Paul Herbert

The English Lesson

Set ten years in the future, Virgil, an English Language Steward (not teacher) works in a school which achieves 100 hundred per cent success rate. Dressed in a red hooded outfit which suggests his low rank, Virgil has been employed to assist the efficient auto-prof: a computerised English instructor. The machine unleashes utilitarian English classes pitched way below its students' levels in order to guarantee passes and maintain the school's reputation. Virgil becomes taken by a student, Marie, who somehow manages to stir him from the drudgery of his apathetic classroom role. He fails one of the student's test in his class and is ordered by his superiors to amend the score if he wishes to keep his position, taking into account the dwindling jobs market. He is bullied, harassed and intimated into complying with a system that is decayed, corrupted and abusive towards its employees.