Captain Obvious

and his sidekick Clarification

Once upon a time there was a superhero called Captain Obvious. He roamed the land with his sidekick Clarification, seeking out injustice and making the world a better place.

One day, Captain Obvious decided to go to school.

"Why would you want to do that?" Clarification asked.

"Because I've heard that school is a bit shit for lots of children."

"That's fucked up," said Clarification, "can I come too?"

"Sure you can," said Captain Obvious.

So off they went.

When they arrived, they put on their superhero cloaks of invisibility 'cause they didn't want people to think they were there for any dodgy reason, and went on in.

As they entered, they passed the office with the office lady, they saw the principal's office with some dude sitting behind a big desk, they saw the staff room with several passive aggressive signs asking people to tidy their own mess, then the classrooms, and beyond them were the playing fields with soccer posts at one end and rugby at the other.

"Nothing much changes, aye?" said Captain Obvious

"Doesn't look like it," said Clarification.

They peered through the window of one classroom and saw desks in straight rows. A sticker chart on the wall. A teacher standing in front of a white board. The children were dressed the same with boys in shorts and girls in skirts. They all had the same books. The same pens The same look on their faces. Captain obvious had heard that some people were worried about robots taking over teachers' jobs, but it looked like this teacher was teaching robots.

"Just to clarify," said Clarification, "they are children?"

"Yes," said Captain Obvious, "they are."

Just then Captain Obvious and Clarification saw one of the children start to wiggle.

"Sit still and do your maths," the teacher said. And the ghostly echos of generations gone lamenting their hatred of maths wafted past Captain Obvious and Clarification and they nodded with understanding. It was obvious and hardly needed clarifying.

One of the robot children put up their hand.

"Yes?" said the teacher.

"I've finished," said the robot, er, the child.

"You may read silently."

"Can I draw?" she inquired.

"I don't know, can you?" said the teacher, and then continued with, "no, you may not draw, it's a waste of time. Alternatively, I can give you more equations."

With that, Captain Obvious and Clarification saw the artistic spirit of the girl wilt within her even as she sat up straight in front of her completed maths. She took out a book and imagined the illustrations she could draw while she appeared to be reading, like a good girl. With her imagination drawing, her artistic spirit reanimated somewhat while hiding behind the book.

"Art is dying, that's depressing," said Captain Obvious.

"Just to clarify," said Clarification, "not ALL schools are like this and there are some teachers responding to the needs of real children."

"Yes, Clarification, you are right about that. But yanno, saying that is a bit like being in the 'All Lives Matter' brigade."

"Can you clarify that for me?" said Clarification.

"Yes. Just because some people of a certain group are not oppressed does not mean we can homogenise the whole group and say everything is okay. And it's not saying that allies are not doing an incredible job. But, while there are still oppressed people, there is work to be done," said Captain Obvious.

"But these are children," said Clarification.

"Children are people," said Captain Obvious.

"Just to clarify, children are people and should not be oppressed by punitive measures such as star chats and uniforms and the privileging of literacy and maths?"

"Gosh," said Captain Obvious, "YES!"

Clarification looked thoughtful and started to wiggle around.

"I need to move," Clarification declared, "I have thoughts." And with that he took himself to the field and went for a jog. Captain obvious took out his visual diary and started to make some notes about what they had seen. Several pages later, Clarification ran back up to him…

"I've got it!" they both pronounced together, and then dissolved in a fit of laughter. It was lucky that their superhero cloaks of invisibility included mute for anyone not also wearing a superhero cloak, otherwise the teacher would have been alerted to the strangers in the playground and who knows what would have happened then. It's possible that the Robot Children…never mind, that's another story. Captain Obvious was obviously excited and Clarification had much to clarify about his ideas.

"Shall we take this back to my Clarification Cave then?" said Clarification.

"I might need my Obelisk of Obvious," said Captain Obvious.

"To clarify, we could both thrash out our ideas and then meet back together at that little organic co-op for some fair-trade coconut milk lattes. Say 2pm?"

"Brilliant idea, Clarification," said Captain Obvious.

And off they went. Captain Obvious to his Obelisk of Obvious where he used AI tech to create an immersive VR experience - obviously it was just a wire frame with grey boxes as even the best developers didn't go full release on the first iteration. Clarification went to his Clarification Cave and started with cave drawings (obviously) which he then digitized and rendered into a visual display adding music for further effect. At 2pm on the dot, they met at the organic co-op for fair-trade coconut milk lattes and show and tell.

"Do you want to go first?" asked Captain Obvious.

"Why don't we just swap?" suggested Clarification.

"OBVIOUSLY!" said Captain Obvious

Clarification put on Captain Obvious's Oculus Quest Pro and Captain Obvious opened Clarification's presentation…

There was a pause…

And then there were fair-trade coconut milk lattes being snorted out of their noses as they both fell about laughing…

"Great minds think alike," said Captain Obvious as he wiped up the mess.

"At least there's no question about what we do next," laughed Clarification.

"We ask the children and teachers what they want, obviously," said Captain Obvious.

"Thank you for the clarification," said Clarification.

Both presentations had started with fancy ideas about redesigning school which had then been erased or washed off the cave wall and they were left with only the children and the teachers. Captain Obvious had showed the children with ideas starting the emerge from their heads and the teachers asking questions to clarify. Clarification had started with the children building models of what they wanted with a pathway to all the things they did not yet know. It was going to be important to ask the right questions to find out what children needed and to find out what teachers needed as well. This would be a big project for Captain Obvious and Clarification, but one they were totally up for. They rolled up their sleeves, ordered fresh fair-trade coconut milk lattes and got busy planning.

Fast forward 3 days…

In just 3 days, Captain Obvious and Clarification had harnessed the power of social media and gathered an incredible amount of data about what children and teachers need and want in school. They had asked about why they need school and what they thought would be important for the future. They had asked about what they love and what they would happily get rid of. They had asked about dreams and nightmares. Older children asked younger children to contribute as OBVIOUSLY the young ones would not be on social media…Captain Obvious and Clarification crunched the data, came up with some possible solutions, and took them back to the children and teachers.

"Cool," said the children.

"Obvious," said the teachers.

"We shall take it to the Ministry of Education and effect change immediately!" declared Captain Obvious.

Fast forward 3 months…

After waiting for 3 months to get a meeting at the Ministry of Education, the day had finally arrived. It had taken the combined power of naggy teacher emails and very cute 'Dear Minister' letters from all the children to get to this point. Captain Obvious and Clarification had made it though, and they had a sweet VR immersive experience to showcase what children and teachers needed in school.

"Hang-on," said the Minister, "how was this data collected?"

"We crowd sourced it," replied Captain Obvious.

"That goes against data collection policy," said the Minister, "you can't use it."

"Just watch our presentation, please?" said Captain Obvious.

"Fine." And the Minister popped on the Oculus Quest Pro and entered a world where children and teachers had everything they needed. It was glorious. "Oh, wow, that is incredible!" said the Minister, obviously impressed. "I wish school had been like that when I was there. It's just a pity that the research and consultation process was not followed," he sighed.

"You mean like the implementation of National Standards and modern learning environments?" Captain Obvious said, pointing out the obvious.

"Oh no, no, no, those were purely decisions made for the advancement of capitalism and neoliberal ideas of education. Silly! Your idea is about school being for the development of the whole person, if we go down that path we'll have a thinking generation before we know it and the collapse of Western civilization."

Captain Obvious and Clarification stare at the Minister in obvious clarity but he is unable to see the irony due to him being a winner in the neoliberal capitalist society of Western civilization and still a paid member of the Order of Meritocracy.

"Off you go," said the Minister, "perhaps come back when you have followed procedure."

Fast forward 3 years…

Captain Obvious and Clarification were utterly frustrated, the procedure they were supposed to follow was neither obvious nor clear. The system required them to pathologise children and teachers whereas it was the system that was the problem and IT WAS SO OBVIOUS! And then there was a refresh of the procedure and all of their paperwork had to be updated to new forms and then the case manager they had been assigned left and the new one said that they had filled in the wrong forms and they would need a different set and then the ministry implemented a digital system but the portal to use it, as far as Captain Obvious and Clarification were concerned, was a portal which condemned users to the fate of Sisyphus.

Fast forward 3 hundred years….

Captain Obvious and his sidekick Clarification were still alive as life extension technology had been perfected (while available only to the extremely wealthy - a philanthropist who believed in their work had paid for it), the climate crisis had been solved (and when we say 'solved' we mean we had learned to live with it by living inside hab domes with lab grown food and population control through sterilization of undesirables), and poverty was a thing of the past (there were only rich people left). This left Captain Obvious and Clarification free to continue to work on the school problem because inside those hab domes there were still children sitting still in rows of desks dressed in the same clothes doing the same work. The children dreamed of one day being able to go outside but they could not make dreams come true until they completed their maths.