Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron by Fforde Jasper

Author:Fforde, Jasper [Fforde, Jasper]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Humour, Mystery, Adult
ISBN: 9781101159651
Goodreads: 7180247
Publisher: Penguin Group
Published: 2009-12-29T08:00:00+00:00

School, Poetry, Co-op

2.1.01.05.002: All children are to attend school until the age of sixteen or until they have learned everything, whichever be the sooner.

The school was situated at the back of the village, two streets behind the town hall and opposite the firehouse. Due to the architectural infallibility of the Rules regarding school design, no better building could or would be thought of, so every school in the Collective was identical. I immediately knew my way around, and the place had an eerie familiarity about it.

I paused in the main hall next to the bronze bust of Munsell and read the school’s oft-quoted mission statement: “Every pupil in the Collective will leave school with above-average abilities.” It wasn’t until I had studied advanced sums that I realized this could not be possible, since by definition not everyone could be of above-average ability.

“It’s a historical average fixed soon after the Something That Happened,” my mentor, Greg Scarlet, had explained when I dared broach the subject. “How else would you be able to compare one year with another? Besides, an average pegged to a time when education was considerably worse than it is now ensures that no pupil is ever stigmatized by failure.”

This was true, and since one’s career path was never decided by ability or intellect, it didn’t much matter anyway. Lessons were generally restricted to reading, writing, French, music, geography, sums, cooking and Rule-followment, which meant sitting in a circle and agreeing on how important the Rules were. Most pupils referred to the subject as “nodding.”

I made my way to the head teacher’s office and tapped nervously on the door.

“Glad you could make it,” she said as soon as I had explained who I was and what I was doing there. She introduced herself as Miss Enid Bluebird. She was a slight woman who was dressed in shabby tweeds and carried the benign expression of the inwardly harassed. This was not surprising, as her office was knee-high in stacks of dusty and much-faded examination papers.

“I’ve managed to bring the backlog down to a mere sixty-eight years,” she announced with some small sense of achievement. “I hope to be able to start marking the papers of pupils who are still alive by the end of the decade.”

“A very worthy aim,” I replied, thinking carefully about how I could apply queuing theory in this instance. “Excuse the impertinence, but wouldn’t it be better to reverse the queuing order so that the oldest papers were last marked? It would allow pupils to know their results sooner, and as far as I can see, would not be against the Rules, since queue direction is not specified.”

She stared at me oddly, then smiled kindly after having given the matter no thought at all.

“A fine idea, but since everyone is above average, improvement to the system is really not that important.”

“Then why mark them?” I asked, emboldened by the rejection of my suggestion.

“So we can make sure the education system is working, of course,” she replied as though I were simple.

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