“Better take advantage of her visit,” said Evda as she introduced Veda Kong.
The history teacher blushed deeply and looked like a young girl.
“That’s fine!” she said, trying to keep her tone businesslike. “The school is about to graduate the senior groups and a word from Evda Nahl to send them on their way coupled with a review of the ancient cultures and races from Veda Kong will be something for our youth to remember! Won’t it, Rhea?”
Evda’s daughter clapped her hands. The teacher ran with the light gait of a gymnast to the subsidiary premises, contained in a long straight building.
“Rhea, can you cut out the polytechnics lesson today and come for a walk?” Evda suggested to her daughter. “I shan’t be able to see you again before you have to choose your matriculation tasks. Last time we didn’t come to a decision.”
Rhea did not answer but took her mother’s hand. In each of the school cycles the lessons were interspersed with polytechnics. At the moment they were to have one of Rhea’s favourite occupations, the grinding of optical lenses, but what could be more interesting or more important than her mother’s arrival?
Veda went away to a little observatory that she could see in the distance, leaving mother and daughter alone. Rhea, clasping her mother’s strong arm like a child, walked beside her wrapped in thought.
“Where’s your little Kay?” asked Evda and the girl grew noticeably sad. Kay had been a ward of hers — the older school-children paid regular visits to first- and second cycle schools in their vicinity to help with the teaching and upbringing of wards they had selected. Integrated help for the teachers was absolutely essential to ensure thoroughness of education.
“Kay was promoted to the second cycle and has gone far away from here. It’s such a pity… why do they move us from place to place every four years, when we are promoted to the next cycle?”
‘“The psyche is wearied and becomes sluggish where there is a uniformity of impressions and perception becomes duller. The efficiency of teaching and upbringing grows less year by year. That is why the twelve years of schooling are divided into three four-year cycles and you move to another school after every cycle, each time to a different part of the planet. It is only the babies in the zero cycle, from one to four years, that do not need any change of place and conditions of upbringing.”
“And why does each cycle have separate schools and separate living quarters?”
‘‘As you little people grow up and are trained you become qualitatively different beings. If different age groups live together it makes their training more difficult and is annoying to the youngsters themselves. We have reduced the differences to a minimum by dividing the children into three age groups, but this is still not a perfect system.
The first cycle, for example, obviously needs splitting into two groups, and that will soon be done. But let us talk first about your affairs and your dreams for the future. I shall have to deliver a lecture to all of you and may be able to answer your questions.”
Rhea began to confide her innermost thoughts to her mother with the frankness of a child of the Great Circle Era who had never experienced hurtful ridicule or misunderstanding. The girl was the incarnation of youth that as yet knew nothing of life but was full of contemplative anticipation. At the age of seventeen the girl was finishing school and starting her three-year period of matriculation tasks, working amongst adults. After the tasks her interests and abilities would be clearly defined. A two-year higher education would follow that would give her the right to independent work in the chosen field. In the course of a long life a man or woman had time to take higher educational courses in five or six different fields, changing work from time to time, but a great deal depended on the choice of the first difficult tasks — the Labours of Hercules, or matriculation tasks. They were chosen after long contemplation and always following the advice of older people.
“Have you passed the graduation psychological tests yet?” asked Evda.
“Yes. I got 20 and 24 in the first eight groups, 18 and 19 in the tenth and thirteenth and even 17 in the seventeenth!” exclaimed Rhea proudly.
“That’s wonderful!” said Evda in pleased tones. “Everything is open to you. Have you stuck to the choice you made for the first task?”
“Yes, I’m going to be a nurse on the Island of Oblivion, and then all our circle are going to work at the Jutland Psychological Hospital.”
Rhea told her mother about the circle of her “followers.” Evda had plenty of good-natured jokes to make about these zealous psychologists but nevertheless Rhea persuaded her mother to be mentor for the members of the group who were also at the time selecting their tasks.
“I shall have to live here until the end of my holiday,” laughed Evda, “and what will Veda Kong do?”
The girl suddenly remembered her mother’s companion.
“She’s very nice,” said Rhea, seriously, “and almost as beautiful as you are!”
“She’s much more beautiful!”
“No, I know… and it’s not because you’re my mother,” said the girl, bashfully. “Perhaps she’s better at first glance but you have a spiritual tabernacle within you that Veda Kong hasn’t yet got. I don’t say she won’t have, it’s just that she hasn’t built it yet… but she’ll build it and then….”
“Then she’ll outshine your mother like a moon outshines the stars.”
Rhea shook her head.
“And are you going to stand still? You’ll go farther than she!”
Evda passed her hand over the girl’s smooth hair and looked down into her upturned face.
“Isn’t that enough eulogy, daughter? We’re wasting time!”
Veda Kong walked slowly down an avenue that led her deeper into a grove of broad-leaved maples, whose heavy moist foliage rustled dully. The first wraiths of the evening mist were making an effort to rise from a nearby meadow but they were instantly dispersed by the wind. Veda Kong was pondering over the mobile tranquillity of nature and thinking that the sites for the schools were always so well chosen. The development of a keen perception of nature and a sensitive communion with nature were an important part of the child’s training. Dulled interest in nature is, in actual fact, an impediment to man’s development, for one who has forgotten how to observe will soon lose the ability to generalize. Veda thought about the ability to teach, the most important of all competencies in the age when they had at last learned that upbringing was more important than education and was the only way to prepare the child for the difficult job of being a real man. The basis, of course, is provided by inherent abilities but they might easily be left undeveloped, without that chiselling of the human spirit that is done by the pedagogue.
Veda’s mind turned back to those distant days when she had been a third cycle schoolgirl, a mass of contradictions, burning with the desire to sacrifice herself and at the same time judging the world by herself alone, with all the egocentrism of healthy youth. How much the teachers did for her in those days — in truth there is no loftier profession in this world of ours than that of teacher!
The future of mankind is in the hands of the teacher for it is only by his efforts that man rises ever higher and becomes more and more powerful, coping with the most arduous of all tasks, that of overcoming himself, his greedy self-love and his unbridled desires.
Veda Kong turned towards a small bay surrounded by pines where she could hear the sounds of youthful voices; soon she came upon a dozen boys in plastic aprons busily trimming an oak beam with axes, instruments that had been invented as far back as the stone age. The young builders greeted the historian respectfully and explained to her that they wanted to build a vessel without the aid of automatic saws and other machinery, in the same way as the heroes of ancient days had done. The ship, when built, was to take them to the ruins of Carthage, a trip they wanted to make during their vacation, accompanied by the teachers of geography, history and polytechnics.