Aleksandr Mikheev’s Reviews > The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Volume 2 > Status Update

And the reason is amusing at first glance, but pretty fair if you think about that. The children are kept away from their parents, and, to be precise, away from any human being in order to not get any child trauma. That may seem weird, but at the same time so on point given how many people nowadays seek help from psychologists and find that the root of their problems is an always drunk dad or emotionally unavailable mother or bullies at school or whatever. So, to avoid all of that, in ‘Progeny’ newborns are raised by robots. To be fair, kids are first tested in order to find their talents and the curriculum is chosen according to what fits them best. Such an approach seems much better than what we have now, where kids either have no idea what profession to choose, have no idea of their hidden talents, or their talents and choices are ignored by their parents.

Of course, the reader will be puzzled by the idea that their child should be taken from them for 18 years and never see a real human face, let alone their parents, until then. Even that being raised by robots could be not such a bad idea from some point of view. To quote PDK: "Naturally, robots could do the best job. Robots could train him scientifically, according to a rational technique. Not according to emotional whim. Robots didn't get angry. Robots didn't nag and whine. They didn't spank a child or yell at him. They didn't give conflicting orders. They didn't quarrel among themselves or use the child for their own ends."
Makes sense, doesn’t it?

It’s funny that you can find exactly the same thought in the movie Terminator 2, in the scene where Sarah looks and her son getting more and more friendly with the cyborg says: “The Terminator would never stop. It would never leave him. It would never hurt him, never shout at him, or get drunk and hit him, or say it was too busy to spend time with him. It would always be there. And it would die to protect him. Of all the would-be fathers who came and went over the years, this thing, this machine was the only one that measured up.”

Anyway, in the story we are talking about, “Progeny”, the outcome doesn’t look that great. At the same time, PKD doesn’t go deep into what it could lead to - being raised only by robots. He just slightly touches the topic during the 20 pages of this short story.

Would you prefer to be raised by robots, who never get angry with you, never get tired of spending time with you, never treat you unfairly - over your parents?

Finally, if you are interested in other speculations of how education can look in the future, check out “Profession” by Isaak Asimov. It was written three years later than “Progeny” and has not such an extreme idea, but a totally different one and fascinating on its own.