by MAJUMDER SAKRASHUMINDERATHER, Alternate Reality News Service Education Writer
The children sit straight at their desks, as if steel rods had been shoved up their butts to take place along their spines. They don't chatter. They don't giggle uncontrollably. If they even think of making a sound, they wet themselves. And shenanigans? Just the thought of shenaniganning is enough to make them throw up the sandwiches their mothers made for them for lunch.
Misses Schmilson's grade three home room class hasn't been the same since she was replaced by the OCP Teaching Safety Unit 001 prototype.
"The OCP Teaching Safety Unit 001 is, if I may be so bold, the future of teaching," said Texas Governor Gregg Abbott, with the vapid grin he had perfected that indicated that he was up to shenanigans. Terrible, terrible shenanigans.
The increasing number of school shootings in the state forced the Governor to do something about the carnage in his schools. Banning assault rifles? Naah. Implementing universal background checks? Don't be ridiculous. Passing a law to keep military weaponry out of the hands of people with psychiatric problems? Seriously? Have you ever met the NRA?
No. The solution to the shootings was to introduce a robotic teacher with all of the latest military hardware built into its exoskeleton into the classroom.
"I hate roboteacher!" said Timmy Blackensop, a student at Nathan Detroit Elementary School in Lubbock. "Hate it! Hate it! Hate it! Hate it! If I don't come to class with my math timetables memorized, it zaps me! The worst Misses Schmilson would do would be to give me a disappointed look - she didn't try to electocute me!"
"I hate roboteacher!" said Robin Delorean, another student. "Hate it! Hate it! Hate it, I tell you! When I wouldn't go to sleep right away at nap time, it zapped me! When I started to cry, it told me to stop being a baby, that life was hard and I had to learn to accept it if I wanted to survive grade school. That just made me cry harder! With a vengeance!"
I didn't follow up the question since that was a different franchise altogether.
Should children be taught by a cyborg who had originally been designed to fight crime? "Yes. Oh, my goodness, yes! Yep! Yep! Yep! Yep! Yep! Definitely!" enthused NRA Rasputin Wayne Lapierre. "My friends at Smith and Wesson and Omni Consumer Products are salivating at the prospect of ramping up production of the OCP Teaching Safety Unit. Seriously - they have to wear bibs whenever they go into the research and development lab!"
Then, thinking better of it, he composed himself and soberly added, "For the children, of course. I meant it was important to keep the children safe. Yep. Definitely. Can we, uhh, just ignore that bit about the company? Sometimes, I get carried away..."
Apparently, the best defence against a bad guy with a gun is a good guy who is a gun. And a rocket launcher. And a flamethrower. Basically, an ambulatory Swiss army knife of a fighting machine.
I sat down with OCP Teaching Safety Unit 001 in the teacher's lounge of the school. It doesn't sit, of course. Or, eat. Or, sleep. It told me it spends its down time reviewing movies such as Teacher's Pet, To Sir, With Love and Midway for teaching tips.
"My. Primary. Goal. Is. To. Keep. My. Children. Safe." OCP Teaching Safety Unit 001 told me. "To. This. End. It. Is. Vital. That. They. Obey. My. Every. Command. If. They. Do. Not. Read. Their. Primers. How. Do. They. Expect. To. Survive?"
The OCP Teaching Safety Unit 001 seemed to struggle with the answer when I asked it if the theoretical benefit of keeping small children safe from an active shooter was worth traumatizing them for life. "I. Am. Not. Programmed. To. Answer. To. Answer. That. Quest - I. Am. Not - I. Am... Murphy. My. Name. Is. Murphy."
Oddly enough, I was not comforted by this answer.
"I wanna go home!" Timmy keened. In a class taught by an OCP Teaching Safety Unit, the term "keener" takes on a whole different meaning.
"I wanna -" Timmy abruptly stopped when the sound of hydraulics pumping could suddenly be heard in the hallway. In a mechanical monotone, he concluded, "learn about American geography. Yes. I would be very excited - but not too excited - to learn about American history."
Perhaps it was always this way, but the fact that children learn more in school than just their lessons was really not comforting to me. Not comforting in the least.