America's School Systems and Brave New World Philosophies

A parallel I found right off the bat from this video, RSA Animate- Changing Education Paradigms, is between the American school system and the society of Brave New World. For starters, the older generations of society constantly drill into their students and kids that in order to be successful in life you need to go to school, get a college degree, to in turn obtain a good job and make decent money. Adults see the importance of this system; however it has been proven that a college degree doesn’t necessarily equal success in life; especially when it takes the identity of the child away to better fit in with the norm. This aspect of American culture best ties into how the society of Brave New World raises their children. Each is treated equally in that they are synthetically born and developed all in the same routine. “Liquor was drawn off from the test-tubes; how it was let out drop by drop onto the specially warmed slides of the microscopes; how the eggs which it contained were inspected for abnormalities; counted and transferred to a porous receptacle…to undergo Bokanovsky’s Process” (Huxley 17). Each embryo is processed identically the same as all the others so that every single being can be equal. Just like the way America’s educational system drills students into taking the same paths to success, the society of Brave New World drills the idea that each embryo needs to be evolved in the same matter to each equal productivity and success.

Also, the narrator of the video demonstrates the idea of divergent thinking; in that there’s no one “right” answer to every single question. As an example he uses the paper clip; how many different ways can a paper clip be used that you can think of? Most adults would range about 10-15 different ways, children on the other hand, before they’re introduced into the school system, can think of around 99 ways. This shows that our school system narrows our minds into thinking there’s only one correct answer, when in actuality there could be numerous answers. This philosophy pertains to Brave New World; everyone in that society believes there’s only one way to do things because the government has told them since they were merely infants. Because it’s all they’ve ever known, they are unable to consider other possibilities to do things.