OLD BOOK
On May 17, 2157, Margie wrote in her diary, “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 it was awfully funny to read words that didn’t move the way they were supposed to – on 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. 
 She said, “What is it about?” 
 “School.” 
 Margie was cynical. “School? What’s there to write about school? I hate school.” 
 The mechanical teacher had been giving her test after test in geography and she had been doing worse and worse until her mother sent for the County Inspector. Margie had hoped the man wouldn’t know how to fix the teacher, but he knew 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. But the worst thing of all were the test papers and homework tasks she had to submit regularly. 
 So she said to Tommy, “Why would anyone write about school?” 
 “Because it’s not our kind of school, stupid. This is the old kind of school that they had 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.” 
 “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 a teacher has to fit the mind of each boy and girl it teaches and each kid has to be taught differently.”  
 They weren’t even half-finished when Margie’s mother called, “Margie! School!” 
 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. 
 The screen was lit up and it said: “Please insert yesterday’s arithmetic homework.”  Margie did so thinking about the old schools. All the kids from the whole neighbourhood 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 with their homework and talk about it. 
 And the teachers were people ... Margie was thinking about how the kids must have loved it in the old days. She was thinking about the fun they had.