The Fun They Had

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The story "The Fun They Had" by Isaac Asimov is about the year 2157 when every child has his own machine teacher and schools like today do not exist anymore. Asimov wrote this story in 1951 for a syndicated newspaper page. Later "The Fun They Had" was published in "Fantasy and Science Fiction" magazine. In the year 2157 the thirteen-year-old Tommy finds an old book. He and Margie, who is eleven, find it strange that the words on paper do not move after having been read. Nowadays they only read stories on the computer screen. The book is about school centuries ago. Margie is very surprised that in the past pupils had a person as a teacher and that all children of the same age learnt the same thing and went to a school house with other children. Margie wants to read more of the book but first she has to learn with her machine teacher whose level is too advanced for her and she thinks school in those days was much better than today. In my opinion Isaac Asimov states the following theses in his story: In the future most things will be done and regulated by computers and technology. In this story everybody has a machine teacher. In line 28 Tommy says to Margie: "Sure they had teacher, but it wasn´t a regular teacher. It was a man." I think that CD-Roms and the internet will be developed more and more. So Isaac Asimov´s idea of the future is not absurd at all. School in the future will be very bad. School nowadays is very good and the pupils have much fun. For example in line 18 Margie says: "I hate school." And in the last two lines there is written: "Margie was thinking about how the kids must have loved it in the old days." I also think that school nowadays is better than in the story. In the future in the school as described by Asimov the social aspect is lost. There are no forms anymore. Everybody sits in front of his computer and the pupils cannot learn
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