The fun they had

‘School.’

‘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 sent for the inspector. He was a round little man with a red face and a whole box of tools. He smiled at her and 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 black 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 very fast.

The inspector said to her mother, ‘It’s not the girl’s fault, Mrs Jones. I think the geography sector was a little too quick. Those things happen sometimes. I’ve slowed it down. Actually, her progress is quite satisfactory.’

Margie was disappointed. She had been hoping they would take the teacher away altogether. 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.’

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 nearly as much.’

Margie said, ‘I wouldn’t want a strange man in my house to teach me.’

Tommy laughed. ‘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 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 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.

Margie went into the school­room. It was right next to her bedroom, and the mechanical teacher was on and waiting for her. The screen was lit up and it said: ‘Today’s lesson is on fractions. Please put 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. They learned the same things, so they could help each other on the homework and talk about it.

And the teachers were people …

The mechanical teacher was flashing on the screen: ‘When we add the fractions ½ and ¼ …’

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