Writing with Miss Y.

Writers with Miss Y. will be exploring topics from the Future Problem Solving programme and writing narratives set in the future. Here is an example of a topic, surveillance society, and a narrative written by a student.


Surveillance Society – 2014

Google Earth aims to photograph every street in every country on Earth, surveillance satellites can photograph a person walking down the street from space, and cities are increasingly being blanketed by closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras both indoors and outdoors. People use cameras in their houses to watch for burglars or even to survey how their babysitters are looking after their children. CCTV cameras can also be used to monitor environments that are not safe for humans. In London it is estimated that there are at least 1.5 million CCTV cameras in city centers, parks, stations, airports, shops and so on. There is little evidence that these cameras deter crime, with police in the UK saying, “Police are no more likely to catch offenders in areas with hundreds of cameras than in those with hardly any.” A 2008 Report by UK Police Chiefs concluded that CCTV solved only 3% of crimes. Do CCTV cameras keep people safe? While “surveillance” has traditionally referred to camera surveillance, it now includes the interception of electronically transmitted information such as phone calls or internet history used for data mining and individual profiling. How do you know when and where you are being watched? Who controls the data that is gathered? Who can view it? How might it be used? Should the need for public and personal safety outweigh an individual’s right to personal privacy?

2014 Middle Division Winner (Years 8-10)


Ocean Soup – 2013

The ocean soup topic was about pollution in our oceans. Here is an excerpt from the 2013 middle division winner:

No one really cared about me at first, but then again, I wasn't quite as voracious back then. And to be completely honest, my greediness was encouraged. The humans didn’t know how hungry I was, how truly big I could grow. They simply knew I provided a convenient place for them to throw their unwanted things. I was their garbage dump. And I, I was such a glutton. I stole everything they threw to me, gobbling every piece up with my greedy, salivating jaws.

These days a few people seem to be drawing up a plan to clear away all of my waste. They want to lift parts of me away somehow, bit by bit, and remove me somewhere else. But it won’t work. I know it won’t, because the particles of plastics in me have become so tiny that they’ve melded with the ocean itself. While my body isn’t completely substantial, it is very much filled with all the plastic waste I’ve been fed over the years. I am a soup bowl of plastic floating in the ocean. I am the ocean. And you cannot, no matter how hard you try, destroy the ocean.

Oh, humans, you innovators, you destroyer of worlds and builder of civilizations. You ever so resourceful humans, always seeking to improve. Always seeking to destroy. This time they have outdone themselves.

Three short years ago, a certain scientist came up with a terrifying – and amazing – creation. It was the culmination of decades of hard, long, suffering work in the lab. How it must have plagued his dreams! How it must have consumed his life! But oh! This new genetic mutation of his was perfect. It was perfect, and it would destroy me.

He had successfully created a new strain of bacteria so dangerous it could be considered a biological weapon: a bacterium that feeds on plastic. A plastic cup, coming into contact with this kind of bacteria, would decompose into nothing but easily digestible organic material, which the normal bacteria in the ocean could then degrade into minerals and carbon and oxygen within a mere twenty-four hours.

This scientist is being heralded as a genius. Everyone is ever so proud of him, for this great new genetic mutation of his that could potentially get rid of all the waste they’ve created, but they fail to realize how big I am. Why, with these water-thriving, plastic eating bacteria everywhere…who knows where it will go?

- FPSPI Scenario Writing Component