Week 13 Theme 2

Thought

Sent by Gray Peters (local age 45) on December 25, 2510, UTC

Received by Jacqueline Andrews (local age 44) on May 20, 2515, UTC

Dear Jackie,

I remember our weekly dinners, talking about how my teaching job on the ship might go and what the differences might be. As I’ve told you many times, it has been tough, and I have never been so humbled by the ideological power a teacher wields.

Can you imagine teaching physics in a world without gravity? Where relativistic time dilation is a fact of life instead of an arcane, difficult to observe phenomenon? Where zero acceleration in the isolated chambers is recreational? Where gravity is a remote force that acts amongst the stars and rocks, and relativity is the ship you live in? Where “down” is dictated by the rotation of the colony dome and where north, south, east, and west are not magnetic?

Can you imagine teaching math and history in a world without money? Have you tried to explain our Great Depressions to a population that doesn’t associate greed with cash? Have you tried to explain the World Wars to children with no conception of land or water?

These children grew up appreciating the heavens, the stars and constellations, but these children have never seen a sunrise over the Alps, or the crunch of freshly mowed grass. These children have never swum in a waterfall. Nor have they stood in a plaza to watch street performers. They haven’t skipped rocks over a brook, or sat under the afternoon sun reeling in a fishing rod.

They haven’t seen the sun. They have never seen a burning star from the earth’s distance – out here, there is only empty space. How, then, can we teach them in our own image, or will we create a generation of people technologically advanced, yet philosophically lacking both the problems and the sophistication that we, humanity, have come to value so much? Such is the plight of a teacher.

Love,

Gray