School sucks...YEAH!!

Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World draws many parallels to the video posted on Mr. Dominguez' blog.  Actually, if one observes closely, they can note many similarities between the two.  After watching the video, I actually started to agree with some its ideas and thoughts.  The education system, has become a twisted version of what its principles stood for, and throughout the years, has evolved into a factory to process children's minds.

There are many similarities to Brave New World that the video points out.  Children today are separated by groups based on age and transported to school.  The school is operated in different class periods based on a bell schedule, and children are forced to labor through the same process every single day.  (Or in our case, we have a different bell schedule every day since Clovis High can't seem to make its mind on a consistent bell schedule).  Anyways, back to may point; school divides the groups of kids into those that succeed based on the school's curriculum and those who fail the school's curriculum.  We should not that these varying levels of success all depends on "grades" that the school gives out in order to classify the elite students from the struggling students.  Seeing a parallelism? In Brave New World, people are classifeid into different gruops based on their varying levels of success and intelligence.  Alphas dominate the intelligence factor in society and are thus able to receive high end jobs while at the bottom are Epsilons and Gammas whose dumbed down intelligence only serves to give them manual labor work.  This work includes a daily routine, that is both monotonous, and mindless.

In Brave New World, people are created in “racks upon racks of numbered test tubes”, very similar to our concept in school, where kids are sitting in rows and rows of desks, each performing the same routine endlessly like a mini-factory. What’s more each learning process in the novel is separate, just as subjects are in school.  There’s a room for birthing, a room for establishing a fear of books and flowers, and there’s a room for erotic play, and so forth and so on.  Furthermore, the people are split into groups during the “pregnancy” based on how dumb or successful they are supposed to be.  This can be compared to how we have different classes based on different subjects like Health, Psychology, and Physical Education.

Overall, the video gives the audience a very good comparison between the education system today with the society in Brave New World.

Brave New World Ch.3

  In the novel, Brave New World, a futuristic Utopian society is depicted with questionable values of ethics and morality. "Wheels must turn steadily, but can not 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."  The quote above refers to the power of the government to act as a moving force upon society to keep it under control.  According to the Controller, "stability. No civilization without social stability" (Huxley 32).  The government controls aspects of the citizens life from birth, by determining what social caste they shall fall under and even utilize differing amounts of alcohol and oxygen to reduce brain potential as an infant.  Likewise, the government also operantly conditions the lower caste infants to associate flowers and books with feelings of pain and fear by electrocuting them and making them listen to wailing sirens.  ”We always throw away old clothes. Ending is better than mending…” describes the philosophy of hypnopaedia, or the process of brain washing while asleep.  Likewise, the people in the novel have no self esteem nor sense of individuality because of their mass production type births.  The men view Lenina as a piece of meat and even Lenina seems to share this notion also.  Family itself is considered to be a derogatory concept as it requires the use of love and relationships to describe. Having a relationship with someone for too long, is considered unorthodox by society's standards and instead should switch from partner to partner.  People are encouraged to act on sexual desire in order to release out their bottled up emotions.  Mond compares this concept metaphorically like a pipe with increasing pressure inside. Additionally, drugs, “soma,” are utilized to create false sense of happiness. These drugs create a false illusion of happiness that lets the citizens escape the bleak and insipid taste of their own world.

Writing About The Tempest

In discussions of The Tempest one controversial issue has been the topic of colonialism.  On the one hand, Aime Cesare argues that the text is hidden with messages of postcolonialism and abuse towards teh native people of the island.  On the other hand, critics such as George Will contends that analyzing The Tempest for colonialism themes strips the text away from its intended purpose.  He believes that the argument of postocolonialism is produced due to political agenda of literary critics. However, I feel that I agree with George Will.  Aime Cesare's work A Tempest, is totally re written i order to showcase the dominance of Prospero with Ariel and Caliban.  He likens Caliban to Malcolm X, a civil rights activist, who changed his name to X in order to reject the name that the white man gave him.  In the text Caliban also changes his name to X with a similar purpose.  Cesare's story also portrays more dialogue between Caliban and Ariel, and how Ariel relates to Caliban's subservience.  However, I think that The Tempest has nothing to do with postcolonialism.  For one thing, The Tempest was written as a comedy, a type of play that is generally light hearted.  Had Shakespeare written a play about a serious theme such as colonialism, he would have most likely changed the whole plot of the story.  In my opinon, Shakespeare intended the story to be seen as how Prospero ultimately forgives his enemies and how he receives paradise in the end, by not succumbing to revenge and anger.  Thus, I think that Shakespeare's intended meaning was to not go down a road full of revenge and hate, but rather one with a more generous outlook.  If traversed correctly, one will eventually find paradise in the end.  Like George Will, I believe that postcolonialism is just a by-product of overanalyzing through literary theorists.