and it said:

“Today’s arithmetic lesson is on the addition of proper fractions. Please insert yesterday’s homework in the proper slot.”

Margie did so with a sigh. She was thinking about the old schools they had when her grandfather’s grandfather was a little boy. All the kids from the whole neighborhood came, laughing and shouting in the schoolyard, sitting together in the schoolroom, going home together at the end of the day. They learned the same things so they could help one another on the homework and talk about it. And the teachers were people.... The mechanical teacher was flashing on e mechanical teacher was ashing on the screen: “When we add the fractions 1/2 and 1/4...

Margie was thinking about how the kids must have loved it in the old days. She was thinking about the fun they had.


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