I had my SAT students write an essay today assessing whether or not technology has made our lives better. One said yes, it had, and cited the following as a reason: in The Scarlet Letter, had Hester Prynne possessed a telephone, she could have called her husband to determine whether or not he was coming back and therefore avoided the entire affair with Dimmesdale escapade. I’m sure he did so because I told him that it was better to stretch a little bit if needed to include a literary reference. Reminder to self: must go over the definition of “a little bit” at the next class.
This was better than when another student several classes ago cited the treatment of this same Hester Prynne as positive social conditioning, mainly because today's student was joking whereas the first student was not.
