Learning and Education
"The Fun They Had" centers on an eleven-year-old girl's experience of her education. Throughout the text, different pedagogical approaches surface: centuries ago, for example, children learned together in schoolhouses staffed by human teachers. In contrast, Margie's education is solitary. Her mother decides the schedule, but the lessons are given by a mechanical teacher—a robot whose screen flashes with lessons, with a slot for entering homework and tests. Margie and the robot undertake her education every weekday, alone except for each other in a room in Margie's home. Thus it seems that Margie dislikes school, not because of the actual act of learning, but because of the increasing mechanization of her education. As a result of this solitary learning, she craves more social interaction. Margie tries to push off school to continue spending time with Tommy, until her mother puts her foot down. When Tommy heads back to his own house, Margie asks pleadingly if she can continue spending time with him after school.
Technology and Progress
Margie and Tommy live in a world governed by the use of technology. Books are no longer printed on paper. School lessons are taught by a mechanical teacher—a robot—who personalizes the lessons to each student's level. Children enter their homework and tests in a punch code to be submitted into the robot's slot. All of this technology is a fact of life in Tommy and Margie's world. Ostensibly these innovations were made in the pursuit of progress. But what progress has really been achieved? Is Margie's life any better for the use of all this technology? Margie's dislike of her education, and her longing for low-tech schools of the past, suggest a critique of the pursuit of scientific advancement without consideration of social and communal life. Technology has made Margie's life lonelier, not better.
History and Memory
When Margie and Tommy find the book in Tommy's attic, they know it is very old because of the stories their grandparents' generation had passed down to them. The memory of the old way of life, before teachers became robots and books became telebooks, is still alive for Margie and Tommy—even if far from their current reality. For Margie, knowledge of and relationship to this historical past causes longing, and a desire to return to those days. In this way, Asimov emphasizes the role of nostalgia, the romanticization of the past, and the importance of history.
