Article | Published in The TES on 01 June 2007 | By: Catherine Paver, writing as Emily Shark. Cartoon by Grizelda
"Is there hope for the future? You have 45 minutes to answer this question."
Blimey. What gorgeously twisted minds these examiners have. Here's carefree youth living for today.
Let's
grind their sunny faces into the hopelessness of existence, while implying
that it is up to them to find a solution.
This was a cracker of a past paper to give Year 10
for their mocks. Here you go, kids: you've got less than an hour on
the outlook for mankind. Hmm. I don't know if I could fill 45 minutes
with this. "Is there any hope for the future?" "Er, no. Sorry, there
isn't."
I'm so tired. I wish I'd marked these at half-term instead of buying
geraniums that I'm now too exhausted to plant. Oh well. I'm determined
to mark three of these ink-stained prophecies before lunch. Should be
possible: I have a comfy spot near the staffroom windows with nothing
to distract me.
Hello, what's this? An ant has just walked across the question. He has
stopped on the word "you", which is curious...Shark! Get on with it.
You can watch ants at the weekend. Yes, but not this ant. Look at that
little body, shiny with intent, skimming over sunlit paper and biscuit
crumbs. He doesn't know how easily he could be squashed. That's why
he's so confident. He has no idea how catastrophic a wrong turning could
be.
If he sticks with me, he'll be fine. If he turns left, he'll get lost in Marian Frond's pencil case. If he turns right, he'll be flattened under the jobs pages of The TES. Being an ant, he knows none of this. He's pure purpose, untainted by doubt. "Do ants have a future?" is not a question that troubles him. Ants have no self-defining choices. They can only grow up to be ants, so the notion of a future is pointless to them.
All right, let's see what Slicer McFadden has to
say. "In the future, everyone will have mobile phones and this will
make disasters easier. But people won't mug each other for their mobiles
because they'll all have them." Cheery and terrifying in equal measure.
What does Shireen Tinker think? "This is our last chance. It is like
an exam I think we will proberly fail. But then another kind of life
creature will happen, like the ones that walked out of the sea before
the dinosaurs. So there is hope, but not for us." Gulp.
Shelley Ramsden, you usually cheer me up. "Everything that is alive
has a future. We just don't know what." Thank you, Shelley. "I worry
about bombs, but we don't know the future so we might as well hope and
not waste life fearing."
Well, these spiky young prophets probably have a future. And look, so
does the ant. Somehow, he's managed to find the window.
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