And a little child

By Marcia Kamien
Only on Mars could children such as these walk proudly under the stars. How ungrateful seemed their bitter hatred of their teachers!
Marcia Kamien is new to science fiction. It is not often that a story of such brilliance arrives on our desk unsolicited, and our surprise was even greater when the author informed us in an accompanying letter she wasn't quite sure we'd buy it. We are afraid she just does not understand editors. We know quite a few, and they all agree that there are stories which would never stay forever clipped to a rejection slip.
On the last day of school Professor Dayton looked with pleasure at his class. Fine men and women, all of them. If, the professor amended silently, one could call them men and women. He, himself, preferred their new name: Martians .
They sat in front of him, ranged in rows, twenty-year-olds stirring restlessly in their seats, as thousands of generations of pupils had done before them.
Only this classroom was a bit different.
In the first place, Professor Dayton sat under a small glass dome with a dashboard of dials and meters directly at his elbow. His class, on the other hand, sat in the open air.
Now and then a head turned to gaze through one of the windows at the dull, brick-colored desert land outside, the low, gently rolling hills that quietly told the story of Mars' long and ancient past.
Today is your last day of class, Professor Dayton said into the portable microphone. You have been good students, all of you, a credit to your mother-Earth. Now, I should like to—
He stopped abruptly. One of the young men was standing, waving him to silence. Dayton knew him well, a bright eager youngster who called himself Bar. All of the others turned their faces to him as to a natural leader.
Leader! Dayton felt a shiver of apprehension. How long had he half-expected this? Since the day, seven years before, when they had all changed their names? Or even earlier, when they had begun to notice?