Since the beginning, the school policy had been to readily accept transfer students, placing them in the right classes according to both their abilities and the classmates they would work with. This was done regardless of what the paperwork from the previous school might suggest. Sometimes these classes included students of different ages. It was made clear that nothing about the classes by themselves implied an educational level, but nevertheless, each student was nominally in one grade.
The school exams and the external exams at the end of the year were open to students at different levels, but there was still a Grade 12, the seniors who would almost certainly graduate in June. They would receive the most attention in the school yearbook which would come out in the spring. They would participate in the graduation events planned for the end of the year.
In this respect Social Tech High was much like any other high school. It was a much more socially active school than most, and what they did worked, but Sally Aston and the other teachers were not sure why.
Earlier, when the problem of underage sex first emerged, things did seem to work out, somehow, but with students of other cultures and nationalities, there might be more difficulties. This fall was the first time there was a significant number of international students. It seemed clear that events involving couples, like school dances, might now be a problem.
There were many people of both sexes in the school who were connected with strong bonds only to others of the same sex. Opposite sex couples had sometimes been formed with the aid of the school software, but since the days when the first 17 year olds were sometimes matched in that way, there were few who had been.
With about one thousand students, five hundred of each gender, almost Level Three matches between boys and girls were possible within the school. From the first, a delicate question had arisen. Should the school’s software help to make these matches happen? Or would they be left to chance?
What to do about Amarita Singh, for example, Beth Green’s long-distance friend? Her culture required her to remain a virgin until marriage. Should the school let her remain alone, without even a partner for school dances, should it let her fall under the spell of whatever boy might want her, or should it interfere, matching her with someone?
Because she was Beth’s friend, that girl was consulted. Though not exactly dragged out of her boyfriend’s bed when the call came through, Beth was still a passionate young girl with views of her own about sexuality.
“I say do nothing. If Amarita stays alone, let her. It is unlikely that the boys will bother her, since they can more easily get what they want outside the school using one of our software systems. If she decides she wants someone for dances, then she will soon learn that the school software lets her privately seek for someone inside or outside the school, for whatever she wants. If she wants a boy who will not pressure her for sex, I think such rare beasts do exist.”
“Do nothing?”
“It’s worked in the past, hasn’t it?”
“Somehow.”
“Teenage sex is not such a bad thing, you know, I’ve been doing it for years”, Beth exaggerated. “We evolved in a world where people needed to reproduce at a young age. That is in our genes. The prohibition against adolescent sex is a cultural thing.”
“Much of what is best about humanity is a cultural thing, Beth. Don’t knock it.”
“Well, we have changed things in a way that can improve our culture without keeping kids from having the kind of satisfaction which they want. We make it easy for them to find lasting relationships.”
“But many are too young for lasting relationships.”
“Why? Girls in Grade Nine at your school are about 14, and can legally marry. If they can find someone truly compatible, why not just marry? Nothing else about their lives need change. They can just become truly happy and settled.”
“What about Amarita?”
“One day she will use the system, find herself a nice young man acceptable to her parents, someone she can easily fall in love with. Then she will take him back to India for a colourful marriage. After which she will come back and keep on going to school. I bet her new husband would be an excellent addition to the school if he is within the age range, but would be good for her either way.”
“Alright. But keep an eye on your friend, please. Don’t interfere, but don’t let her screw up her life, either.”
“Oh, she is a real friend. I’ll look after her, of course I will. And I’ll try not to set an example for her. Best if she didn’t take up my decadent life style.”
“It’s none of my business, Beth, but, uh … “.
“Why am I not happily married? Well, Essie and I decided to go for the best guys here at UC Berkeley, even though we knew they’d only be temporary. Time to go for the best in the world when we graduate.”
“How has that worked out?”
“Some heartbreak. OK, lots of heartbreak. But wonderful good times, too. About par for a kid my age in the medieval days of social technology, say ten years ago.”
“I’m surprised. I’d have thought that you, of all people, would have done better.”
“Oh, I did. Back then a teenager might have a series of Level Two or Level Three relationships, with frustrations and fights. I have had Level Five relationships. Just wonderful. I’m a little on the underage side myself, so I don’t want to you to pry, but they were seniors, who went on to grad school elsewhere, as they’d planned all along. We broke up when they left.”
“College seniors? And you were how old?”
“Oh, about fifteen. But a lot of the freshman class were dating seniors. I saw no harm in it. Had to do a bit of sneaking around to keep them out of jail, but that’s normal.”
“Beth, I see you are absolutely the very worst person I could have asked about this.”
“Don’t underestimate sneaking around. I bet most of the kids in your school are doing it. Sneaking around that is.”
“And therein lies the problem. I am so worried about the foreign students.”
“If necessary they can almost all marry their way out of their difficulties. Don’t worry about it.”
Sally could not stop worrying, but for now would do nothing. There was a delicious irony in this which was not lost on her. Sally had enjoyed an active sex life from just before she turned thirteen, and done years of sneaking around.
Some people, including Beth’s mother, who had gone to Sally’s school in North Vancouver, one grade ahead of her, had known about Sally, and thought her a slut. That was not actually true. She had never slept around, never had more than one boyfriend at a time, and only had a sequence of them because the boys dumped her.
They didn’t like being with someone so obviously smarter than they were. Once dumped, however, the lustful Sally never waited long before finding someone new. Now everything was so much better. She was not smarter than Drake, he stayed with her, satisfying her regularly. Her husband had remarkable qualities of endowment, strength, inventiveness and endurance.
Sally’s daughter, Kelly, was not Drake’s. Her conception had been partly responsible for the creation of Technological Fantasies, years earlier, which among other things, was supposed to find Sally a husband.
It would be ten years before Kelly would be ready for Social Tech High. She had just started kindergarten. But the time would come when Sally would want Kelly in the school. What would it be like at that time? Everything Sally did, every time she made a decision, she always wondered what effect it would have on the school her daughter would attend.
One thought came to mind as Sally dwelt on these topics. Did she really want Kelly to spend nine years in the public school system? No. Well, how about a good private school? Yes? No?
Sally tried to envision Kelly’s life at twelve and thirteen. She couldn’t. Not knowing what else to do, Sally called Alma Renwick and went to see her.
“You are probably the very worst person for me to ask about this, Alma, and I have already made that mistake once today. So I won’t think of you as impartial, more of an advocate for one point of view. I’ll try to dig up an advocate for the other.”
“Ah. Well, I am famous for my points of view. You will have to be a little more specific.”
“Your favourite grade is seven. You have argued for extending the school downwards, making it a full range high school, a junior-senior high school.”
“Oh, goody, you are going to consider it. About time.”
“We’ve always worried about the underage sex problem, Alma. I was just talking about it with Beth Green, who tells me that it isn’t really a problem, because girls in our school are old enough to marry.”
“With parental permission. I do see the point, though. Now you see me as wanting to remove even that solution, by opening up the school to kids too young to marry even with parental consent.”
“Except in Quebec, where it is legal for girls as young as twelve to marry, with consent.”
“I didn’t know that. Well, anyway, Sally, we do know a lot more about underage sex than we used to, and we’re able to deal with it, somehow. I think we could manage to keep the lid on even with younger kids.”
“So now you are going to tell me the advantages of having young kids here, Alma.”
“I am. First of all, junior high is hell, whether in public schools or private ones, same sex or mixed. How we survive those years, I don’t know. But in some way those are the key years. They are the years girls become obsessed with boys, become rebellious, drift away from their studies. They are the years boys start to take an interest in sex, about a year later than the girls, finally becoming obsessed with it, while the girls won’t give them the time of day. In single sex private schools, it is the same, with kids outside the school being the object of their desire. In a residential school, all kinds of things go on.”
“Wouldn’t all that happen here, too?”
“Not the same way. It would be a lot better. The younger kids would have older ones to look up to. That can be good or bad, depending on what the older kids are like. Here they are exceptionally good.”
“Here they sneak around. Would they learn that from their elder mentors?”
“Chances are they already sneak around for one reason or another. Didn’t you sneak around at that age, Sally.”
“Yes, but I don’t want little kids behaving like I did.”
“How soon we forget.”
“Very funny. OK, I’m guilty of growing up into a responsible adult, though I never wanted to be one. I just don’t want to be responsible for parents suing the school.”
“I think you already challenged one father to do just that, didn’t you? It’s not the school, anyway. They might sue Tech Fantasies or Project match. Suing the Greens would be good, they’ve got a bundle. But the school, no. We’re behaving ourselves, and will keep on doing so, even if we admit kindergarten kids.”
“Ouch. I’ve got one of those, Alma. If you have your way, then 7 or 8 years from now little Kelly will be in a school with 17 year old boys.”
“All rendered harmless by good relationships, mostly outside of school.”
“Do you really think my little girl would be better off here, in Grade Seven, with other twelve year old’s?”
“It is the best school in the world, Sally.”
“Won’t the influx of younger kids change everything, possibly for the worse?”
“Possibly for the better. Older kids will become mentors for younger ones, and in doing so will grow themselves.”
“You have almost persuaded me.”
“Good. Now go find your devil’s advocate, to undo all my efforts.”
Sally thought she had been a good enough devil’s advocate herself, but just to be on the safe side, looked around for someone to argue the contrary position. That seemed harder than it should have been.
“Beth”, Sally asked by video wall, “I wanted a person to argue a certain point of view. Why is it so hard to find one?”
“Ah, what you want is my half-brother David. He can persuade anyone of anything, especially if she is cute.”
“I am sure someone in your family is a prodigy at any human ability. Have you a brilliant musician in the family, like Mozart?”
“My half-sister Ashley.”
“Rocket Scientist?”
“My half-sister Caroline.”
“Sophist?”
“That’s David. Able to argue any side of any issue.”
“I thought so. But no, I don’t want some product of your father’s genius factory. Oops, sorry, you are more than that.”
“It’s alright, I am proud of it.”
“What I mean is, I want some technology. Given an argument, find me a person to argue it.”
“Ah. I think I have just thing. Indirectly a product of my father, via me. My little backwards text matcher. Produce about a page of text, asking a question, stating an opinion, giving a sample dialogue. Hand it to the backwards matcher. The writings of everyone with both some text and a profile in the system will be compared with your sample page, then you will be guided to the best individuals.”
“Fascinating. How do I get my hands on this piece of magic?”
“I just e-mailed it to you. Click on it and follow the instructions.”
“You are very kind. Too bright, but still kind. Like that father of yours.”
“High praise.”
Sally fetched the program and started it up. It requested a text file, in any format, preferably on one topic, and suggested something of page length, or at least a paragraph, giving a button to click for short examples.
That was easy enough to do. Briefly she wrote up both Alma’s views and what Sally guessed an opponent might say. Feeding both into the matcher, separately, Sally got one-line descriptions of several people, and was asked if she wanted them invited to contribute their expertise.
Eventually Sally got in touch with a Solomon Eisenstein, who would argue in favour of adding lower grades. To argue against them, she got the husband of one of her best teachers. Ralph Stevens was the husband of the Grade Nine music teacher, Rita Stevens. The couple had a fourteen year old son in the school and a twelve year old daughter in an all-girls private school.
The two argued their cases much as Alma and Sally had earlier, making their points more clearly and firmly. But there was one thing they almost agreed upon. In some ways the school would help the younger kids. Being thoroughly integrated into such a good school would help them mature and help them academically.
The part about helping them mature was one of Mr. Stevens’ reasons for disliking the idea. He wanted his little girl to remain a little girl for as long as possible. Sally wondered what young Eileen Stevens would think about that. No, she didn’t wonder at all. Of course the girl would be frustrated and angry over it. Kids want to grow up. Sally thought adults should let them.
On the other hand, did she really want little Kelly to grow up too soon? In her mind’s eye she suddenly saw a too mature twelve year old Kelly getting out of the car a block before reaching the school, wanting to walk there, hoping nobody would realize that Kelly Phillips was Principal Sally Aston’s daughter.
Her attention diverted, Sally hardly noticed the argument going on around her. It didn’t matter anyway. This was not the proper forum. She would have to invite the two gentlemen to present their views before the assembled teachers.