"Some events occur without us noticing, so that is why we measure as much as we can." A teacher's voice emantated into the cheaply constructed classroom. He had an old, kind face. Grey hair was cut neatly. The silence between his words and breath abandoned by a rattling, under specced air conditioning unit. It was not the only sound.
It sounded like rain. It was not. The sun blazed down on the structure, its heat making the expansion of metal framework of the place sound like a gentle rain. The teacher was older than the building. The gathered children were older than the building.
The only thing that was old was the lesson. The next sound was a child's voice. They were asking a question repeated by humanity for longer than the gathered collective had been conscious. An inquisitive, perhaps not that bright child, with a high pitched voice:
""So if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it makena sound?"
His teacher smiled."It depends on who you ask. It depends on the reasons the question is asked." From metrology to causality, this would be the last group he'd teach. Ten more years and he could rest. Teachers followed their children up through the years, instead of having a different one each time the Earth journeyed around the nearest star.
The teacher continued explaining, "However, the event occuring is the result of what happened before, and that event triggers subsequent events."
"Does this happen everywhere?" Asked another child, her voice soft, with another expanding her question.
"And in every moment?"
"Yes."
"Try to think of some examples where we might not notice things that are changing, even though we are in a place with the change."
He pressed against his open palm, and the screen behind him went black. It returned to white, having replaced the content of the previously scrawled lesson. The surfaces of the desks did the same.
He sat behind his own desk, and his question emerged onto all the desk screens simultaneously, for the room had been listening all along. A timer began, giving the children a few minutes to come up with ideas and enter them into the system.
He watched the ideas emerge in a number of different colours. Each one was scored in real time on a number of metrics, speed of entry, consistency of keystroke, word length, sentence length, spelling, and if he so wanted, he could observe any improvement or deviation from past student behaviour. Not a lot could be done to improve these things moment to moment, but ensuring the continued development of reasoning and competency in expression was the most important thing.
The teacher read over the entries the children were working on.
"The exchange of oxygen from air in the lung. "
"Grass growing."
"The waves at the beach taking away a liitle of the sand. "
"increased electrical resistance leading to a fire"
"Hair growing"
"Water evaporating"
"Continental drift"
The list grew. He added his own entry. "Children learning".
The classroom chimed quietly, signalling that time for this exercise was ending. The teacher picked up a book, extracted the carboard bookmark, turned the pages until he arrived at the desired text. He read a passage about a seedling that grew to envelop a mesh fence over dozens of years. Full of metaphor to help show the slow passage of time, and full of intricate, cutting detail.
It was akin to a bedtime story for the children a reminder of both persistence and frailty, and when he was done, he announced that it was nap time.
