"Robert F. Young - Thirty Days Had September" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

weakening the economy, precipitating a depression, and making the building of new
schools more impracticable than it had been in the first place.
When you came right down to it, you had to take your hat off to the cereal
companies. In introducing teleteachers and teleducation, they had saved the day.
One teacher standing in one room, with a blackboard on one side of her and a movie
screen on the other, could hold classes for fifty million pupils, and if any of those
pupils didn't like the way she taught, all he had to do was switch channels to one of
the other teleducational programs sponsored by one of the other cereal companies.
(It was up to each pupil's parents, of course, to see that he didn't skip classes, or
tune in on the next grade before he passed the previous grade's boxtop tests.)
But the best part of the whole ingenious system was the happy fact that the cereal
companies paid for everything, thereby absolving the taxpayer of one of his most
onerous obligations and leaving his pocketbook more amenable to sales tax, gas tax,
tolls, and car payments. And all the cereal companies asked in return for their fine
public service was that the pupils—and preferably the parents, too—eat their cereal.
So the paradox wasn't a paradox after all. A schoolteacher was an anathema
because she symbolized expense; a teleteacher was a respected public servant
because she symbolized the large economy-size package. But the difference, Danby
knew, went much deeper.
While schoolteacher-hatred was partly atavistic, it was largely the result of the
propaganda campaign the cereal companies had launched when first putting their
idea into action. They were responsible for the widespread myth that android
schoolteachers hit their pupils, and they still revived that myth occasionally just in
case there was anybody left who still doubted it.
The trouble was, most people were teleducated and therefore didn't know the
truth. Danby was an exception. He'd been born in a small town, the mountainous
location of which had made TV reception impossible, and before his family migrated
to the city he'd attended realschool. So he knew that schoolteachers didn't hit their
pupils.
Unless Androids, Inc. had distributed one or two deficient models by mistake.
And that wasn't likely. Androids, Inc. was a pretty efficient corporation. Look at
what excellent service station attendants they made. Look at what fine stenographers,
waitresses, and maids they put on the market.
Of course, neither the average man starting out in business nor the average
householder could afford them. But—Danby's thoughts did an intricate hop, skip,
and a jump—wasn't that all the more reason why Laura should be satisfied with a
makeshift maid?
But she wasn't satisfied. All he had to do was take one look at her face when he
came home that night, and he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that she wasn't
satisfied.
He had never seen her cheeks so pinched, her lips so thin. "Where's Miss Jones?"
he asked.
"She's in her case," Laura said. "And tomorrow morning you're going to take her
back to whoever you bought her from and get our forty-nine ninety-five refunded!"
"She's not going to hit me again!" Billy said from his Indian squat in front of the
TV screen.
Danby whitened. "Did she hit him?"
"Well, not exactly," Laura said.
"Either she did or she didn't," Danby said.
"Tell him what she said about my TV-teacher!" Billy shouted.