Chapter 1: The Fun They Had
Isaac Asimov — Future Schools vs Old Schools — CBSE Marking Scheme 2026-27
Margie is eleven years old and Tommy is thirteen years old. They are futuristic school children living in the year 2157 who study through computerized telebooks and mechanized domestic teachers.
On the night of 17 May 2157, Margie recorded a remarkable event in her personal diary with the words: 'Today Tommy found a real book!' To Margie, a printed paper book was an unprecedented and historical novelty because she had only ever seen moving words on television screens.
No, Margie had never seen a real physical book before. She had only heard about printed books from her grandfather, who told her that his grandfather had told him about a long-ago era when all stories were printed exclusively on paper.
Margie and Tommy found several aspects of the real book exceptionally strange and curious:
- Yellow and Crinkly Pages: The physical paper had turned yellow and crumpled over centuries.
- Still Words: The words stood rigidly still on the page rather than moving across a screen as telebooks did.
- Permanence of Text: When they turned back to a preceding page, it still contained the identical words they had read previously, unlike digital screens where text constantly refreshed.
- Wastefulness: Tommy considered it a waste because after reading a printed book, one would simply throw it away, whereas their television screen could hold millions of books.
A telebook is an electronic, digital book displayed on a television or computer monitor. The text moves across the screen and can be scrolled. A single television screen or memory unit can store hundreds of thousands or even millions of distinct books without taking up physical space or deteriorating over time.
Margie's school was situated right inside her own house, in the room right next to her bedroom. She did not have any classmates whatsoever; she studied entirely alone in isolation with her personalized mechanical teacher that was programmed to match her individual learning pace.
Margie and Tommy learned geography, history, and mathematics (arithmetic). Margie was currently struggling with geography tests, while Tommy's mechanical teacher had recently malfunctioned because its history sector had blanked out completely.
1. Tommy's Teacher Malfunction:
Once, Tommy's mechanical teacher suffered a major technical failure when its history sector blanked out entirely. The repair personnel had to take the teacher away for almost a full month to overhaul and reprogram the hardware and software systems.
2. Why County Inspector Was Summoned for Margie:
Margie's mother sent for the County Inspector because Margie had been performing consistently poorly in her geography assessments. The mechanical teacher had been giving her test after test in geography, and Margie had been doing worse and worse, sinking into frustration and distress.
3. The County Inspector's Diagnosis and Repair:
The County Inspector—a friendly, round little man with a red face and a box of tools with dials and wires—dismantled the mechanical teacher. He discovered that the geography sector had been geared too rapidly for an average eleven-year-old child. He slowed down its pace to an average ten-year level and reassured Mrs. Jones that Margie's overall progress pattern was quite satisfactory.
1. Why Margie Hated School:
Margie despised school because her education was mechanical, lonely, rigid, and devoid of human warmth. Her classroom was an empty room next to her bedroom where an emotionless mechanical teacher flashed on the screen at fixed hours every day (except weekends). What Margie hated most was the slot where she was required to insert her homework and test papers written in punch code, which the mechanical teacher graded instantaneously in zero seconds, stripping away all joy from learning.
2. Margie's Fascination with the Old Kind of School:
When Margie learned about the schools of centuries ago from Tommy's book, she was enchanted. She discovered that in the old days:
- Teachers were real human beings who explained lessons, asked questions, and empathized with emotions.
- Students from the entire neighborhood walked together to a dedicated special building, laughing and shouting in the schoolyard.
- Children of the same age sat together in common classrooms and learned the exact same syllabus, enabling them to help one another with homework and discuss problems openly.
Conclusion:
Margie sat before her mechanical teacher, daydreaming about how much fun the children must have had in the old days—playing, bonding, and learning together as a vibrant social community.
Asimov's story provides a prophetic critique of purely digitized, isolated education. While technology offers customized pacing and vast information storage, it completely fails to fulfill emotional, interpersonal, and psychological needs. Human teachers bring empathy, moral guidance, spontaneous encouragement, and personal understanding that machines cannot replicate. Furthermore, physical classrooms foster collaboration, peer empathy, communication skills, and social camaraderie. Education is not merely data transmission into the brain; it is a collective human experience, proving that technology should assist teachers, never replace them.
Tommy is thirteen, practical, curious, and somewhat condescending towards Margie. He views the physical book through an analytical, utilitarian lens—comparing its finite pages with the superior storage capacity of their million-book telebooks. In contrast, Margie is emotional, introspective, and acutely starved for companionship. While Tommy enjoys discovering historical facts, Margie connects with the human experience behind the facts. She romanticizes the ancient school system because it offered what her privileged yet sterile robotic life lacked: friends, shared laughter, human teachers, and mutual support.