School Used to Be Different

It’s now ten years I don’t teach. It all started during the pandemic 12 or so years ago. It was a strange one, it would give you fever and chest pain, but you would also lose any sense of touch. If you touched an object or a person, you wouldn’t feel anything. That wasn’t the worst of it, of course: millions of people died.

I caught it, in a mild form, I didn’t really have any high temperature and the chest pain was negligible, but I could not feel anything. My boyfriend at the time, now my husband, lived with me already, so he had to isolate and stay at home with me for two weeks. He didn’t catch it, of course. But I did, and when we made love it was terrible: I didn’t feel him, I didn’t feel anything. I knew he was there because I could see him and touch him, but I couldn’t feel him: he was a total stranger to my body.

I don’t teach anymore, I am mostly an examiner. All teaching is held by virtual animations that students can watch from home. I have to admit some of them are good, especially with the sciences, as it is easier for a young girl or boy to understand the Theory of Relativity when the screen showed you a surface being deformed by a round object (a mass). But there are no teachers and no classes now. School isn’t a social experience the way it used to be when I grew up.

When I was a child we had actual buildings called schools. School wasn’t the activity of studying at home as it is now, it was a building. The buildings had rooms and every room had a certain number of students that sat at separate desks. In front of them sat the teacher, with her large desk. When I was a kid every class had a blackboard behind the teacher, this big patch of black on the wall where she would write with a white chalk. We had some coloured chalks, but everything was mostly black and white. There were no fancy animations.

The virus was so powerful, that not only we had to wear mask anywhere, almost even in bed, but the Authorities  had to close the schools to reduce the contagion. As teachers we had to improvise. The internet already offered platforms we could share with the students to create a visual class. It took us a few weeks to perfect our lessons as we had never done anything like that before. But we were teachers: our priority was to teach no matter what.

I missed my students, having them there chatting and screaming instead of listening to me, I missed even that. The students missed their mates. They would send each other text messages on their smartphones while in their bedrooms, thinking we wouldn’t notice because we were a few miles away. But it wasn’t the same, there was no group.

When we were about a year or so into the pandemic and the virus still wouldn’t go away, some heads of schools had a brilliant idea, or so they thought. Considering that after a year or so the interaction on the part of the students was diminishing and that even the teachers were starting to literally read what they were meant to teach, these heads of schools thought: why do not we have one teacher for each discipline record the lesson instead of having many teachers for so many classes? Furthermore, what was the point of having classes anymore? A lot of us lost their jobs.

I still have a job, but I am not a teacher, I am an examiner. Nowadays exams are the only thing that software and machines cannot cope with. Yes, most scientific test could be checked by machines, but machines are not very good at literature and creativity. It was a cliché when I was a kid and used to read or watch books and films with overpowerful A.I.s, but they were correct in recognising that machines do not recognise creativity. So here I am, sitting on a chair correcting tests without being able to connect a face to a test. Maybe this helps to be impartial, I don’t even care anymore. I am an examiner, not a teacher: I am not meant to care.

Someone then decided that, considering they had been using the same teachers’ recordings for months, they didn’t need those teachers any longer. So students were studying from recordings of jobless ex-teachers. It is a depressing thought, your educational usefulness lasting longer than your economical utility. But I was one of those recorded teachers, and even though I was using up my savings I was happy that some part of me was still teaching.

The subject of this test is an analysis of Hamlet’s famous “To be or not to be” monologue in Shakespeare’s homonym play, Act 3, Scene 1. This student’s text starts with: “Nobility is not the metre one should consider nowadays before taking action. I am not saying it is old-fashioned, but just inappropriate to the times. Nobles are media celebrities. Real nobility is rare. Killing someone is neither nobler nor not. I know. I am going to kill soon.” I stop in my tracks. For a moment, I was getting carried away. This is supposed to be an analysis, not a work of fiction. As I carry on, I realise this may not be a work of fiction, but a confession for a crime to come.

Of course, when more time passed, someone then realised that those recordings were becoming old and the average student’s attention deficit was getting worse. This is when they decided to use virtual teaching. Some governments even hired directors and screenplay writers to create some of those educational videos. I have to admit, some of those videos were beautiful, maybe too beautiful to be able to teach anything: the students would get too engrossed in them to have the detachment that sometimes learning necessitates. Yes, we learn through stories, but we learn stories, messages, not notions. This is the way schools are now. 

“When you lose the name of action, when thoughts and fears take over, that’s when your end comes. To die, to sleep, these things do not matter in the end: to die so as not to act is still an action and a choice. This entire monologue is the reason why we don’t study philosophy any longer: Thought takes over Action and we ponder about existence instead of existing. Existing is neither noble nor philosophical: we act because when we lose action we are not men anymore. Life is hard, but it’s all part of the act of living or dying. I will kill soon and one day I will die: only then I will sleep.”

She is seriously perturbed. The system does not allow her to see the name of the student. She considers contacted the Authorities and let them deal with it. She considers ignoring the entire thing, just giving it a mark without reading it again. But then she remembers she used to be a teacher. She emails her superior to ask for a name. Her request is, of course, denied, half a day later, through an email asking for the reason for her request. She knows what her superior will do if she gives her reason, so she drops the matter.  

It’s two days later. In three days she has to send the test results back to the machine so that the machine can, anonymously and privately, forward them to the students. She decides to go to her superior’s office.

‘Are you serious? Either you are reading too much into the text. And yes, I have read it when you’ve sent it over, 10 minutes before you turned up here without an appointment. Or, you are right, and we need to call the Authorities.’

‘He is only a teenager. He hasn’t done anything yet. If only could I talk to him?’

‘And what do you think you would obtain by talking to him? You don’t even know if it’s a him or a her.’

‘It’s obvious it’s a young man from the text, if you’ve really read it.’

‘This is beside the point. You haven’t answered my question.’

‘I want to help him.’

‘I do understand your motivation. You want to talk to him, help him. What if he has a weapon and attacks you?’

‘We used to be teachers.’

‘But we aren’t anymore. Are you behaving this way out of nostalgia? You are an examiner and your job is to examine and mark the text. I will not contact the Authorities, because I want you to take the right decision, but I give you 24 hours and then if you haven’t I will.’

‘I need a name, please.’

‘You are not listening.’

‘What if I am wrong and as you said I am reading too much into it? The Authorities will arrest me instead, for wasting their time.’

‘You are wasting my time.’

‘You used to be a teacher.’

‘You used to be a teacher, now you are an examiner.’

At home her husband can see she is distracted, but he doesn’t say anything. When the time comes she will start talking and he will be there for her. She wonders how he doesn’t get frustrated. On the contrary, it feels like his patience keeps growing. She should say something, but she knows she won’t. That night, in bed, she is supposed to think about calling the Authorities, but instead she is thinking about finding that student. She wants to save him. At the thought she almost laughs. She knows it’s not the truth. She wants to be a teacher again: she wants to teach something that these students cannot learn at school anymore.

In the morning, she finds an email of her superior. Actually, it is an email address she doesn’t know. The email asks to delete it, even though it may still be traceable. The email says the 24-hour deadline is still standing. There’s a name and an email address. She knows it’s the student’s name and email address. She wonders what made her superior change her mind. She doubts she was that convincing. She has a chance. She emails the student. She doesn’t lie. She says she used to be a teacher, she has read his analysis of Hamlet’s monologue and would like to discuss the matter. She knows it’s dumb, the student has no reason to agree to meet her; he may suspect what’s going on. She may be acting like an idiot, but she also feels like her old self, something attached to old values, such as honesty.

Strangely enough, the student agrees to meet her in a café in half an hour. She’s so surprised she’s stunned. She has so many tests to correct, but she hasn’t been able to do anything since reading the student’s test, so she knows she just has to go. She has a mission. She feels so ridiculous inside that she is happy people cannot look at each other’s heads. She is supposed to help this student, not look for personal glory. Something is wrong with her, but it’s probably because she feels like she has become one of those Japanese takumi, those artisans so skilled in a very particular art that no one else practices anymore. Teaching has become a takumi art, even though she does not use her hands. She does not even know what she uses or used to use: all she knows is that she practices an art that doesn’t exist anymore.

He sees a young boy sipping a coffee and looking outside the window and she knows he’s her student. His eyes are not lost in the outside, but on the contrary they are so focused that they are intense. She sits in front of him. He takes a little longer before turning. When he does he loses nothing of the intensity of his look. She introduces herself. He still doesn’t say anything. He knows she knows his name anyway. It would be redundant. She needs him to say something because she doesn’t know how to start. And so he does: ‘I know why you are here: you want to stop me from killing. My question is why. What do you care?’

It is a good starting point for her as any, she can take it from there.

‘I used to be a teacher.’

‘It means nothing to me.’

‘You now have virtual school, but about ten years ago it was different. You used to have real teachers in flesh and blood, like me.’

‘I know what a teacher is. But your answer does not satisfy my question.’

Tough client, she thinks, but at the same time she feels like she is warming up, as if some old and rusty engine is starting to move again. She feels excited.  

‘It means that I used to care about my student. Teaching does not mean only to transfer notions, but also ideas: to interact. Passing information from one human to her fellow human. It’s communication. It’s helping. A student was not the result of the total number of her test results, the way it is now. I have to admit that it is hard now for me to explain, I never had to, for me it was so obvious. But there was something extra we used to give our students amongst all the bits of information. That extra was meant to really help you in life, in order for you to build your moral compass.’

‘So you either want to help me or judge me. Or both.’

‘I want to help you and understand you.’

‘It sounds arrogant: how can you claim you can understand me by sitting with me in a café?’

‘But I have read your text and it says more about you than you think.’

‘It was a test, not simply a text, but you decide to read more into it than there is. The text says exactly what I want it to say. There is no hidden meaning. You have doubts, but your doubts are correct: I plan to take someone’s life and I am not afraid of taking action because action generates existence.’

‘There are many kinds of actions you can take to affirm your existence. Why murder?

 ‘Why did Hamlet seek blood instead of unmasking his father’s murderer? Because he couldn’t prove that his only witness was a ghost? That ghost may well have been a figment of Hamlet’s imagination. Hamlet belonged to the madhouse, not the crown. He doubted, because he knew he was crazy. I don’t murder for revenge, I am not trying to prove I am sane through murder. I plan to kill because I do not doubt. It’s the killing itself that has all the meaning it needs, no need for revenge or inner cause. The murder is reason, alibi, action and consequence. The only aspect it’s missing is judgement or any sense of justice. It is not right or wrong, so I cannot be judged. It is simple, pure action since death it’s the only aspect of life that cannot be undone. Have you ever lost someone to death? It cannot be undone. And no, I have not lost anyone myself. I have had a good life. And I am not worried if I end up in prison. I know I cannot be judged. But you cannot call the Authorities before I have done what I have to do, because I have to act in order for my act not to be undone.’

‘I cannot let you do what you plan to do. This is not only because of the person you will end up killing, but for yourself and your future. I have to stop you.’

‘Okay, so you don’t want to help me, really. You want to be a hero, the teacher comes back to save the wayward student. But there is a misunderstanding. You cannot stop me. You have a gun pointed at your belly. Don’t worry, I will make sure you die quickly. I’ve told you what I told you because I knew you could not stop me. And as I’ve said, I don’t care if I get arrested: I cannot be judged. But you are going to die and I am going to feel more alive than ever because I came here with my ideas clear. You have failed because you wanted to believe you were coming to save me, but you came here to become a hero. Your ideas were not clear to yourself so you came with the wrong determination. But don’t worry, this is not why you are going to die. You are going to die because I decided on a course of pure action, it could have been anyone. Goodbye.’

While he is going on with her monologue, she has entered a state of complete panic, so her consciousness already deaf to his words. On the contrary, she decides to look outside the table in case he is lying. The first shot hits her in the belly, the second and the third in her face. No, the teacher hasn’t died a nice death.