Some Time
In The
Future

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"There was a third member of the Chestnut Tree Cafe badinage, who was also ever-present. She said less than the other two, but she was always appreciated. She had a constancy of temperament which made a pleasant change from the dark mutterings of Gordon, and his baiter-in-chief Eric.

This was Mary, who loved books. She was quiet, thoughtful and sincere; it was no wonder people liked having her around so much.

Actually, books in themselves were an interesting topic, for they had been much in decline recently. Books, real books that is, were in short supply. The Avocado app which was now running the economy couldn't see any point in allocating scarce resources to book publishing, especially when everything was available on-line.

'I've just finished 'The Mill on the Floss', said Mary. She was probably in her mid-thirties, Dan guessed. She was attractive, yet she never mentioned anything about a husband, a boyfriend or a family.

'Would anyone like to swop?' she asked.

Dan would have loved to have known more about her. Where she lived. What she did – when she wasn't being a greeter at the British Museum of course.

Dan did know that Mary had once been a teacher. He also knew that she hadn't found this easy; for teaching had become a very conflicted profession.

The problem was that schools faced a dilemma. On the one hand education – traditional education that is – was about the development of the person. It was about fostering social skills, analytic skills and verbal reasoning. It was about writing balanced and thoughtful essays and solving problems in maths and the sciences. In short it was about creating enlightened, rational individuals equipped for the future.

The problem was, the future didn't seem to need these skills any more. People didn't need to be able to have old-fashioned conversations, because they could communicate via text. They didn't need to be able to solve maths problems because there was always an app which could do it for you.

There wasn't even any point in learning to write any more, as no one really used pens and paper these days. After all, your Smartphone saw and remembered everything, and could tell you anything you needed to know later on.

Under these circumstances, education had reached something of a crossroads. All the traditional skills, like writing, calculating or problem solving – or even thinking to any great degree – weren't needed any more. The truth was, unless you were going to be a top-line PhD research student in advanced computing and programming, these days you only needed the education of a 12 year-old.

As a result, education had reached something of a crisis, with both teachers and students knowing that what they were doing was essentially unnecessary; and the morale of teachers had reached rock bottom. It was under these circumstances that Mary had resigned - for she felt she could do no more in the classroom.

Of course, these days no one resigned. But Mary had. That in itself was exceptional. No wonder she didn't say as much as the others.

But things were getting late. Dan had to move on. He had places to go and people to see and he didn't have any more time to debate the end of humanity. He made his apologies. Eric nodded, Gordon growled darkly, and Mary smiled ever so slightly. And with that Dan was off, to the next destination in his busy workday. "