First meetings in the Enderverse by Orson Scott Card Page B

survival of the community. In this class, we are not afraid to go where the evidence takes us.”
    “What if it takes us out of any chance of getting a job?” asked a student.
    “I’m here to teach the students who want to learn what I know,” she said. “If you’re one of that happy number, then aren’t we both lucky. If you’re not, I don’t much care. But I’m not going to not teach you something because knowing it might somehow make you less employable.”
    “So is it true,” asked a girl in the front row, “that he really is your father?”
    “Who?” asked Ms. Brown.
    “You know,” the girl said. “Hinckley Brown.”
    Hinckley Brown. The military strategist whose book was still the bible of the International Fleet-but who resigned from the I.F. and went into seclusion because he refused to go along with the population laws.
    “And this would be relevant to you because…?” asked Ms. Brown.
    The answer was belligerent. “Because we have a right to know if you’re teaching us science or your religion.”
    That’s right, thought John Paul. Hinckley Brown was a Mormon, and they were noncompliant. Noncompliant like John Paul’s own parents, who were Polish Catholics. Noncompliant like John Paul intended to be, as soon as he found somebody he wanted to marry. Somebody who also wanted to stick it to the Hegemony and their two-children-per-family law.
    “What if,” said Ms. Brown, “the findings of science happen to coincide, on a particular point, with the beliefs of a religion? Do we reject the science in order to reject the religion?”
    “What if the science gets influenced by the religion?” demanded the student.
    “Fortunately,” said Ms. Brown, “the question is not only stupid and offensive, it’s also moot. Because whatever blood relationship I might or might not have with the famous Admiral Brown, the only thing that matters is my science and, if you happen to be suspicious, my religion.”
    “So what is your religion?” the student said.
    “My religion,” said Ms. Brown, “is to try to falsify all hypotheses. Including your hypothesis that teachers should be judged according to their parentage or their membership in a group. If you find me teaching something that cannot be adduced from the evidence, then you can make your complaint. And since it seems particularly important to you to avoid any possibility of an idea contaminated by Hinckley Brown’s beliefs, I will drop you from the class… right… now.”
    By the end of the sentence she was jabbing instructions at her desk, which was sitting atop the podium. She looked up. “There. You can leave now and go to the department offices to arrange to be admitted to a different section of this class.”
    The student was flabbergasted. “I don’t want to drop this class.”
    “I don’t recall asking you what you wanted,” said Ms. Brown. “You’re a bigot and a troublemaker, and I don’t have to keep you in my class. That goes for the rest of you. We will follow the evidence, we will challenge ideas, but we will not challenge the personal life of the teacher. Anyone else want to drop?”
    In that moment, John Paul Wiggin fell in love.

    Theresa let the exhilaration of Human Community carry her for several hours. The class hadn’t started well-the Wiggin boy looked to be a troublemaker. But it turned out he was as smart as he was arrogant, and it sparked the brightest kids in the class, and all in all it was exactly the kind of thing Theresa had always loved about teaching: a group of people thinking the same thoughts, conceiving the same universe, becoming, for just a few moments, one.
    The Wiggin “boy.” She had to laugh at her own attitude. She was probably younger than he was. But she felt so old. She’d been in grad school for several years now, and it felt as if the weight of the world were on her shoulders. It wasn’t enough to have her own career to worry about, there was the constant pressure of her father’s