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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