Title: The Parched Lands
Author: N.A. Ratnayake
Publisher: Self-Published
Publication Date: May 14, 2018
Genres: Science Fiction
Length: About 18 pages.
Source: I received a free copy from the author.
Rating: 4 Stars
Blurb:
Amanthi is a teenage student in a not-so-distant future school system of hyper-testing and top-down control. In this world, creativity is a liability — but Amanthi is not deterred from dreaming. THE PARCHED LANDS delves into the tangled issues of race, tracking, high-stakes testing, and creativity starvation that run through America’s public school systems. This short story was published as a part of Crossed Genres Magazine 2.0, Issue 7: Expectations.
Review:
Knowledge is power.
Amanthi was a brave and likeable protagonist who I wish I could have spent more time with. It takes courage to stand up against a system that one has never lived outside of, especially for a teenager who also wishes to fit in with her peers and reach her academic goals. Some of my favourite scenes involving her were the ones that showed what she was like when she wasn’t trying to remain at the top of her class. While academics are important, they are only one piece of the puzzle that can be used to describe what someone is like, and they cannot be used to explain someone’s heart and soul.
I found myself wishing for more levels of meaning in this short story. The premise was straightforward, and its criticisms of modern educational culture, while completely justified in my opinion, followed that same path. This could have easily been a five-star read for me if the author had dug more deeply into the themes to reach the centre of what is wrong with things like large language models and the incessant focus on testing at the expense of creativity and lifelong learning in many schools.
Despite this, I did enjoy the world building in this piece. The educational system in this vision of the future was so focused on pushing up grade point averages and test results that it was overlooking the many other ways someone can find success not only in life but also in their personal development. I nodded along as I read the descriptions of the body modifications that students underwent in order to get as much out of them as possible in the classroom. While it was obviously an exaggeration of what actually happens in the classroom, the emotions connected to the commodification of learning were eerily similar in real life and in fiction.
The Parched Lands made me wish for a sequel.