"But tomorrow, there will be writing and reading for all," Prestonby
answered.

The guard with the key unlocked the door, and he and Yetsko went
through, into an utterly silent sound-proofed room, and from it into
an inner, noisy, room, where a recorded voice was chanting:

"Hat--_huh-ah-tuh._ H-a-t. Box--_buh-oh-ksss_. B-o-x.
Gun--_guh-uh-nnn_. G-u-n. Girl--_guh-ih-rrr-lll_," while pictures were
flashed on a screen at the front, and words appeared under them.

There were about twenty boys and girls, of the freshman-year
age-bracket at desk-seats, facing the screen. They'd started learning
the alphabet when school had opened in September; now they had gotten
as far as combining letters into simple words. In another month,
they'd be as far as diphthongs and would be initiated into the
mysteries of silent letters. Maybe sooner than that; he was finding
that children who had not been taught to read until their twelfth year
learned much more rapidly than the primary grade children in the
Literate schools.

What he was doing here wasn't exactly illegal. It wasn't even against
the strict letter of Fraternity regulations. But it had to be done
clandestinely. What he'd have liked to have done would have been to
have given every boy and girl in English I the same instruction this
selected group was getting, but that would have been out of the
question. The public would never have stood for it; the police would
have had to intervene to prevent a riotous mob of Illiterates from
tearing the school down brick by brick, and even if that didn't