This song always makes me think of Bernard and his simultaneous desires to be snarky about his society but also be accepted and lauded within its parameters. Bernard is kind of a jerk, but do his not-so-nice aspects seem justified at all? Does he draw our attention to important problems with the World State?
Showing posts with label Looking Backward. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Looking Backward. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 26, 2019
Bernard Marx: the Music Video
This song always makes me think of Bernard and his simultaneous desires to be snarky about his society but also be accepted and lauded within its parameters. Bernard is kind of a jerk, but do his not-so-nice aspects seem justified at all? Does he draw our attention to important problems with the World State?
Tuesday, February 12, 2019
Education and Utopia
These utopian societies just do not want their people to know the truth. Suspicious. Just like the censorship of art, education seems to be on the chopping block as well. This is not about the quality of education, because that's a tangent I do not wish to pursue, but rather about the specificity of education.
In Plato's Republic, only the education of the guardians is worth mentioning.
In More's Utopia, people are educated in their craft(s) and can spend their free time studying language and literature.
Bellamy's Looking Backward mentions education through apprenticeship, and "The schools... of higher liberal learning are always open to aspirants without condition." Each person must learn a trade through an apprenticeship and rise up in the ranks. If people want to pursue higher education, they are able to.
The host in Morris' News from Nowhere is initially confused by the term "school." As the dialogue continues, he says, "I understand you to be speaking of book-learning" and addresses the ways children learn to read, write, and study languages. That's not really the narrator's point either; he wants to know about how these people educate the mind. The people discourage bookishness and find it childish, because work is more important: "so I don’t think we need fear having too many book-learned men." And this was the sentence that struck me.
Why would a society not want its people to be learned? It's fine to learn a trade because that leads to employment and a manner in which you aid the community. But you're not allowed to learn anything else, or at least, it's frowned upon to pursue any other education. Stay in your little box of the craft/profession you've chosen to learn, young one, and don't pursue anything more because it's not good for you to know too much. Because if the people become educated about their ways of life, they might realize what's actually going on. It goes back to control. If a society controls what the people, especially children, learn, then society controls the people and the people become docile, complacent, and, most importantly, malleable. Then the machine of society is in control rather than the people who make up that society. It reeks of 1984 and 2+2=5, or the "fake news" of today. What are these utopias hiding that they don't want their citizens to learn?
In Plato's Republic, only the education of the guardians is worth mentioning.
In More's Utopia, people are educated in their craft(s) and can spend their free time studying language and literature.
Bellamy's Looking Backward mentions education through apprenticeship, and "The schools... of higher liberal learning are always open to aspirants without condition." Each person must learn a trade through an apprenticeship and rise up in the ranks. If people want to pursue higher education, they are able to.
The host in Morris' News from Nowhere is initially confused by the term "school." As the dialogue continues, he says, "I understand you to be speaking of book-learning" and addresses the ways children learn to read, write, and study languages. That's not really the narrator's point either; he wants to know about how these people educate the mind. The people discourage bookishness and find it childish, because work is more important: "so I don’t think we need fear having too many book-learned men." And this was the sentence that struck me.
Why would a society not want its people to be learned? It's fine to learn a trade because that leads to employment and a manner in which you aid the community. But you're not allowed to learn anything else, or at least, it's frowned upon to pursue any other education. Stay in your little box of the craft/profession you've chosen to learn, young one, and don't pursue anything more because it's not good for you to know too much. Because if the people become educated about their ways of life, they might realize what's actually going on. It goes back to control. If a society controls what the people, especially children, learn, then society controls the people and the people become docile, complacent, and, most importantly, malleable. Then the machine of society is in control rather than the people who make up that society. It reeks of 1984 and 2+2=5, or the "fake news" of today. What are these utopias hiding that they don't want their citizens to learn?
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