Ushieja

Journal Entry/Story

October 12th 2042

Dear Diary,

As you know, I have been trying very hard to get my son to get his grades up, especially in math. He has failed the last two tests he had written, and if he fails the third one, he will not be able to remain a student at the school. His father and I are paying so much money for him to have the best education possible, but it seems like he isn’t interested in what is being taught.

I remember the days when I was a student in elementary school, back in the early 2000’s, and although we had actual teachers rather than these AI bots that my kids have, I wonder if not much has changed in regard to what education is valued, and for whom it is valued.

This morning during breakfast Jacob was telling me that his class had begun their first lesson on trigonometry yesterday, and he doesn’t understand what it would ever be used for or why he would ever even use it. This was their first introduction to using the sin, cos and tan functions, and the first lesson was all about memorizing the right-angle triangle. With a mouthful of pancakes, he had said to me “trigonometry is dumb. GeminiUltra can solve these questions for me anyways”. As thankful as I am that we have all these AI assistants around us, I do wonder if he would benefit from having a human as his teacher. A lot of my memories from when I was in elementary school were laughing and talking with my teachers. They would always tell us stories about their lives, and we would build a relationship as the year went by; and at the end of the year, I would be so sad to leave my teacher behind. Truly, I don’t think Jacob has ever felt that feeling.

I was an educator back in my day and my parents had instilled in me the value of the work done by teachers. If it wasn’t for my teachers, I would not be the person that I am in today, and I have always felt that gratitude. I don’t think that Jacob feels any gratitude towards his AIBots. I also don’t think that he feels the depth of the value of teaching. To be quite honest diary, I don’t know if I feel it either anymore. I’m greatful for my GeminiUltra for motivating me and answers my questions or for always being a voice to talk to when I feel lonely, but the relationship doesn’t really feel the same as the kinds of relationships I had when I was younger. I remember my parents would look forward to getting to meet my teachers during parent-teacher meetings, but now all I get is a statistical analysis of my son’s progress through the semester and his rank in class amongst his peers. I don’t hear any stories of what Jacob does in class or how he interacts with his peers, or what his personality in class is like. It seems that the consideration of his identity in the classroom has completely been nullified and he has just become a statistic in constant comparison to the others. And of course, his VR headset is always on ‘personal’ mode so and never on ‘speaker’ mode so all I see of Jacob is him sitting on the couch with his VR headset. To be honest, I don’t even think I’ve actually heard him have any type of conversation in his math classes, all I hear is the occasional answer that he gives, probably only when he’s asked a question. I really don’t think that he is enjoying his math class, and I think this is why his grades have been so poor.

I’m not so sure I agree with how his math classes are so apolitical and so devoid of any personal connections. I remember when policy changes were made back in 2035 and the pushback that came with these changes. I remember Mathematics was made an apolitical subject, and laws were passed that mathematics should just be math, a rigorous foundation that trained students to think logically and become fluent mathematical communicators. I even remember watching the News when the law was passed, the government was saying that students would be trained to become engineers and computer programmers that would build the robots and automated factory machining that runs the labour tasks in our society. But to be quiet honest diary, I don’t think my son wants to be an engineer or a computer programmer. I miss the days where we had more freedom to decide what we wanted to do with our futures. At least I had some say in having dreams for my future when I was a kid, but I don’t think Jacob has had that much freedom in what his dreams could be. All of the students these days are being pushed towards careers of engineering and development. Don’t get me wrong, there isn’t anything wrong with engineering or development, but what about the students that’s like poetry or art and want to be creative in the traditional sense, using paper and paint? Oh gosh, I don’t think Jacob has touched a piece of paper since he was a toddler. Maybe that’s what I need to do with Jacob. He used to love painting and drawing when he was very young but ever since he started his primary education, he hasn’t had the opportunity to be creative in how he learns. It just seems that everyone is expected to learn in the same generic way, and unfortunately, this doesn’t always work. I just need to figure out a way to get Jacob interested in his mathematics learning, I’m just not sure how.

I am going to sleep on this for now. By the way, my health goals were reached for the day today! My health system is saying that I moved around today for a total of 10 minutes! That’s a record! It must be all of the walking I did going back and forth from the kitchen today to make myself coffee since our GeminiServe is in the shop getting repairs. I really need to convince my husband to get us a second service bot. I really don’t want to deal with getting up and stopping my work whenever I need a cup of coffee, it’s exhausting!

Anyways, tomorrow is Eliza Day and we are joining the celebrations virtually with my family in Sri Lanka and my husband’s family in Cuba so I will check in with you later. Good night!