The Fun They Had

• Punch Card


  A card with holes punched in it to store data or instructions for a computer
• Symbols


  • Tommy's Book
• The story is set in the future, in a world where e-books ("telebooks," in the world of the story) have completely replaced print media
• Margie hates her mechanical teacher


  The teacher is impersonal and unfriendly, and the work is repetitive and taxing
• The County Inspector was able to fix Margie's mechanical teacher, showing that people are still an essential part of the computer-driven world
• Margie was disappointed when the County Inspector fixed her teacher


  She had hoped he would take the teacher away altogether
• Margie has no conception of how schooling might have been different in the past, as the mechanization of learning has made traditional classroom learning obsolete
• Margie is baffled by the idea of a human teacher, as she has grown up in a world where machines can provide virtually unlimited information
• Margie finds it confusing that students in the old days learned the same things if they were the same age, as her mother always tells her that "a teacher has to be adjusted to fit the mind of each boy and girl it teaches, and that each kid has to be taught differently"
• Margie doesn't believe she herself could ever have enough knowledge or wisdom to teach someone else better than a computer could
• The mechanized education system in the children's world has not only robbed them of fun, but of their full potential to collaborate with others and develop intellectually
• Students in the old days learned the same things if they were the same age
• Margie's mother always tells her that "a teacher has to be adjusted to fit the mind of each boy and girl it teaches, and that each kid has to be taught differently"
• Margie finds it difficult to imagine the possibility of going to school with other children but is nevertheless fascinated by the idea
• Margie and Tommy go their separate ways to go to school, further highlighting how this mechanized method of schooling isolates children from one another
• The mechanical teacher is already waiting for Margie - Margie has school at the same time every day, apart from Saturday and Sunday, because Mrs. Jones believes that "little girls [learn] better if they [learn] at regular hours"
• The mechanical teacher can deliver lessons at any time of day for their particular student, again showing how schooling has become more individualized and distinct from the archaic method of classroom teaching
• Margie longs for the ancient schools where the teachers were real people and all students learned the same thing and helped each other with their homework
• Margie is too busy "thinking about how the kids must have loved it in the old days. She [is] thinking about the fun they had"
• For Asimov's audience, children in the 1950s, it would likely seem laughable to call their schooling "fun"
• "The Fun They Had" shows the dark consequences of a futuristic world that has forgone books and traditional group learning for a more mechanized and individualized system
• Margie's longing for the "olden days" of the 20th century encourages young readers to view their own education with gratitude, since Asimov's alternative proves to be isolating and unfulfilling