My A Level students seem intent on kicking me out of my literary crenellations, ignoring my shameless plugging of 18th and 19th Century classics and steering us towards a vortex of science fiction prose as a federation shuttlecraft from which to launch their coursework. Selfish.

I blame the pandemic. A gothic castle or a cloistered heroine will cut no smelling salts with students who honed their education in isolation, and were on first name terms with an unreliable narrator calling herself Corona. They want to consume their literature in byte sized pieces; it needs to be atomised down into download, podcast or reel. They do not want to borrow my leather-bound classics. White linen shirts and riding breeches have no place in their modern world, apparently.

I keep up with the students’ reading selection only because a 1:1 tutorial should technically be a two way conversation and would feel a little awkward if the teacher is lost for words. I consider bluffing it out with AI but do not want to lose my job. My dystopian science fiction A Level text was ‘1984’ but now the students recognise Room 101 as a cheesy tv show and cancel culture is the newspeak they happily consume. ‘1984’ is distant history and it is a truth universally acknowledged that I am now too proud and prejudiced. Darcy – sadly – does not trans warp.

In desperation I cut through the Sixth Form common room to borrow a copy of ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’ from a colleague. ‘At least I saw Bladerunner at the cinema once,’ I tell her as I steal a couple of Sci Fi novels and her copy of Science Fiction for Dummies.’ ‘The film is nothing like the book,’ she replies, ‘It would be like saying that the Freman stillsuits in ‘Dune II’ adhere to their descriptions in Herbert’s original novel.’ ‘They don’t’? I fret, secretly relieved that Frank is not a student text choice and that I will not have to return to the cinema to try to understand why the Fremen never domesticated the giant sandworms to take the strain out of a desert commute.

As I stride back through the Common Room, I am struck by the number of students lounging about and the deafening silence. When I was Head of Sixth Form I was always nagging students to keep the noise down and to leave their card games and get to the library. Today the students have their eyes averted and are gripped by games they are playing – solo – on their mobile phones. Admittedly some are laughing, but they chuckle to themselves, at messages posted by someone who is probably sitting right next to them.

I notice the same when I am on gate duty at the end of the day. Students are reassembled with their friends after a day of study, but are more excited to be reunited with their phone than their peer group. Eyes are transfixed onto their screens; they walk out into the traffic en masse and in silence. A couple of girls stop mid-Zebra crossing (oblivious to an impatient driver) to pose for a couple of selfies. This is the only time I see them smile.

I am starting to understand why K. Dick’s characters aspire to own real animals in ‘Do Androids Dream…’ I am beginning to understand humanity’s struggle for relevance in a dying world, and why empathy becomes man’s overriding goal. No wait, I am bluffing, I am still on the first chapter and just quoting from the blurb, but I am trying really hard to tune in. Perhaps romantic poetry and gothic tropes have no place in the world I am now inhabiting and perhaps this coursework is teaching me more than it is the students.

Dick’s ‘Voigt Kampf Empathy Test’ (yes, I made it to the end of the novel) may need a reintroduction to determine whether students are now turning into robots. Ironic when, if I have got Dick’s concept right, his characters are frightened of robots becoming people. Smelling salts may be needed it we are to pass through this coursework window unscathed and if I am to pretend I am not a dinosaur. However, I now look forward to speaking to my students about it – when they look up from their screens. I find myself wondering if a giant sandworm would hold greater social status than a sheep these days, but then I may just be talking a load of kipple. Where is Darcy when you need him? I am still lacking in empathy and feeling rather shirty.