What if it isn't just a movie...

Suppose you sent a person and then a robot back in time from the future 3 times in order to prevent some calamity, but every time you think you've prevented it, it finds some other way to happen?

Suppose the future you're trying to prevent is the development of computers so sophisticated that they become self-aware and turn on their human inventors?

Suppose you've decided after the first 3 attempts fail, to try a much subtler approach?

If the educational system can be decimated to such a degree that the chances of anyone actually educated under this system being able to develop anything nearly as sophisticated as the machines from the future becomes next to impossible, wouldn't it make sense to send back a killer robot to wreak just such havoc upon the educational system?

That's right, we're all extras in Terminator 4: Return to the Stone Age.

I hope that Arnold is able to get to me before a crazed Sarah Connor breaks into my classroom in combat fatigues and threatens to eviscerate me in front of my students: "It was you! You taught them math! You made it possible! I have to stop you!" If he cuts off his fake skin and shows me his robotic arm, I'll help him take down the system from the inside... not with explosives, but by filling up instruction time with meaningless tests, making it harder for anyone to become a teacher, and using up as much education funding as possible to create tax breaks for the wealthy (as long as they're not wealthy computer programmers).

If it ends with me propped up against a desk, clutching a heavy text-book above the "enter" key set to execute a program that increases community college funds, gasping "I don't know... how much longer... I can hold this..." as underprivileged students dive for cover, then that's just what I'll have to do. .. although I'd much rather be the guy who tearfully lowers Arnold into the steaming cauldron of the hot tub behind his mansion after he saves the world from education.

- "I'll be back."