Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 27 views

    The Fun They Had

    Uploaded by

    gannla
    1) Margie finds an old book in Tommy's attic about schools from centuries ago. She is fascinated to learn that schools were different back then. 2) In the past, schools were buildings where all the neighborhood children went to learn together from a human teacher. The teacher was not an automated machine tailored to each individual student. 3) Margie wonders what it would be like to go to school in the past, where all the kids learned the same things and could help each other with homework. She imagines they must have had more fun learning together than with today's isolated mechanical teachers.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    The Fun They Had

    Uploaded by

    gannla
    27 views4 pages
    1) Margie finds an old book in Tommy's attic about schools from centuries ago. She is fascinated to learn that schools were different back then. 2) In the past, schools were buildings where all the neighborhood children went to learn together from a human teacher. The teacher was not an automated machine tailored to each individual student. 3) Margie wonders what it would be like to go to school in the past, where all the kids learned the same things and could help each other with homework. She imagines they must have had more fun learning together than with today's isolated mechanical teachers.

    Original Title

    TheFunTheyHad

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    1) Margie finds an old book in Tommy's attic about schools from centuries ago. She is fascinated to learn that schools were different back then. 2) In the past, schools were buildings where all the neighborhood children went to learn together from a human teacher. The teacher was not an automated machine tailored to each individual student. 3) Margie wonders what it would be like to go to school in the past, where all the kids learned the same things and could help each other with homework. She imagines they must have had more fun learning together than with today's isolated mechanical teachers.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    27 views4 pages

    The Fun They Had

    Uploaded by

    gannla
    1) Margie finds an old book in Tommy's attic about schools from centuries ago. She is fascinated to learn that schools were different back then. 2) In the past, schools were buildings where all the neighborhood children went to learn together from a human teacher. The teacher was not an automated machine tailored to each individual student. 3) Margie wonders what it would be like to go to school in the past, where all the kids learned the same things and could help each other with homework. She imagines they must have had more fun learning together than with today's isolated mechanical teachers.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 4

    The Fun They Had

    A Short Story by Isaac Asimov (from 1951)

    “He smiled at her and gave her an apple, then took the teacher apart.”

    Margie even wrote it that night in her diary. On the page headed May 17, 2155, 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
    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 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 11 and hadn’t seen as many telebooks as Tommy had. He was 13.
    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 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 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 girls’s
    fault, Mrs. Jones. I think the geography sector was geared a little too quick. Those things happen sometimes. I’ve slowed it
    up to an average 10-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 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 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.

    You might also like