Past Times at Ridgemont High

“As the teacher started to count down, the students uncrossed their arms and bowed their heads, completing the exercise in a flash. ‘Three. Two. One,’ the teacher said. Pens across the room went down and all eyes shot back to the teacher. Under a policy called ‘Slant’ (Sit up, Lean forward, Ask and answer questions, Nod your head and Track the speaker), the students, aged 11 and 12, were barred from looking away. When a digital bell beeped (traditional clocks are ‘not precise enough, the principal said) the students walked quickly and silently to the cafeteria in a single line. There they yelled a poem — ‘Ozymandias,’ by Percy Bysshe Shelley — in unison, then ate for 13 minutes as they discussed that day’s mandatory lunch topic: how to survive a superintelligent killer snail.” NYT (Gift Article): ‘You Can Hear a Pin Drop’: The Rise of Super Strict Schools in England. (Is this a roundabout method of competing with robots?)