Beehive lessons–NCERT Class 9 — The Fun They Had — Fast track your English

                                                  The Fun They Had

Introduction on the book .. The story we shall read is set in the future, when books and schools as we now know them will perhaps not exist. How will children study then? The diagram below may give you some ideas.

My introduction .. The story describes how the practice of imparting education could undergo unthinkable transformation in the future. The conventional schools, books, teachers, blackboards etc. would become totally obsolete.  The question thus arises: How would then the children receive their education? The diagram in the book throws some light on the education scenario in the future.

Vocabulary building..

New words and phrases used .. Impart, Undergo, Unthinkable, Conventional, Obsolete, Throw some light

Sentences ..

Impart .. In the army, young recruits are imparted training about ways to survive acute hunger. cold, injuries etc.

Undergo .. In the current Israel-Iran war, ordinary civilians are undergoing severe mental stress as enemy bombs fall in the vicinity of their homes.

Or

The accident victim had to undergo an emergency operation to save his life.

Unthinkable .. The humiliation and agony that Mother Sita had to undergo after being abandoned by her husband, Lord Rama, is unthinkable.

Or

The pain of the relatives of the Air India crash victims is clearly unthinkable.

Conventional .. Modern warfare techniques are undergoing a huge change. Now, armies use software engineers and high-speed computers to stave off enemy attacks.

Or

Conventional TB drugs are no longer effective as patients have become drug-resistant.

Obsolete .. Computers and laptops are discarded as e-waste after they outlive their lives and become obsolete.

Or

The 18-year-old girl was asked to go to her friend’s birthday party wearing a traditional saree. The girl vehemently opposed the idea of her mother saying that sarees have become obsolete for modern-day adolescents.

Throw some light .. The police inspector investigating the murder asked the neighbour of the victim to throw some light on the crime.

Or

The recovery of a 15^th century lamp from underground in Andhra Pradesh throws some light on the religious practices of those times.

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The lesson’s initiation to the topic .. In pairs, discuss three things that you like best about your school and three things about your school that you would like to change. Write them down.

Answer .. Positive points.  1. The teachers we have in our school are really unique. They teach their subjects with clarity using very simple language.

2. Our school has a beautiful flower garden that we all maintain under the guidance of our Sanskrit teacher. No other school in our district can boast of such an eye-catching garden.

3. In our school, we hold annual music competitions when budding singers and musicians from among us get a chance to show their talents on stage. Parents and visitor applaud the young students from the core of their hearts.

Changes wanted .. 1. Our school’s football ground lies waste. Because it is so messy, we don’t go there to play. This abandoned ground can be cleaned and spruced up to allow us to play there and even inter-school competitions.

2a. Drinking water availability is a big problem. Water comes to the tap just for two hours a day. Many times, we remain thirsty. Due to the sweltering heat of summer, being deprived of water proves to be very painful. The two-hour supply must be replaced by an eight-hour supply.

3. The school has neighter a canteen, nor does it serve tiffin to us. As a result, we all buy our food from street vendors. This creates stomach upset, besides costing us a lot of money. The school should have a canteen.

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The lesson’s question.. Have you ever read words on a television (or computer) screen? Can you imagine a time when all books will be on computers, and there will be no books printed on paper? Would you like such books better?

Answer .. We very rarely get to see YouTube videos dealing with our lessons. We have heard about e-books, but have never used them because we have no access to computers. We can imagine books appearing in computers, but that will not be good, because looking at computer screens can damage our eyes. Apart from this, we really love our text books and worship them during Saraswati Puja. So, losing our books can devastate our minds. We will not like such computer-based books at all.

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Detailed explanation para by para ..

1. The scene is Margie’s study room and the date is May 17, 2157 — a far distant day in future, Margie has sat down to write her diary. She mentions that Tommy, her younger brother, had stumbled upon an old, frayed printed text book. It wa an unique discovery because printed text book had long been lost in oblivion. The old text book’s features were so surprising. Its contents were printed in static letters and one had read them line by line by moving the eyelid gradually from left to right and from bottom to top. To revise an old lesson, one had to turn back the pages. Such procedure was oceans apart from the way Margie read her text books. She just had to open the device and click on a certain button to access the lesson. From then on,, the reader had to sit still with eyes fixed on a spot on the screen. The letters rolled on graually from  left to right. For going back to an earlier content, just a click was enough. Tommy’s grandfather recalled that his grandfather used to read such ‘printed’ books.

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New words and phrases learned ……… Lost in oblivion, Oceans apart

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2. Tommy is a young boy aged 13, and Margie is an 11-year-oldgirl. For both, the idea of a book printed in papapr appears bizarre. They both wonderwhy books should at all be printed when they are to be thrown to the duxst bin after being read. They feel it’s colossal waste of paper. A compoter can store a million books or more. One can effortlessly retrieve any book as and when needed, and a computer needs a very miniscule space for storage compared to the space needed for library of a million books. The books stored in a computer don’t decay with time. With so many advantages, storing books in a computer appears to be a hugely advantageous option for students, scholars and those who need to refer to books for their professions. Tommy had found the old, yellowing book lying in the attic of his room. The book dealt with ‘School’ as its topic. Tommy’s eyes were fixed on his computer screen as he disclosed these facts to Margie, the 11-yeard-old girl.

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New words and phrases learned ………Bizarre, Colossal, Decay

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3. Margie was appalled to learn that the book was written about ‘school’. She had never been to a school. She felt that the concept of ‘school’ was a old-fashioned, regressive Margie had a robotic Geography teacher who loaded her woth tests after tests, but Margie’s scores kept dipping gradually.  Clearly, she was learning too little of the subject. Her mother was disgusted to know that Margie was turning out to be laggard in the subject. She made her displesure known through her body language. She request the Country Inspector to come.

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New words and phrases learned ……… Appalled, Regressive, Dipping. Laggard

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4. The Country Inspector arrived in no time. He was a round little man who carried a head made out of clumsy-looking mess of wires and electronic devices. Maggie offered an apple, and removed the robotic teacher out of the screen. The Country Inspector was a computer wizard, who replaced the earlier robotic teacher with a new one– a black big teacher. The change of teacher was completed in just about an hour by the Country Inspector. The new teacher showed lessons and asked simple questions. Margie was offered a slot where to post her answers, but she had to use her punch code to insert her answers. Margie had learned this ‘punch code’ skill at the age of eight, but loathed She was averse to using it for writing down her inputs. The new teacher disclosed her scores in no time.

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New words and phrases learned ……… Wizard, Loathed, Averse

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5. The Country Inspector calld in to fix Margie’s ‘low-score’ issue did his reset work of the Geography teacher. He patted Margie on her head to assure her and her mother that the ‘low-score’ issue wouldn’t occur again. He explained to the mother that the problem had arisen because the teaching was going on at too fast a pace. He had slowed it down to realistic level, and Margie would not face the problem again. In this manner. the Country Inspector assuaged the anxiety in the mother’s mind about her daughter’s under-performance. He told the mother not to blame Margie for her past low scores.  He left the spot. Margie, however, was still seething in anger. She had expected that the Country Inspector would replace the teacher with anew one, In a similar incident, Tommy’s History teacher was withdrawn totally from his job. Frustrated that her Geogrzaphy teacher had not been taken off, Margie wondered why people wrote and read books based on school.

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New words and phrases learned ……… Assuage, Seethe,

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6. Tommy explained to Margie that the schools of yore were vasly different from the schools they were studying then, Margie’s mind was still confused. She began reading from the ‘centuries-old’ book Tommy had stumbled upon. She  musedthat the old-fashioned schools were manned by human teachers, who taught the kessons to the students and gave them suitable homework.

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New words and phrases learned ……… Of yore, Stumble upon,

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7. Tommy and Margie got busy with a chat over the efficacy of ‘human’ teachers. Tommy asserted that human teachers are quite efficient and knowledgeablde as her father was. Margie did not reconcile to having a stranger human being inside her home. Tommy was clearly amused at Margie’s ignorance. He explained that the teachers never came to students’ homes. They taught from the classrooms of school buildings that stood at a distance. Tommy further mentioned that the students of a class were more or less of the same age and were taught the same lessons.

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New words and phrases learned ………Reconcile

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8. Margie mentioned that as per her mother, a teacher has to customize his teaching to the mental ability of each student.  Tommy and Margie got into a minor argument as she held on to the book to read it further. Just then, Mrs. Jones came in to ask Margie to attend her computer-school. Tommy, too, hzad to sit down for his school sessions.

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New words and phrases learned ……… Customized

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9. Tommy gor up and walked forward very casually to attend his class. He held the book between his arm and chest. Margie went into her study room where her teacher was already waiting for her. Evey day of the week except the weekends, the teacher appeared, ready to teach exactly at the scheduled time. That day’s subject as announced on the screen was addition of fractions — from Arithmetic. Margie was asked to submit her homework in the proper slot.

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10. Margie submitted her tasks in the prescribed manner. Her mind went back to the old-fashioned physical school where her grandfather’s grandfather had studied. She was lost in thoughts. It was a jovial get-together of students who walked joyfully from their homes to congregate in schools. They sailed in the same boat as far as their study was concerned. They were taught the same thing, so they could clarify each other’s doubts. The teachers were live human beings. Juxst around this time, the teacher was explaing how to add two small fractions in the board o the computer screen. Margie wondered how much the kids would have enjoyed their time in schools.

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New words and phrases learned ……… Jovial, Congregate, Sail in the same boat.

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Thinking about the text …

Activity  ..  Margie’s diary entry is 121 years, 10 months old (Calculated basing on July, 2025)

Q1. How old are Margie and Tommy?  Ans … Tommy is 13 and Margie is 11.

Q2.  What did Margie write in her diary?   Ans .. Margie mentioned that Tommy had found a real book that day. (Indirect   Or  Margie wrote, “Today Tommy found a real book!”  Direct form

Q3.  Had Margie seen a book before?   Ans.. Margie had not seen a book before.

Q4.. What things about the book that she found strange?  Ans.. It was a rare find for Margie. The old, fraying book had printed pages that one had to hold and turn to read its contents. Margie felt that having a printed book in paper was a wateful ideza.

Q5. What do you think a telebook is?  Ans…. A telebook is virtual book that exists only in the internet. It has no physical form. A tebook is a soft copy, whereas an ordinary book is a hard copy.

Q6. Where was Margie’s school?  Did she ever have a classmate?   Ans .. Margie’s school was housed inside her computer as virtual entity. She had no classmate.

Q7.  What subjects did Margie and Tommy learn?   Ans, … Margie learned Geography and Tommy learned basic Arithmetics.

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Answer the following with reference to the story.

1. “I wouldn’t throw it away.”

a. Tommy said these words.

b. The word ‘it’ refers to the new-found book.

c. It is being compared with the robotic teacher that teaches the xstudents through the computer-assisted TV screen.

2. Sufre, they had a teacher, but it was not a regular teacher. It was a man.

a. The word they refers to the students of those days, long long back in histry.

b. The word regular means a AI-generated teacher who wouldn’t be available 24×7 by pressing a key on the computer. A regular                              teacher could be late, or be on leave.

c. The contrast is between a living human being who teaches in person and a robotic teacher who appears and disappears just by                           pressing key. Nevetheless, the latter teaches in the samr way as the former.

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III. Answer each of these questions in a short paragraph (about 30 words).
1. What kind of teachers did Margie and Tommy have?

The teachers who taught Tommy and Margie were not humans. They were robots efficiently programmed to conduct themselves as dutiful and efficient teachers. They obeyed the computer commands of the students.

2. Why did Margie’s mother send for the County Inspector?

Margie’s mother felt that her daughter’s underperformance in Geography had something to do with the pedagogy of the ‘virtua’ teacher. She wanted to try out an alternate teacher through the intervention of the ‘Country Inspector’.

3. What did he do?

The Country Inspector did some analysis to know what had caused the incompatibility of the teacher with his young student. After being able to pinpoint the discrepancy, he re-programmed the teacher to met Margie’s learning pace.

4. Why was Margie doing badly in geography? What did the County Inspector do to help her?

The Country Inspector discovered that the teacher was loading too many tasks on Margie and was asking her to rush through the answering process. The Country Inspector gave some commands to the software to slow down the coaching and testing process.

5. What had once happened to Tommy’s teacher?

Answer .. On one occasion, the teacher had been taken off his duty for a month because the history section had been blanked out inadvertently.

6. Did Margie have regular days and hours for school? If so, why?

Margie had her school sessions on weekdays. Saturday and Sundays were off. The sessions started and ended according to pre-determined timings. It was felt that sitting down to study at fixed times aided the learning process.

7. How does Tommy describe the old kind of school?

Tommy was both surprised and amused to think about the old type of schools that had large well-built buildings, teachers and classrooms where teachers and students had direct and real interaction with each other. Tommy didn’t appreciate this system much.

8. How does he describe the old kind of teachers?

Tommy was amusecd to think that real human beings were deployed to teach students in physical ckass rooms. He fet such teachers were relatively inefficient and wasteful.

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Answer each of these questions in two or three paragraphs (100 –150 words).

1. What are the main features of the mechanical teachers and the schoolrooms that Margie and Tommy have in the story?

Answer … Margie and Tommy have no real human teachers that our present day society holds with high regard. What they have is a sophisticated computer programme that generates a human-looking mechanical character. The teacher appears instantly on the TV screen at the pre-detrrmined time and conducts its teaching process as per a pre-determined content and pace. After the lexssons are taught, it conducts a series of tests to asses how well the student has assimilated the imparted knowledge. Overall, it’s completely computer-based teaching process that has no human teachers, no physical infrastructure and no aura of respectibility around it.

2. Why did Margie hate school? Why did she think the old kind of school must have been fun?

Answer .. Margie’s TVscreen-bsased school was confined to a room where coaching proceeded as per a pre-determined pace. The teacher, a mechanical device looking similar to a human being, never bothered to ascertain if the student was able to cope with its pace of coaching. It loaded Margie with a number of tests. Quite understandably, Margie scored well below the satisfactory level. This miffed Margie.

Margie could imagine that the old schools were vastly different from her TV screen schools. The old schools brought friends together. They interacted with one another in a lively manner. Th e human teacher graced the classrooms bringing with them a personal charm. Naturally, for Magie, the old schools were great fun.

3. Do you agree with Margie that schools today are more fun than the school in the story? Give reasons for your answer.

Answer .. Margie is very much right in admiring the present day school system. The school buildings, the play grounds, the canteen aand the library add charm to the schools. Mixing with friends leaves an enduring emotional bond with the,. The teachers are revered for their personal involvement in the knowledge imparting process. Students remember them lovingly long after leaving the schools. On the contrary, the computer-aided TV screen classrooms are devoid of human charm. They are lifeless and empathy-less. The TV screen classrooms confine the young minds to their rooms. They don’t commute and so, don’t expose themselves to the elements of nature. The education process ends up as an ordeal, rather than a lively routine.

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Thinking about Language
I. Adverbs

1. Find the sentences in the lesson which have the adverbs given in the box
below.
awfully sorrowfully completely loftily
carefully differently quickly nonchalantly

2. Now use these adverbs to fill in the blanks in the sentences below.
(i) The report must be read so that performance can be
improved quickly.
(ii) At the interview, Sameer answered our questions ,
shrugging his shoulders loftily.
(iii) We all behave when we are tired or hungry awfully.
(iv) The teacher shook her head when Ravi lied to her sorrowfully.
(v) I forgot about it completely.
(vi) When I complimented Revathi on her success, she just smiled
and turned away nonchalantly.
(vii) The President of the Company is busy and will not
be able to meet you.
(viii) I finished my work so that I could go out to play.

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