The Fun They Had - Issac Asimov

 The Fun They Had – Isaac Asimov

 

[Science fiction is a kind of fantasy that usually concern changes that science may bring about in the future. Many science fiction stories take you to an imaginary world, such as another planet, the future on Earth, or a spaceship in another galaxy. 

 

This story was written in 1951 was written in 1951, many years before computers became common teaching instruments in schools and at home. As you read, think about how the writer feels about these “mechanical teachers.”  Have any of his predictions come true? How do you predict computers will be used in classrooms by the year 2155?]

 

Margie even wrote about 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 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 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 careful. “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 tolls 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 hour or so, there it was again, large and ugly with 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 sector was 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 rime 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 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 bool 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. 

 

Then 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.”

 

Matgie did so with a sigh. She was thinking about the 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 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.

 

 

 

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ed by mastanappa puletipalli 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood -- William Wordsworth

Ode: Intimations of immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

—William Wordsworth

 

The child is father of the man;

And I could wish my days to be 

Bound each to each by natural piety.

(Wordsworth, “My Heart Leaps Up”)

 

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

The earth, and every common sight,

To me did seem

Apparelled in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it hath been of yore;—

Turn wheresoe’er I may,

By night or day.

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

 

The Rainbow comes and goes,

And lovely is the Rose,

The moon doth with delight

Look round her when the heavens are bare,

Waters on a starry night

Are beautiful and fair; 

The sunshine is a glorious birth;

But yet I know, where’er I go,

That there hath past away a glory from the earth.

 

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,

And while the young lambs bound

As to the tabor’s sound,

To me alone there came a thought of grief:

A timely utterance gave that thought relief;

And I again am strong:

The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;

No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;

I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng,

The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,

And all the earth is gay;

Land and sea 

Give themselves up to jollity,

And with the heart of May

Doth every Beast keep holiday; —

Thou Child of Joy,

Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy. 

 

Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call 

Ye to each other make; I See

The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;

My heart is at your festival,

The fulness of your bliss, I feel —I feel it all.

Oh evil day! If I were sullen 

While Earth herself is adorning,

This sweet May-morning,

And the Children are culling 

On every side,

In a thousand valleys far and wide,

Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm, 

And the Babe leaps up on his Mother’s arm; — 

I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!

—But there’s a Tree, of many, one, 

A single field which I have looked upon,

Both of them speak of something that is gone;

The Pansy at my feet

Doth the same tale repeat:

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?

Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

 

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to close

Upon the growing Boy,

But he beholds, who daily farther from the east

Must travel, still is Nature’s Priest, 

And by the vision splendid 

Is on his way attended;

At length the Man perceives it die away,

And fade into the light of common day.

 

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;

Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,

And, even with something of a Mother’s mind,

And no unworthy aim,

The homely Nurse doth all she can

To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man,

Forget the glories he hath known, 

And that imperial palace whence he came.

Behold the child among his new-born blisses,

A six years’ Darling of a pigmy size! 

See, where ‘’mid work of his own hand he likes,

Fretted by sallies of his mother’s kisses,

With light upon him from his father’s eyes!

See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,

Some fragment from his dream of human life,

Shaped by himself with newly-learn{e}d art

A wedding or a festival,

A mourning or a funeral;

And this hath now his heart,

And unto this he frames his song:

Then will he fit his tongue

To dialogues of business, love, or strife;

But it will not be long

Ere this be thrown aside,

And with new joy and pride

The little Actor cons another part;

Filling from time to time his “humorous stage”

With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,

That Life brings with her in her equipage;

As if his whole vocation

Were endless imitation.

 

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie

Thy Soul’s immensity;

Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep

Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,

That, deaf and silent, read’st the eternal deep,

Haunted forever by the eternal mind,—

Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!

On whom those truths do rest,

Which we are toiling all our lives to find,

In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;

Thou, over who why Immortality

Broods loke the Day, a Master o’er a Slave,

A Presence which is not to be put by;

Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might

Of heaven-born freedom on thy being’s height,

Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke

The years to bring the inevitable yoke,

Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?

Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,

And custom lie upon thee with a weight,

Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

 

O Joy! That in our embers

Is something that doth live, 

That Nature yet remembers 

What was so fugitive!

The thought of our past years in me doth breed

Perpetual benediction: not indeed

For that which is most worthy to be blest;

Delight and liberty, the simple creed

Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,

With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast: —

Not for these I raise

The song of thanks and praise

But for those obstinate questionings

Of sense and outward things,

Fallings from us, vanishings;

Blank misgivings of a Creature

Moving about in worlds not realized,

High instincts before which our mortal Nature

Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:

But for those first affections,

Those shadowy recollections,

Which, be they what they may

Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,

Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make

Our noisy years seem moments in the being

Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,

To perish never;

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,

Nor Man nor Boy,

Nor all that is at enmity with joy,

Can utterly abolish or destroy!

Hence is a season of calm weather

Though inland far we be,

Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea

Which brought us hither, 

Can in a moment travel thither,

And see the Children sport upon the shore,

And heart the mighty waters rolling evermore.

 

Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!

And let the young Lambs bound

As to the tabor’s sound!

We in thought will join your throng,

Ye that pipe and ye that play,

Ye that through your hearts to-day

Feel the gladness of the May!

What though the radiance which was once so bright

Be now for ever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;

We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind;

In the primal sympathy

Which having been must ever be;

In the soothing thoughts that spring

Out of human suffering;

In the faith that looks through death,

In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,

Forebode not any severing of our loves!

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;

I only have relinquished one delight

To live beneath your more habitual sway.

I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,

Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;

The innocent brightness of a new-born Day

Is lovely yet;

The clouds that gather round the setting sun

Do take a sober colouring from an eye

That hath kept watch o’ver man’s mortality;

Another race hath been, and other palms are won.

Thanks so the human heart by which we live, 

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

 

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prom ed by mastanappa puletipalli

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

ODE ON SOLITUDE (The Happy Man) - Alexander Pope

 Ode on Solitude (The Happy Man) – Alexander Pope

 

Happy the man, whose wish and care

A few paternal acres bound, 

Content to breathe his native air,

In his own ground.

 

Whose heards with milk, whose fields with bread

Whose trees in summer yield him shade, 

In winter fire.

 

Blest! Who can unconcern’dly find

Hours, days, and years slide soft away,

In health of body, peace of mind,

Quiet by day,

 

Sound sleep by night; study and care

Together mix’d; sweet recreation,

And innocence, which most does please,

With meditation.

 

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;

Thus unlamented let me dye;

Steal from the world, and not a stone

Tell where I lye.

 

 

ed by mastanappa Puletipalli

SORROW - ANTON CHEKHOV

 Sorrow

By Anton Chekhov

THE turner, Grigory Petrov, who had been known for years past as a splendid craftsman, and at the same time as the most senseless peasant in the Galtchinskoy district, was taking his old woman to the hospital. He had to drive over twenty miles, and it was an awful road. A government post driver could hardly have coped with it, much less an incompetent sluggard like Grigory. A cutting cold wind was blowing straight in his face. Clouds of snowflakes were whirling round and round in all directions, so that one could not tell whether the snow was falling from the sky or rising from the earth. The fields, the telegraph posts, and the forest could not be seen for the fog of snow. And when a particularly violent gust of wind swooped down on Grigory, even the yoke above the horse's head could not be seen. The wretched, feeble little nag crawled slowly along. It took all its strength to drag its legs out of the snow and to tug with its head. The turner was in a hurry. He kept restlessly hopping up and down on the front seat and lashing the horse's back. 

"Don't cry, Matryona, . . ." he muttered. "Have a little patience. Please God we shall reach the hospital, and in a trice it will be the right thing for you. . . . Pavel Ivanitch will give you some little drops, or tell them to bleed you; or maybe his honour will be pleased to rub you with some sort of spirit--it'll . . . draw it out of your side. Pavel Ivanitch will do his best. He will shout and stamp about, but he will do his best. . . . He is a nice gentleman, affable, God give him health! As soon as we get there he will dart out of his room and will begin calling me names. 'How? Why so?' he will cry. 'Why did you not come at the right time? I am not a dog to be hanging about waiting on you devils all day. Why did you not come in the morning? Go away! Get out of my sight. Come again to-morrow.' And I shall say: 'Mr. Doctor! Pavel Ivanitch! Your honour!' Get on, do! Plague take you, you devil! Get on!" 

The turner lashed his nag, and without looking at the old woman went on muttering to himself: 

“Your honour! It's true as before God. . . . Here's the Cross for you, I set off almost before it was light. How could I be here in time if the Lord. . . .The Mother of God . . . is wroth, and has sent such a snowstorm? Kindly look for yourself. . . . Even a first-rate horse could not do it, while mine--you can see for yourself--is not a horse but a disgrace.' And Pavel Ivanitch will frown and shout: 'We know you! You always find some excuse! Especially you, Grishka; I know you of old! I'll be bound you have stopped at half a dozen taverns!' And I shall say: 'Your honor! Am I a criminal or a heathen? My old woman is giving up her soul to God, she is dying, and am I going to run from tavern to tavern! What an idea, upon my word! Plague take them, the taverns!' Then Pavel Ivanitch will order you to be taken into the hospital, and I shall fall at his feet. . . . 'Pavel Ivanitch! Your honour, we thank you most humbly! Forgive us fools and anathemas; don't be hard on us peasants! We deserve a good kicking, while you graciously put yourself out and mess your feet in the snow!' And Pavel Ivanitch will give me a look as though he would like to hit me, and will say: 'You'd much better not be swilling vodka, you fool, but taking pity on your old woman instead of falling at my feet. You want a thrashing!' 'You are right there--a thrashing, Pavel Ivanitch, strike me God! But how can we help bowing down at your feet if you are our benefactor, and a real father to us? Your honour! I give you my word, . . . here as before God, . . .. you may spit in my face if I deceive you: as soon as my Matryona, this same here, is well again and restored to her natural condition, I'll make anything for your honour that you would like to order! A cigarette-case, if you like, of the best birchwood, . . . balls for croquet, skittles of the most foreign pattern I can turn. . . . I will make anything for you! I won't take a farthing from you. In Moscow they would charge you four roubles for such a cigarette-case, but I won't take a farthing.' The doctor will laugh and say: 'Oh, all right, all right. . . . I see! But it's a pity you are a drunkard. . . .' I know how to manage the gentry, old girl. There isn't a gentleman I couldn't talk to. Only God grant we don't get off the road. Oh, how it is blowing! One's eyes are full of snow." 

And the turner went on muttering endlessly. He prattled on mechanically to get a little relief from his depressing feelings. He had plenty of words on his tongue, but the thoughts and questions in his brain were even more numerous. Sorrow had come upon the turner unawares, unlooked-for, and unexpected, and now he could not get over it, could not recover himself. He had lived hitherto in unruffled calm, as though in drunken half-consciousness, knowing neither grief nor joy, and now he was suddenly aware of a dreadful pain in his heart. The careless idler and drunkard found himself quite suddenly in the position of a busy man, weighed down by anxieties and haste, and even struggling with nature. 

The turner remembered that his trouble had begun the evening before. When he had come home yesterday evening, a little drunk as usual, and from long-established habit had begun swearing and shaking his fists, his old woman had looked at her rowdy spouse as she had never looked at him before. Usually, the expression in her aged eyes was that of a martyr, meek like that of a dog frequently beaten and badly fed; this time she had looked at him sternly and immovably, as saints in the holy pictures or dying people look. From that strange, evil look in her eyes the trouble had begun. The turner, stupefied with amazement, borrowed a horse from a neighbour, and now was taking his old woman to the hospital in the hope that, by means of powders and ointments, Pavel Ivanitch would bring back his old woman's habitual expression. 

"I say, Matryona, . . ." the turner muttered, "if Pavel Ivanitch asks you whether I beat you, say, 'Never!' and I never will beat you again. I swear it. And did I ever beat you out of spite? I just beat you without thinking. I am sorry for you. Some men wouldn't trouble, but here I am taking you. . .. . I am doing my best. And the way it snows, the way it snows! Thy Will be done, O Lord! God grant we don't get off the road. . . . Does your side ache, Matryona, that you don't speak? I ask you, does your side ache?" 

It struck him as strange that the snow on his old woman's face was not melting; it was queer that the face itself looked somehow drawn, and had turned a pale grey, dingy waxen hue and had grown grave and solemn. 

"You are a fool!" muttered the turner. . . . "I tell you on my conscience, before God,. . . and you go and . . . Well, you are a fool! I have a good mind not to take you to Pavel Ivanitch!" 

The turner let the reins go and began thinking. He could not bring himself to look round at his old woman: he was frightened. He was afraid, too, of asking her a question and not getting an answer. At last, to make an end of uncertainty, without looking round he felt his old woman's cold hand. The lifted hand fell like a log. 

"She is dead, then! What a business!" 

And the turner cried. He was not so much sorry as annoyed. He thought how quickly everything passes in this world! His trouble had hardly begun when the final catastrophe had happened. He had not had time to live with his old woman, to show her he was sorry for her before she died. He had lived with her for forty years, but those forty years had passed by as it were in a fog. What with drunkenness, quarrelling, and poverty, there had been no feeling of life. And, as though to spite him, his old woman died at the very time when he felt he was sorry for her, that he could not live without her, and that he had behaved dreadfully badly to her. 

"Why, she used to go the round of the village," he remembered. "I sent her out myself to beg for bread. What a business! She ought to have lived another ten years, the silly thing; as it is I'll be bound she thinks I really was that sort of man. . . . Holy Mother! but where the devil am I driving? There's no need for a doctor now, but a burial. Turn back!" 

Grigory turned back and lashed the horse with all his might. The road grew worse and worse every hour. Now he could not see the yoke at all. Now and then the sledge ran into a young fir tree, a dark object scratched the turner's hands and flashed before his eyes, and the field of vision was white and whirling again. 

"To live over again," thought the turner. 

He remembered that forty years ago Matryona had been young, handsome, and merry, that she had come of a well-to-do family. They had married her to him because they had been attracted by his handicraft. All the essentials for a happy life had been there, but the trouble was that, just as he had got drunk after the wedding and lay sprawling on the stove, so he had gone on without waking up till now. His wedding he remembered, but of what happened after the wedding--for the life of him he could remember nothing, except perhaps that he had drunk, lain on the stove, and quarrelled. Forty years had been wasted like that. 

The white clouds of snow were beginning little by little to turn grey. It was getting dusk. 

"Where am I going?" the turner suddenly bethought him with a start. "I ought to be thinking of the burial, and I am on the way to the hospital. . . . . It as is though I had gone crazy." 

Grigory turned round again, and again lashed his horse. The little nag strained its utmost and, with a snort, fell into a little trot. The turner lashed it on the back time after time. . . . A knocking was audible behind him, and though he did not look round, he knew it was the dead woman's head knocking against the sledge. And the snow kept turning darker and darker, the wind grew colder and more cutting. . . . 

"To live over again!" thought the turner. "I should get a new lathe, take orders, . . . give the money to my old woman. . . ." 

And then he dropped the reins. He looked for them, tried to pick them up, but could not--his hands would not work. . . . 

"It does not matter," he thought, "the horse will go of itself, it knows the way. I might have a little sleep now. . . . Before the funeral or the requiem it would be as well to get a little rest. . " 

The turner closed his eyes and dozed. A little later he heard the horse stop; he opened his eyes and saw before him something dark like a hut or a haystack. . . . 

He would have got out of the sledge and found out what it was, but he felt overcome by such inertia that it seemed better to freeze than move, and he sank into a peaceful sleep. 

He woke up in a big room with painted walls. Bright sunlight was streaming in at the windows. The turner saw people facing him, and his first feeling was a desire to show himself a respectable man who knew how things should be done. 

"A requiem, brothers, for my old woman," he said. "The priest should be told. . . ." 

"Oh, all right, all right; lie down," a voice cut him short. 

"Pavel Ivanitch!" the turner cried in surprise, seeing the doctor before him. "Your honour, benefactor!” 

He wanted to leap up and fall on his knees before the doctor, but felt that his arms and legs would not obey him. 

"Your honour, where are my legs, where are my arms!" 

"Say good-by to your arms and legs. . . . They've been frozen off. Come, come! . . . What are you crying for? You've lived your life, and thank God for it! I suppose you have had sixty years of it--that's enough for you! . . . ." 

"I am grieving. . . . Graciously forgive me! If I could have another five or six years! . . ." 

"What for?" 

"The horse isn't mine; I must give it back. . . . I must bury my old woman. .. . . How quickly it is all ended in this world! Your honour, Pavel Ivanitch! A cigarette-case of birchwood of the best! I'll turn you croquet balls. . . ." 

The doctor went out of the ward with a wave of his hand. It was all over with the turner. 

 

& & & &

ed.mastanappa puletipalli