Won’t You Please Consider The Noble Profession of Post-Dystopian Teaching

Why you should consider (the noble profession of) (Post-Dystopian) teaching!

BY: NOAH FARBERMAN

Art by Daniel Gomes // THE UNDERGROUND

Hello everyone, I am happy to see such a full room. I appreciate you allowing me to borrow some of your evening for this quick presentation. I encourage you to participate when called upon, it will help this all flow faster so that you can sooner return to your night’s activities. When I have silence I can begin. Thank you. 

An exploratory walk amidst the clod has proven unfruitful? Flasks hang empty? Feeling goofy or Goofy-feeling? Do you seek an alternate vocation? Do you require one? 

Might I implore you to consider the noble profession of⸺hush hush⸺teaching? 

As how the mathematicians might describe their once precious pi, the eradication of the education system with the new world, the act of banning the profession, in itself, is a vicious circle. 

Let us explore another quote of relevance: “I know that I know nothing.”  We can clearly see how this phrase foretells the fate of the uneducated, when forced to abandon education. Now, can anyone tell me who spoke those wise foreboding words? No? How old are you all, may I ask? 14 to 17? And none of you know of Plato? Socrates? Freud? Foster-Wallace? Sadly, I figured as much. 

As I’m sure you’ve put together, the teaching I experienced in my youth is vastly different than the types of information that I believe should be taught today. 

Geographics finds itself lost in meaning when all that remains is a single town, whose higher concern lies in maintaining itself. What need might there be for maps of faraway lands when those lands are far away? What purpose could we find in understanding the weather system and how it influences the growth of land when the land we inhabit is, by all technical means, uninhabitable and yet we still inhabit it? Street smarts are all we need when all we have are streets, smart. 

Photo by jaylopez via FreeImages

Mathematics is rendered pale in comparison to the need for better irrigation. And knowing exactly how many drops of water is collected per day would only make the process feel more worthless. If everyone collects 14 drops and there are 35 of you in a group how many drops is that? Doesn’t matter, by the time you figure it out your Wrangler already drank half of it. What is so magical about numbers? Not much in the one and only town with one and only job. 

Here is something, does gym still have some function? Gets you fit and if you need an activity between shifts⸺wait, exercise makes you sweat and sweating makes you thirsty and there’s no water. Surviving is a workout on its own. 

Language will always serve a greater purpose. As I speak to you now we all grow, me with my vocational abilities, you with your oratory and cognitive skills. I saw some of your notes on my walk here, the arrows pointing to water depots were beautiful. The images spoke a million words. That is proof right there; I would be ignorant to pretend grammar holds its own when faced with the need for brevity. Imagery. Codes. Your arrows are no doubt a more important language than my words, and you are already experts on the subject. Teaching would be of no help to either of us. Especially since it would mean breaking the law, something I may very well be doing by standing before you today. 

The law: something pushed but never taught. Although… raise your hands if you know your rights. All of you, as expected. I believe you are still at the age in which every morning, when awoken by your Clubhouse member, you are required to list off all major laws. 

I bring you back to the notion that education is a requirement, for if we are not aware that we are imprisoned, we have no desire to be freed. 

Why are we alive? I’ll answer this? Is it because Flint, Michigan's water is the cleanest in the world? Raise your hand if you think that is the cause of our survival.

It makes sense that you all believe that; propaganda has pushed the notion that we are the lucky ones, and in a sense, we are the lucky ones. 

Water is the same everywhere on earth, today. It wasn’t always that way. For many years we, those of us who lived in Flint before the global contamination, suffered consistently. Our water was iron, increasing in such subtle doses that we, although not without many deaths, developed an immunity. What was toxic for the globe, was drinking water for Flint, Michigan. 

Photo by gplatt via FreeImages

It is for that same reason the rain has stopped—I hope you don’t mind this mini lesson—for the iron water blend that inhabits this new world is heavy. Acid rain exists, although our barren land has thankfully kept the dangerous weather on further horizons. But the weather we once knew did not vanish without cause. All that is to say, on further horizons there is weather beyond the spoiling sun and frigid darkness. And where there is weather, though acidic, there is water. 

Now based on what I’ve talked about, freedom and proof of other inhabitable planes, it might come as a great desire to escape. 

I support that plan. Let us conduct another mini-census, knowing what we now all know, who would like to escape? 

Many hands, I see, that’s rewarding. Keep your hands up, I would like to ask one of you with raised hands a question. You, yes, How do you plan on escaping?

Mhmm, running in the night? Guns will shoot you down, light or dark. 

Does anyone else have an answer?

Mhmm. Mhmm. Very well thought-out, although the chances of getting lost in the abandoned factories are high and the chances of running out of resources are higher.

Getting lost is an interesting concept. As I’m sure you remember, I mentioned earlier the lack of need for geographics. Perhaps, if I redact such a claim, and choose to indulge in the once dead art of learning maps, we may be able to look upon this old factory blueprint and be able to enter the facility already knowing which way to go. Of course, looking upon a map without an understanding of maps may result in nothing. White lines on blue paper. Perhaps an education on maps, and resource management, and proper cloaking tactics, may allow for any one of you to walk freely out, should that be your desire. 

And by that account, being aware of the number of guards and their parol routes, for safety reasons, might prove to be just as helpful for your escape. If we were to possibly chart their routes, the time it takes for each guard to patrol, then we might be able to figure out exactly what time they’d be at any given place to a point of certainty. In which case, walking freely out would be a truthful opportunity. If you want to go somewhere, why not know when and where?

How, as well, I suppose is another important question. Those legs of yours seem strong enough to march all day, but can you climb? Can you carry an ill friend? Can you crouch and wade and stretch? It would be a useless life to have escaped, should that be your goal, only to be trapped by a muscle spasm one day out. Gym teachers, though they may have, at one point, encouraged a life of sport and fun, were never given the chance to shine as survivalists. 

Science, more than geography, will help dictate the route, as we know acid rain is something to avoid, and reading clouds, soil, and wind would be essential to living out in the vast. And should someone be lucky enough to find a computer, I never said this before, but the chances of someone else being alive out there was never zero. How could it be? At one point there were 7.8 billion on this planet, and now we are meant to believe 100,000 remain? Life finds a way. Science finds a life. 

I can’t say much about your codes and language. I don’t speak it. Maybe, you could educate me. Maybe you could create a dialect only non Clubhouse members could speak. To form a Non-Clubhouse Clubhouse. 

The sign of a perfect escapist is someone who can escape. How it's done won’t have mattered when they’re out and gone, not to them anyway, they’d be gone already. But wouldn’t it be nice to know how they do it? What steps and precautions they took to escape? And to know, for certainty, that within yourself you possess the knowledge needed to be free? To be able to choose. Freedom or not. 

Although perhaps you are like me, whose freedom would mean regret, would mean leaving behind all of those still imprisoned by mind and chain. Perhaps you have, within you, a noble desire to be not the freed, but the freer. To teach. 

Should that be your goal, and I need not hear an answer now, I will leave you all with a remnant of the former world, a bookmark. On which is a set of clues that will lead you to our school. The doors of which are always open, from 9am to 3pm and not during the summer months or weekends. Teaching is noble and thus requires a lot of break and preparation time.

Won’t you look at the time? I must be getting to my occasionally air-conditioned classroom and you must be getting out into the hot sun to collect drops of water from the surrounding desert in order to survive another dystopian day. Mondays, am I right?