http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/SchoolAndSocietyThroughScienceFiction
Originally published in 1974 by editors
Martin H. Greenberg,
Joseph D Olander, and
Patricia Warrick. This
Science Fiction Genre Anthology collects 21 short fiction works and five
Non-Fiction works.
Fiction published in this Anthology:
"The Purposes of Education"
"Teaching and Learning in Society"
"School and Society"
"Technology and Education"
"Critical Issues in Contemporary Education"
This Anthology provides examples of:
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Henry Slesar's "Examination Day": A boy wishes on his twelfth birthday to do well on the government exam. He does and it turns out people who do too well are killed.
- Doom as Test Prize: Henry Slesar's "Examination Day": A 12-year-old boy undergoes a mandatory IQ test administered by the government. In the last scene the parents are notified that the boy exceeded the IQ limit, and are asked how they'd like his remains to be handled.
- Epistolary Novel: "The First Men", by Howard Fast, is told mostly by letters (and one telegram) between Harry Felton and his married sister, Jean Arbalaid. The last letter is set in a Framing Device of a conversation between Harry and Eggerton, the US Secretary of Defense.
- Framing Device: "The First Men", by Howard Fast, is told mostly by letters between Harry Felton and his married sister, Jean Arbalaid. However, the last letter isn't read until Harry and Eggerton, the US Secretary of Defense, are having a conversation. This conversation matches the condition of the last letter Jean wrote him, so Harry reads it to the Secretary.
- Just One Second Out of Sync: "The First Men", by Howard Fast, has a forest that is suddenly replaced by a strange mist. A letter from the future explains that this mist is from the people inside having moved the forest less than a millisecond into the future.
- Psychic Link: "The First Men", by Howard Fast, has a small group of children who have learned how to initiate telepathic links. They slowly induct every child in the program into the link, and become smarter than the adults taking care of them.
- Novelette:
- One-Word Title:
- Persecuted Intellectuals: Henry Slesar's "Examination Day": The government exterminates anyone who scores too high on a mandatory examination so they can't grow up to question or threaten the power structure.
- Short Story:
- Super-Speed Reading: R. A. Lafferty's "Primary Education Of The Camiroi": Inverted when an alien race regards those who read rapidly as intellectually inferior on the grounds that they don't take the time to absorb and memorise every detail.
- Time Travel: Harry Harrison's "The Ever Branching Tree": A classroom teacher uses time travel to demonstrate the science of evolution to their students.
