Two happy students entirely unaffected by the underage sex controversy were John Calder and Grace Ling. In the eyes of the law the two 17 year olds were adults, and though her parents were still unhappy about their growing passion, the two remained in school and would be a big part of it throughout their senior year.
John had been added to the school as a student for Sally Aston and would study math with her. He had already begun to spend short sessions with her when the school found little Grace Ling, who was probably going to be his girlfriend.
As we have seen, the compatible pair were soon an inseparable couple. To encourage that relationship and get some necessary work done, John and Clarity had been assigned to work sifting through the pile of possible school textbooks. Since he was tied to no other student, Anderson Simms did not join this exercise, but worked directly with his teacher, Dr. Ellen Smith.
As the school grew it added to its set of working textbooks. Making use of them was going to be difficult. The process had begun with those two students, John and Grace, in the summer before the school officially opened.
“This is going to take a lot of work, kids, but it’ll be worth it”, Sally had told them. “You’ll see.” She handed them questionnaires to fill out. They groaned.
“Now, now, none of that. Leaf through the books, scan them, get some clue as to what they contain and how they are written, then just answer the questions about the books. It will be easy.”
The kids looked at one another. This did not seem like something that would be fun. Fun was what they did while naked in bed together, a subject increasingly on their minds.
John and Grace has both been lonely before coming to the school. Now they were in the most passionate relationship they could imagine, not just sexually fulfilled, but deeply in love.
It was the love that stabilized them so they could work together on almost anything and do well at it. But Dr. Aston had explicitly told them not to work together. They could sit together amongst the piles of books, but would not exchange comments about them. Each book should get a different review.
At first they worked from a prepared questionnaire, but when new teacher, Alma Renwick, had arrived to work with them, they had begun to switch over to a computerized dialogue approach, as used with both students after they they had answered questions about themselves.
Sally Aston, school principal and math teacher had introduced their new supervisor and co-worker while the two students were reading the first chapters of two different books.
“Mrs. Renwick, this is my student, John Calder, and his girlfriend, Grace Ling. We have not found a teacher for Grace yet, but we keep her busy. John and Grace, this is Mrs. Renwick. She is happiest teaching younger students, but knows everything about everything. If there is something in those books which might interest you and contribute to your education, she’ll help you find it.”
John and Grace looked at each other quickly, trying not to seem as disappointed at they felt. It had been so much fun working together. Happily, Alma Renwick was acute enough to sense their feelings.
“OK now. My office is just going to be down that hall and on the right side, near the end. I want you to come by whenever you want to, but whether you do or not, I’ll check in twice a day. If you can’t stand sitting around looking through books another minute and need to get some air, leave me a note, but I do want to see some signs that you are actually working.”
John and Grace exhaled as one. This was going to be OK.
“Now, out of every ten books you’ve looked through, give me the bottom nine. I want you to keep doing that until you have whittled the pile down to something plausible.”
Sally and Alma went off together, smiling at one another. They knew that John and Grace would keep busy and do good work, even if they did find someplace to go for a little recreation sometimes.
The next student after John, Andy and Grace was Clarity Bond.
Alma left Clarity in the main office, then spoke with Grace alone.
“Grace, we are adding a new student, who will be helping you and John. I am going to suggest that at least one of you stay in the room at all times. I can guess your preferences, but I think you might consider leaving John on duty sometimes, while you and the new girl go for a walk. You know that we are organizing this school on the basis of compatibility. Don’t think of her as any threat to your relationship with John. She is likely to become your friend. Probably. If not, let me know.”
Grace understood. The two young people were introduced to the pretty, Clarity Bond, then it was the three of them going through the books.
All three had been asked to point out books that interested them, chapters that interested them, quirks of the authors, coverage of the topic, and so on.
This process would never stop. Every new student would spend some time going over the textbook pile. Sometimes Dr. Smith would drag Andy over to meet with the others and continue the process. There was obviously some meaning or purpose behind it, but it was not discussed until the second meeting of that original behavioural geography class.
When the students entered the room, each found two books on his or her desk. Everyone had a copy of “Basics of Behavioural Georgraphy”, by Tucker and Elmsworth. The other books were all different. John Calder had “An Introduction to Mathematical Sociology”. Grace had “History of the Behavioural Sciences”. Andy had an Introductory Psychology text, Clarity an Introductory Sociology text. The students recognized all of these books, which had survived the process of elimination during the summer.
Indeed, everyone in the class had two textbooks apiece, one that the whole class would study from, one for individual study.
This remained to school policy even after the it had finally reached full size. All classes now had eight students in them. Each class had a carefully selected textbook. Using the data input by the kids over the summer and early fall, the software had chosen the best possible text for the class as a whole. But it had done more than that. It had chosen the best possible individual texts, based on the student’s personal characteristics.
After the major reorganization which had shuffled the students between classes, the textbooks had also been changed in many classes, to reflect changes in class composition.
In other ways the policies of Social Tech High with respect to books were quite remarkable. A school with high fees, it also offered generous scholarships to worthy students. Whether a student’s books were paid for by school fees or by the donations funding scholarships, every kid in the class had not one but three copies of every text book. Paper may be going out in favour of online reading, but having a book to lay out on your desk in class or beside you while you did your homework was still the ideal way to go.
Of the three copies, one stayed at the school. Two copies were delivered to the student’s home by a teacher who spoke personally to the child’s parent or parents.
“We will be sending home two copies of each homework assignment answer sheet”, Dr. Paul Grey told the mother of one of his scholarship students, a poor woman who lived in a project highrise. “To go with them, these two big boxes contain two copies of each textbook your son uses. He studies eight different subjects, using 16 different books. So we are bringing you 32 books!”
“Thirty-two books, heavens, where am I going to put them?”
“Well, Mrs. Reed, that’s up to you, but Joey has a new friend now, who’d be glad to help.”
“Why so many books? I just don’t get it.”
“Half of them are for you, Mrs. Reed. You don’t have to use them, but we never want the lack of a book being a reason for not helping Joey. That’s also why we are sending you two copies of each answer sheet. We’d like you to try doing the homework yourself, whether you help Joey or not. If you don’t want to, that’s fine. If you can’t, that’s find. But we don’t want the lack of an extra answer sheet to keep you from helping your son. We’ll send you additional information and instructions, too, sometimes. Anything we can do to make sure your son gets something out of the work he does at home.”
Mrs. Reed remained confused, but said, “I don’t think my Joey needs my help. He is a smart boy, not like his momma.”
“Then let him teach you. Teaching another person is the best possible way to learn something.”
“Oh, oh dear, well alright, for Joey, anything, I love him so much the dear.”
Satisfied Paul Grey walked to his car, brushing his hands together and smiling.
Everything the brilliant English teacher had said was true, but there was another reason that additional books were being made available, and why duplicate copies of all answer sheets would be sent home. The staff at Social Tech High kept busy feeding answer sheets into scanners, putting the data into computers, where it was process by powerful programs.
These programs were designed to do a lot with this raw data. That included the analysis what each student did with their homework assignments, what help they had probably received, and some things about the parent who helped. Parents had a right to refuse, or could simply not participate, but the advantages of helping their kids was made clear, as were the advantages of letting such data be collected.
Given all of this information, it was possible to use the increasingly large database of test and homework questions to generated unique custom-tailored homework sets for each student.
Never would a teacher just say “Read chapter X from page A to B”. Now it was be “I’m just printing out your homework assignments now and and will give them to you as they come off the printer. You’ll find some hints about where in your books some help with the answers will be given.”
Books would continue to be used, and paper answer sheets would still be provided, but in addition, students could find homework online. The school site, http://SocialTechHigh.Org/ kept individual accounts for each student, where individualized information, instructions, homework and even some suggested recreations were provided. The school provided low-profile flat-screen computers in classrooms and special computer labs, all paid for by major donors.
The Social Tech High organization itself could not do all the programming needed to manage this, so the parent organization, http://TechnologicalFantasies.SocialTechnology.ca/ handled most of it, using a large corps of volunteers under the direction of a few paid staff members.
John Calder was the student of one of the original Tech Fantasies Trio. Utterly compatible and very close to her, in an appropriate way, John was fascinated by the Tech Fantasies organization and their dedication to imagining the advanced technology of the future. Sally hoped he would want to become part of the organization himself, but would not put any pressure on him.
In fact John did join Tech Fantasies, dragging Grace, Clarity and a few other kids with him — a chain of new people, new volunteers to work in an already large movement turning dreams into reality, as they were turning the dream of a new highschool into reality.