As a reviewer, there are books I find and those that find me. At the Trough by Adam Knight is a futuristic tale about American education that I found for myself. As an educator and student myself, I connected with this book at so many levels and it is an immense pleasure to be able to reflect on education from both sides. Before I dive deep into all the thoughts this book brought to the surface, let’s take a quick look at the synopsis:
In a future where schools have no teachers and no classrooms, Jennifer Calderon is the perfect student. Every day she watches her video modules, plays her edu games, and never misses an answer. Life is comfortable in the Plex, a mile-wide apartment building. Corporations and brand names surround her and satisfy her every want and need.
Then one day, her foul-mouthed, free-spirited, 90’s-kitsch-wearing girlfriend Melody disrupts everything. She introduces her to a cynical, burned-out former teacher, who teaches them the things no longer taught in school. Poetry. Critical thinking. Human connection.
But these lessons draw the attention of EduForce, the massive corporation with a stranglehold on education. When they show how far they are willing to go to keep their customers obedient, Jennifer has to decide what is most important to her and how much she is willing to sacrifice for it.
Content Notes include Profanity, Suicide, Abuse, Violence, being in the foster care system, and Death.
Thoughts on At the Trough
At the Trough is a story of perseverance, losing one’s grasp on reality and taking a stand against it. I was not prepared for the uncomfortable place that this book put in as I pondered education through EduForce, the misunderstanding around the role of teachers and the whole experiment that this whole world seems to be. The difficulty and unease is what makes this book brilliant. To confront hard issues, one has to face the realities and gravity of those realities have to play out for a significant amount of time to have an impact. At the Trough has that impact and here is how.
On Schooling
What makes school what it is? Is it the learning side, the regurgitation and repetition of knowledge? Is it about social values? Is it the connection to people? With COVID and intermittent online education through the pandemic, we have had the opportunity to ask some of these questions. As public health mandates evolve with each new variant and wave, every decision around education and work is under the lens and criticized. It is our pandemic situation which made my connection to this book even more solid. The education system in At The Trough looks nothing like ours today but that is not to say that we can’t get there ever.
It is 2051 and EduForce, a private company, has figured out an efficient way to educate children and create a productive workforce. There are no teachers, there are no classmates. Every student is a number, glued to their screen. With self-paced learning and modules and games, and easy access to food and drinks, learning is fun. Once a student completes the set number of achievement levels, they can now enter the workforce and start earning a living. Education is also progressive which means as the world’s knowledge expands, so do the number of achievement levels before students are deemed worthy.
I had not thought about how devastating the introduction of a new year in school would have been until I read Jennifer, the one and only Five Point. She has a 5.0 GPA, no rounding required. She knows her lessons and does really well with the system. Through At the Trough, I discovered why the 5.0 is so important to her and she learned the hard lesson of how numbers should never define our self-worth. I can relate to Jennifer. In another life, if I had grown up in any country that follows the GPA system, I can imagine coming very close to being her. Thankfully, as much as there was an expectation to achieve in India, 100% is a bit ridiculous to expect of anyone in everything. Except in Math, of course. I kid you not. That I grew up with.
Anyway, Jennifer has this amazing person in her life named Melody. And Melody has seen a lot more of the world than Jennifer ever will. The sheltered environment that Jennifer’s mom has created for her as well as the Plex city they live in makes life quite straightforward if you have a family… All of these aspects create a dystopian world that no one except Melody seems to question. When Melody gets in touch with a former teacher who wrote a book called The Trough, criticizing the education system and the path society is going, Charles takes her and Jennifer under his wing and kick starts learning all over again.
On Teachers
This book was so good!
What is learning without a teacher? What if that teacher was just someone online? You could watch their tutorials anytime it worked best for you and your learning brain! Everything would be on your terms, you decide the pace of your education.
I was telling you all that I took up knitting recently! Online learning has not been very productive for that. Sure, the capability of pausing a video and staring at the screen and then comparing it to the needles in my hands is great, but nothing beats talking to someone about knitting and seeing them knit. Nothing comes close to having someone observe your work and correct you.
I think in the world that At the Trough depicts, arts would not be part of the curriculum to the same extent, if any at all.
I have been a teacher and then I have stopped being a teacher in the professional capacity and that is why I found a kindred spirit in Charles. While our reasons to not be in education are drastically different, we know the feel of a classroom, being surrounded by students, the spark that they get in their eyes when they “get” the concept you are trying to teach… It is exhilarating and is partly what makes being a teacher a wonderful profession to be in!
Yes, teachers are not computer programs and hence cannot be expected to do 100% on everything they have to do. But there is so much they do and so much that they give! Planning out a lesson for a class takes hours (I used to teach 5 classes of Math a day, two grades), not just because of time there is to cover a particular material but also finding ways to keep the kids engaged, depending on what I know of them and the time of the day.
Sure, self paced education through a computer offers that customization that a teacher cannot always make happen in a class, but that does not mean teachers are always lacking. We work with kids outside of class all the time and make connections with the kids. It was presumptions like these that made this book so hard to read. It was like the government put a blanket on all the things that teachers do and decided it didn’t make society better.
Charles’ love for teaching and students is reignited when he meets Melody and I loved reading his origin story, how he ended up working for EduForce and the chain of events that follow meeting Melody. In expressing his emotions towards his students and teaching them, he remembers the true days in the classroom and comes to see the world he lives in a different light. As he starts to realize it feels like a simulation, I started to realize it too. But you know the worst part of thinking it’s a simulation and realizing it is real life is that it is indeed a simulation but you never get to come out on the other side. There are people who have put other people in boxes and decided to keep them imprisoned there forever. It is simulation in that it is orchestrated to an unfathomable extent.
At the Trough is a well-written story. It gave me so much to think about that as I wrote this review, I decided it was very much a 5 star read. Author Adam Knight thoroughly develops each character, sharing who the main people in their lives have been, how EduForce and the Plex lifestyle has affected them, how they live and how they want to live. This was not a comfortable read for me and my expectation from the beginning was for a story that would have a lot of grays and an equally gray ending. That is life in its truest form.
Will you pick up this book?
Add it to your shelves on Goodreads and Storygraph. You can also find the book on IndieStoryGeek.
I hope you enjoyed reading my review of At the Trough by Adam Knight! I am very excited to have connected with the author since reading it and I look forward to bringing him on the blog on the 27th!
Check out the Book Review Index for similar reviews in this genre. You can also dig into my teaching related articles from my preservice days!
Many thanks to the author for providing me a complimentary copy of the book via BookSirens in exchange for an honest review.
Cover Photo on Unsplash
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