Since there were ways of preventing conception, her prime concern could be taken care of. Clisser thought the age difference was immaterial.
And Jemmy desperately needed the balance that a fully rounded life experience would give him.
Clisser and Jemmy provided support for Bethany to ascend the un railed steps to the stage and then, with a swirl of the long skirts that covered the built-up shoe she wore, she settled herself in her chair. She placed her flute case and the recorders where she wanted them, and the little reed flute in the music stand. Not that this group of musicians required printed sheets to read from, but the other groups did.
Danja lifted her fiddle to her chin, bow poised, and looked at Jemmy who hummed an A with his perfect pitch for her to tune her strings. Sheledon softly strummed his guitar to check its tuning and Lozell ran an arpeggio on his standing harp. The continent’s one remaining piano - his preferred instrument - was undergoing repairs to the hammers: they had not yet managed to reproduce quite the same sort of felt that had been used originally.
Clisser nodded at Jemmy, who did a roll on his hand drum to attract attention and then, on Clisser’s downbeat, they began their set.
It was several days before Clisser had a chance to discuss the project with Jemmy.
“I’ve wondered why we didn’t use the balladic medium to teach history,” Jemmy replied.
“It isn’t history we’ll be setting to music.”
“Oh yes, it is,” Jemmy had contradicted him in the flat and tactless way he had. It had taken Clisser time to get used to it.
“Well, it will be when the next generation gets it - and the next one after that.”
“That’s a point, of course.”
Jemmy hummed something, but broke off and sprang across to the table where he grabbed a sheet of paper, turning it to the unused side.
He slashed five lines across it, added a clef and immediately began to set notes down. Clisser was fascinated.
“Oh,” Jemmy said offhandedly as his fingers flew up and down the lines, “I’ve had this tune bugging me for months now. It’s almost a relief to put it down on paper now that I’ve a use for it.”
He marked off another measure, the pen hovering above the paper only briefly before he was off again. “It can be a show piece anyhow. Start off with a soprano - boy, of course, setting the scene. Then the tenors come in - they’ll be the dragon riders of course, and the baritones Lord Holders, with a few basses to be the Professionals… each describing his duty to the… then a final chorus, s.a.t.b., a reprise of the first verse, all Pern confirming what they owe the dragons. Yes, that’ll do nicely for one.”
Clisser knew when he wasn’t needed and left the room, smiling to himself. Now, if Bethany was right and this term’s students could perform the research satisfactorily, he could make good on his blithe promise to the Council. He did hope that the computers would last long enough for a comprehensive search. They had got so erratic lately that their performance was suspect at most times. Some material was definitely scrambled and lost among files. And no-one knew how to solve the problem of replacement parts. Of course, the pcs were so old and decrepit, it was truly a wonder that they had lasted as long as they had. Was there any point these days in holding a course on computer electronics?
Which thought reminded him that he had interviews with two sets of parents who were insisting that their offspring be put in the computer course since that was the most prestigious of those offered. And the one involving the least work, since there were so few computers left.
Where would they practice the skills they learned? Clisser wondered.
Furthermore, neither of the two students concerned had the aptitude to work with mechanical objects; they just thought it was what they wanted. There were always a few cases like that in an academic year.
“And one set of Holder parents who did not like their daughter associating with lesser breeds without the law” as Sheledon put it.
“As if there was room, or facilities, for more than one teachers’ school. Or the private tutors some Holders felt should be supplied them because of their positions. Ha! As it was, the peripatetic teachers were going all year long, trying to cover the basics with children in the far-flung settlements.
Well, maybe one day they could site a second campus - was that the word? - on the eastern coast. Of course, with Threadfall coming, he’d have to revise all the schedules as well as instruct his travelers on how to avoid getting killed by the stuff. He had seen footage - when the projector still worked - of actual Threadfall. He shuddered.
Accustomed as he had been all his life to the prospect of the menace, he still didn’t like the inevitability. The reality was nearly on them.
The Weyrleaders could waffle on about how well prepared Hold and Weyr were, with dragon strength at max, and ground crews and equipment organized, but did anyone really know what it would be like? He swore under his breath as he made his way to the rooms that still needed to be completed to receive occupants in five days. He’d work on the syllabus on his lunch break.
A sudden thought struck him so that he halted, foot poised briefly above the next step. What they really needed was a totally new approach to education on Pern!
What was the point of teaching students subjects now rendered useless here on Pern? Like computer programming and electronic maintenance? What good did it do the Pernese boys and girls to know the old geographic and political subdivisions of Terra? Useless information. They’d never go there! Such matters did not impinge on their daily lives. What was needed was a complete revision of learning priorities, suitable to those who were firmly and irrevocably based on this planet. Why did anyone NOW need to know the underlying causes of the Nathi Space War?
No-one here was going to get in space - even the dragons were limited to distance which they could travel before they were in oxygen debt.
Why not study the spatial maps of Pern and forget those of Earth and its colonies? Study the Charter and its provisions as applicable to the Pernese citizenry, rather than prehistoric governments and societies? Well, some of the more relevant facts could be covered in the course to show how the current governmental system, such as it was, had been developed. But there was so much trivia - no wonder his teachers couldn’t get through the lessons. Small wonder the students got bored.
So little of what they were presently required to learn had any relevance to the life they lived and the planet they inhabited.
History should really begin with Landing on Pern well, some nodding acquaintance with the emergence of homo sapiens, but why deal with the aliens which Earth’s exploratory branch had discovered when there was little chance of them arriving in the Rukbat system?
And further, Clisser decided, taken up with the notion, we should encourage specialized training - raising agriculture and veterinary care to the prestige of computer sciences. Breeding to Pernese conditions and coping with Pernese parasites was far more important than knowing what had once bothered animals back on Earth. Teach the miners and metal workers where the spatial maps showed deposits of ores and what they were good for; teach not the history of art - especially since many of the slides of Masterpieces had now deteriorated to muddy blurs - but how to use Pernese pigments, materials, design and tailoring; teach the Great Currents, oceanography, fish-conservation, seamanship, naval engineering and meteorology to those who fished the waters… As to that, why not separate the various disciplines so that each student would learn what he needed to know, not a lot of basically useless facts, figures and theories?