Brave New Education

In Sir Ken Robinson's Changing Educational Paradigms he draws parallels between education and Brave New World. One parallel that he makes is that the drugs that doctors make kids take for ADHD shuts off their senses and deadens them to what is happening. Robinson feels that this is how parents are getting their children through school. The way this connects to Brave New World is that the soma the people take also deadens them to what is happening around them. An example of this is when Lenia and Bernard have to go talk to the Warden before they go into the reservation and "when the Warden started booming, she had inconspicuously swallowed half a gramme of soma, with the result that she could now sit, serenely not listening, thinking of nothing at all, but with her large blue eyes fixed on the Warden's face in an expression of rapt attention" (Huxley 101). Children also go through school like this because they do not always pay attention and instead just sit there and pretend they are listening.

A second parallel between Brave New World and the video is that Robinson says that children are educated in batches. This connects to Brave New World because the people are produced using the Bokanovsky's Process. This is where "a bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full-sized adult. Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before. Progress (Huxley 6). In Brave New World the people are produced in huge batches just like how children are educated in batches. In both instances the individual is not taken into consideration but  pushed to the side to take care of just getting the big group of people through the education process so they can graduate or like in Brave New World so they can try and create as many people as possible.

Brave New World

In chapter 3 of Brave New World Mustapha Mond said, "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." This passage sums up the value system in their society because it is saying that society can go on but someone must be there to help it go on as it is supposed to. They believe that someone needs to control all aspects of the people's lives.

The ideas of the passage can be used to manipulate the desired outcomes of human experiences such as family, monogamy, impulse, feeling, and desire. The "sane men" that control the people's desires such as monogamy can control it simply through repetition. Mustapha Mond told the students that "every one belongs to every one else" to which "the students nodded, emphatically agreeing with a statement which upwards of sixty-two thousand repetitions in the dark had made them accept, not merely as true, but as axiomatic, self-evident, utterly indisputable" (Huxley 40). The controllers also manipulate the people by telling them that the "poor pre-moderns were mad and wicked and miserable. Their world didn't allow them to take things easily, didn't allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy" (41). They try to tell the people that they do not need the desired human experiences like family and monogamy because that just made the "pre-moderns" unhappy while the world that the people were living in now was a lot better than before. The Controller tells the students that they are "fortunate boys...no pains have been spared to make your lives emotionally easy-to preserve you, so far as that is possible, from having emotions at all" (44). The controllers feel that they can manipulate the desired outcomes of human experiences by creating people with no emotions at all because that would help people stay loyal to the government. They would not have distractions which would detract their loyalty.

Preparing to write about The Tempest

In the discussions of The Tempest, one controversial issue has been over colonialism. On the one hand, Aime Cesaire argues in a humorous rewrite of The Tempest. In his play he stresses the idea of colonialism by having Prospero ask Caliban "what would you be without me?" and having Caliban reply with "I'd be the king, that's what I'd be, the King of the Island. The king of the island given me by my mother" (313). Aime Cesaire emphasizes the issue of colonialism through Caliban's heightened argument with Prospero over who the island really belongs to. On the other hand, George Will contends the issue of colonialism of being in the play by saying that "the academics who reinterpret Shakespeare in the light of colonialism, feminism, and other preoccupations are rendering the plays unrecognizable to the ordinary reader and playgoer" (110). Will believes that people read to far into the book which just makes it confusing to the reader. He believes that people should just read it how the author intended it to be read. Others, such as Stephen Greenblatt believe that "Caliban, enslaved by Prospero, bitterly challenges the European's right to sovereignty. The island was his birthright, he claims, and was unjustly taken from him" (114). Greenblatt believes that you should read deeper into the text to get a better meaning of the story. He feels that the story was clearly about colonialism. However, my opinion is that I agree a little with both Will and Greenblatt. I agree with Greenblatt that we need to look a little deeper into the story to better understand it so we can see the idea of colonialism in stories such as The Tempest. However, I also agree with Will in that we do not necessarily need to look super deep into the story. We should try to interpret it for ourselves and how the author wanted us to rather than just go off of what critics have already said about the story and its meaning.