White mars by Brian W. Aldiss & Roger Penrose. Chapter 10, 11

Kathi Skadmorr came over from the science unit with some discs of an old jazz man called Sydney Bechet and some laboratory-distilled alcohol. She was spending the night with her lover, Beau Stephens, and invited me to drink with them.

After some drinks, I asked Beau if he thought I was pretty.

‘In an Oriental way,’ he said.

I told him that was a stupid remark and meant nothing.

‘Of course you’re pretty, darling,’ said Kathi. Suddenly, she jumped up, put her arms round me, and kissed me on the mouth.

It went to my head like the drink. A track then playing was a number called ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’. I had never heard it before. It was good. I began to peel off my Nows and dance. Just for the fun of it. And my new leg looked fine and worked beautifully.

When I was down to my bra and panties it occurred to me not to go further. But the two of them were cheering and looking excited, so off they came. My breasts were so nice and firm – I was proud of them. I flung my clothes at Beau. What did he do? He caught my panties and buried his face in them. Kathi just laughed.

With the track ending, I suddenly felt ashamed. I had shown so much crotch. I ran into the bathroom and hid. Kathi came to soothe me down. I was crying. She sang softly, ‘I don’t know if we’re in a garden, Or in a crowded rendezvous.’ And I felt awful next morning.

I never told anyone about this before.

‘We must take the most tender care,’ Tom said, when the Adminex was discussing education, ‘of our youngsters, so that they do not think of themselves negatively as exiles from earth. Education must mean equipping a child to live in wisdom and contentment – contentment with itself first of all. We need a new word for a new thing, a word that means awareness, understanding…’

‘There’s the Chinese word juewu. It implies awareness, comprehension,’ I suggested.

‘Juewu, juewu…’ He tried it on his tongue. ‘It has something of a jewel about it, whereas education smells of dusty classrooms. I can almost hear children going to their first playschool at the age of three, chirruping jewey-woo jewey-woo…’

The word was adopted by the group.

We then fell to discussing what activities those early chirrupers should engage in.

Sharon Singh was certain that young children most enjoyed music and verse with strong rhymes; rhythm, clapping, she said, was the beginning of counting, counting of mathematics, and mathematics of science.

Mary Fangold remarked that in the discussions in Plato’s Republic some time is spent wondering which metrical feet are best to express meanness or madness or evil, and which ones grace. The speakers conclude that music engenders a love of beauty.

I ventured to say that ‘beauty’ had become a rather suspect, or at least a specialised, word.

Tom agreed that it had accumulated some embarrassments; yet we still understood that it had something to do with rightness and truth. It was hard to define except by parallels; certainly the right music at the right time was a benison. Better even than the art of speaking with grace, was employing a rich vocabulary – which was rarely the mark of an empty head.

And with the music had to go activity, dancing and such like. This was a way in which juewu helped to unite mind and body.

But we agreed that, while good teaching was important, it could be achieved only by good teachers. As yet no method had been established for guaranteeing good teachers, beyond the simple expedient of training and paying well, though not lavishly.

‘But once the system is established,’ Tom said, ‘then our well-taught children will make the best teachers. Patience, love and empathy are more valuable than knowledge.’

The next stage was the regularisation of educational curricula for various ages.

We wanted our first generation of Martian children to understand the unity and interconnectedness of all life on Earth.

We also wished them to understand themselves better than any generations had done before. Phylogeny was a required subject, for only from this could grow knowledge of one’s self.

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