A short story by Gianni Rodari, translated from the Italian “La macchina per fare i compiti”.
One day a strange fellow knocked at our door: a funny little man, I tell you, barely taller than two matchsticks. On his shoulder he carried a bag bigger than himself.
“I have some machines here to sell,” he said.
“Let’s see them,” said my father.
“Here, this one is a machine for doing homework. You press the little red button to solve maths problems, the little yellow button to write essays, the little green button to learn geography: the machine does it all by itself in a minute.”
“Buy it for me, dad!” I said.
“All right, how much do you want?”
“I don’t want money,” said the little man.
“But surely you don’t work just to keep warm!”
“No, but in exchange for the machine I want your child’s brain.”
“Are you mad?” my father exclaimed.
“Listen to me, sir,” said the little man, smiling. “If the machine does his homework, what does he need a brain for?”
“Buy me the machine, dad!” I begged. “What do I need a brain for?”
My father looked at me for a moment and then said: “All right, take his brain.”
The little man took my brain and put it in a small bag. How light I was, without a brain! So light that I started to fly around the room, and if my father had not caught me in time I would have flown right out of the window.
“You will have to keep him in a cage,” said the little man.
“But why?” asked my father.
“He has no brain any more, that’s why. If you let him wander about, he will fly off into the woods like a little bird, and in a few days he will starve to death!”
My father shut me in a cage, like a canary. The cage was small and narrow, I could not move. The bars squeezed me so tightly that… in the end I woke up, terrified. Thank goodness it had only been a dream!
I can assure you that I got straight to work on my homework.