Schools across the country have been experiencing setbacks in their professor breeding programs. “Basically,” said prominent breeder Frank Galton, “our problems started when nerds started becoming ‘cool’. Since that paradigm shift, our problems in controlling the reproduction of our specimens have increased tenfold.”
The professor breeding program has been going on for centuries, dating back to some of the oldest universities in Europe. The program began when the administrators of the universities realized that certain genetic characteristics were very useful in the teaching trade. It was further noticed that careers in academia occasionally ran through families. Some of these families became the foundation stock for purebreds that exist to this day.
“We’ve got several breeds going today,” Galton explained, “for example those lively, animated ‘teacup’ professors we use for small classes with a great deal of equations and boardwork. This breed is my favorite, quite quirky and charming – good for early morning or sleepy afternoon classes – and their petite frames mean that they spend a limited amount of time blocking what they’re writing on the board. Then there are the slower, the thinking breeds. These varieties are not particularly sociable, but for classes that require precision and quiet contemplation of the material, they excel.”
A popular new breed in recent years is the Revised, though Galton admitted that the standard for Revised professors is still a work in progress. “We meant them to be sort of a creative, affable sort. You know, the kind of teacher that people remember fondly from their youth because they had a unique teaching style? Unfortunately, naturally occurring specimens with the traits we wanted were somewhat rare, and the breed as it now stands tends to be hit-or-miss. Right now we still get a lot of young Reviseds that try fancy new teaching styles just for the sake of doing something different, and the students hate them. They’ll then either continue doing ‘new’ things, completely oblivious to students’ protests, or they’ll become disillusioned and start to conform more to the Traditional standard, which is a problem we need to address.”
However, all the breeds could be in danger if current trends continue. When the breeding program started, intellectuals were stuck-up enough to stay within reasonable bounds. “Actually, the problem then was getting them to breed at all,” Galton joked “they were so busy with their work. Also, at that time the only specimens that could be shown were males, so they tended not to have female specimens to choose from anyway. At that time, breeders just saw it as unavoidable out-crossing that would, at least, strengthen the health of their lines.”
When a female standard was finally developed, sometime in the 1900s, the program really took off. “At that point we started to rely more on the aversion that mongrels had for our purebreds,” Galton said, “now instead of being the high and mighty class, academics were seen unfavorably by the general public, and that allowed us to isolate the gene pool really nicely. The jock breeders were having a terrible time of it, though… and now the situation is starting to reverse.”
Intellectuals began to experience more and more appreciation as the 20th century rolled to a close, and now “it’s quite a struggle to keep out-crossing from happening on an unprecedented level,” Galton said, “we’re feeling a very real loss of control when it comes to mate selection. Furthermore, this out-crossing means that we’re less likely to reach some new equilibrium where professors are again the lofty ivory-tower class or the isolated dorks. If either of those are going to happen, it’s going to have to arise spontaneously from among the mongrels, because the breeds we could have taken in those directions are being diluted with each passing generation. In short, the situation is very, very bad for breeders.”
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