In ‘The Fun They Had’ the writer, Issac Asimov, has tried to present a futuristic image of the world before the readers. He has presented his idea with the help of two children Margie and Tommy.
Summary
This is a story set in a futuristic scenario of around 150 years hence. In this phase of human development, every activity of education has become dependent on electronic media. There are telebooks in which the words move across the screen. The teachers are mechanical robots and the school is but an adjacent room in the house, where the student sits with the mechanical teacher, reading instructions on the screen and giving answers. It is a very boring process as there is no interaction between the teacher and the student.
One day, Margie, an eleven year old girl, made an entry in her diary, ‘Today Tommy found a real book’. Tommy was two years older to Margie. He had found the book in the attic of his room. Till then, they had never seen a real book. They had only heard from grandfather that there used to be books written on paper. They were very excited to find this book because it was a new discovery for them.
The book was on the concept of school. The school was that of an old system. From this book they learnt a lot of things about the schools in the past. They learnt that there used to be a separate building for school where children went for studying. The classrooms contained a number of students who were taught by a human teacher. Since all learned the same things, they could easily help each other and could also easily interact with the human teachers.
Margie used to dream of lot of kids going to school together, laughing, playing and helping each other. This appeared more interesting than sitting alone in a room in front of a computerized robot and reading instructions on the screen, without being able to ask any questions. As a result she started hating her school even more.