What's the Name of That Book??? discussion

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SOLVED: Adult Fiction > SOLVED. USA has been taken over by ?USSR, book set in primary school where new teacher is teaching the children new beliefs

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message 1: by Sarah (last edited May 06, 2019 11:01AM) (new)

Sarah (drsarah) | 176 comments This book was also made into a film, so maybe someone will recognise it from there even if they haven't read the book. Quite a short one. I read it in my childhood... would have been '80s at the latest, but could well come from earlier.

The premise of the book is that the US has been taken over by another country (which as I recall wasn't named, but is heavily implied to be the USSR) who are trying to turn the children to their ways of thinking. The book is a scene in a primary school which shows the teacher from the new country coming in and starting to instill the new country's beliefs in the children. It starts and ends by stating the time, to indicate that this is all taking place over a very short space of time; I think it was a half-hour.

Starts with the old teacher looking nervously out at her class; she knows the new teacher is about to arrive and take over, and she doesn't know what will happen to the children. New teacher arrives, old teacher is ushered out to an unknown but vaguely-implied-to-be-ominous fate. New teacher sees the children are scared and rapidly wins them over by singing cheerfully to them. One of the children is still suspicious as he knows his father's been taken away by the new regime.

The children start saying the pledge of allegiance and she stops them and asks what 'pledge' and 'allegiance' mean, challenging them to think about the meaning of what they're saying. They agree it doesn't make much sense to promise allegiance to a flag. She suggests that, as the flag is so special, it should be cut up to share out between them (Propaganda!!); once they've done that, the children vote to throw the flagpole out of the window, which of course they think is great fun.

She then steers them towards praying for candy. Children keep their eyes closed while praying, so she's able to sneak round and put little parcels of candy on each desk for them to see when their eyes are opened. However, the suspicious child keeps his eyes open a crack and sees what she's doing. Just as children are all 'Wow, that was amazing, I'm going to pray for a pony next' he shouts out that the teacher did it. Teacher tells them delightedly that he's absolutely right, she did it, now they know that God can't give them anything, only another person can.

There's a bit of a question-and-answer session in which they get to know the new teacher. The suspicious child eventually blurts out his anger at having his father taken away, and she reassures him that he was only taken away to sort out some 'bad thoughts'. All children now completely won over.

Ends with the teacher thinking about how she's trained for this, she knows she's going to teach them well so they grow up to be good citizens, we have the 'from each according to his abilities' line, and it ends with her looking at the clock and seeing the time again.

(The tone of the whole thing is meant to be 'Look how quickly our children's minds can be won over! Oh noes!' To me it always seemed more like a description of a sensible way to treat children.)


message 2: by Sarah (last edited May 06, 2019 12:48PM) (new)


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