Well I'm off to work, I mean school, I mean, ugh, give me my pills.

Education today is a joke. Students all around the country are being shoved into these giant industrialized melting pots that completely deprive them of any self expression or individuality. Creative thinking is stunted at a very young age by teachers that train students to think that there is only one answer to everything. Instead of expressing themselves, students are stuffed with pills and told to focus; blaming their attention span on a disease rather than the actual cause, modern technology. With so many outlets of entertainment in today’s technological world, of course students are going to barely be able to pay attention when listening to a boring monotonous lecture. They group students by age, completely ignoring the fact that not everyone at one age learns or thinks the same, and stuff them with individual standardized testing not realizing that by alienating children they are inhibiting their ability to learn and grow as much as they could as when they are in a group. Schools have quickly turned into educational factories, educating children by batches down a long assembly line of knowledge in an attempt to standardize and uniform the population.

There are many parallels that can be drawn from this to Brave New World. Individuality and creativity is also stunted at a young age by scientists who genetically engineer people in jars before they are born so that they can be taught and produce in whatever group or batch was preordained. Also similar to our education system, their society is set up in the form of an assembly line, operating under the slogan "Community, Identity, Stability" and stuffing everyone  with pills and medication to keep them stable and useful. The whole society has been thrown in a giant melting pot that completely deprives them of any self expression.

Mmmm...yeah yuck.

"Wheels must turn steadily, but cannot turn untended. There must be men to tend them, men as sturdy as the wheels upon their axles, sane men, obedient men, stable in contentment." This quote spoken by Mustapha Mond in “Brave New World” elucidates the mechanic society that exists due to debauched morals that are ensiled into the population to drive it towards complete and utter stability.  Stability is achieved by organizing society into a giant assembly line of jobs and responsibilities, replacing God with Henry Ford. The population is dehumanized through engineering that predetermines each individual’s biology so that they can serve their preordained purposes efficiently and contently.  The whole structure thrives on pleasure which allows men and women of every profession, whether prominent or low-end, to behold total satisfaction with their lives, and the government to maintain efficiency.

To obtain and retain this pleasure, the government completely transforms Christian morals, making them a taboo subject of the past. The whole family structure is completely torn down thanks to modern technology that allows people to be conceived, grown, and manipulated in test tubes and rooms that are kept and monitored in large buildings. There is no longer such thing as a “mother” or “father”, in fact the words themselves are extinct. By erasing the family structure, the government is keeping people both dependant and devoted to them and to society as a whole. Because of this, sex is no longer looked upon as a binding act between a man and woman, but rather a leisurely pastime for everyone to partake in. Sexual feelings and impulses are encouraged while marriage and sanctity are abhorred things of the past. In this world, "Every one belongs to everyone else". In fact, it is highly looked down upon to only have one partner. If one wishes to be refined, he or she will “have” as many people as possible; so the more promiscuous the better. By keeping sexual relations light, the government is preventing anyone from getting emotionally attached, again keeping them 100% percent devoted and satisfied to them.

I see your point....but you're still wrong. Sorry.

 

 

There is a question on The Tempest that directly delves into the core of education; should we critique a piece of literature solely by face value, or should we dig deeper and take the history and context of the piece into consideration? There have been many discussions on the subject, particularly surrounding The Tempest, and there are numerous opinions.  Stephen Greenblatt agrees with the later. He finds it extremely necessary for the reader to search into the text and derive for themselves any and all possible meanings from the words that lie between the lines; especially in the case of The Tempest.  To him, researching and interpreting can only heighten the reader’s experience and is the reason why we read in the first place. On the other hand, George Will finds this method of reading to be highly counter-productive and insulting to the author’s original intent. He thinks that by reading too far into a text, we can completely destroy the author’s meaning and replace it with our own. He argues that this is what political powers often do to strengthen their arguments, and that we should just enjoy the work for its face value and nothing more. In the case of The Tempest, enjoy the beauty of the words that Shakespeare artfully designed unto the page and leave it at that. To help keep it at this, he suggests that we establish one concrete interpretation of every literary work. My own argument lies somewhere between the two. I think Shakespeare's views on colonialism can be found without having to dig unnecessarily deep into the text and it is my plan to make and support my own argument on the interpretation of The Tempest by pulling evidence and ideas from both Greenblatt and Wilson. Mmhmm. I do. It’s a fact.