[IC] [SR4] What I want to do when I grow up, High School builds character Options

[Koekepan]

The start of the fall quarter in 2072 is dreary in Tacoma. It isn't really cold yet, but the weather struggles to reach 20C in the afternoons, and drops below 10C at night. Stretches of thin, watery sunlight alternate with drifting drizzle which obscures the Olympics from view and turns Puget Sound leaden.

Still, all these things happen outside the school. The school building is a solidly constructed, institutional building. Its purpose has shifted in some ways over the years. Lessons are now delivered in preprogrammed units through VR. In theory this means that all learners can follow their own pace to tackle anything which catches their fancy. In practice, many kids have learned to game the system so that they don't have to work very hard, just passing the minimum number of easy courses so as to avoid remedial attention. The ones who excel are often scouted by the corps and offered entry into the corporate schools with promises of great jobs to follow. This isn't universal - some of the smarter kids don't get offers. Usually this can be traced back to trouble with authority or other behavioural problems, or having green skin.

The kids themselves refer to the school as babysitting by taxpayer, because so do many other people, and it does seem to fit the way they are shuttled in, plugged in, unplugged and shuttled out with occasional breaks for lunch, bathroom breaks and PE because some people still care about high school athletics for some reason.