Don't be a Twinkie

 The standard education model's simplistic definition given by Sir Ken Robinson does not seem so different from the terrifying one in Brave New World when it is also so simply defined. Both process and ship children, just the form in the novel is a tad more extreme.

We are not purposely molded at birth, nor have we been cut off from all permanent relationship bonds, yet we still suffer from parallel forms of educational injustice.  Bernard questions Lenina in the novel, "Don't you wish you were free Lenina?" She so ignorantly responds " I am free. Free to have the most wonderful time. Everybody's happy nowadays." Her freedom is unknowingly limited, just as ours is. She has been bred to be her class, to act her defined way, and so have we through our educational system. Robinson comments on how children are brought up through school like an assembly line, each age group being specifically designated and each student being forced to adhere to the class guidelines given for their distinct age group. The government does not see is that a person can not be compared to another for we are all individuals and all have different abilities that could benefit society in our respective ways. This runs parallel to the hypnopedia techniques by the schooling system in the novel, for both systems emphasize conformity, a seemingly futile goal when it is common knowledge that each and every person is an individual. People cannot not be packed and processed like a box of Twinkies, it would be impossible for every person in the world to fit the cream filled yellow cake mold of such idealistic thinking.

Furthermore, it appears that Huxley emphasizes the limitation in the novel to reflect the disastrous ways of the current public schooling system, just as Robinson did through his presentation. As a student in such a system, I find it disturbing that I am being forced to comply with guidelines that do not fit the needs I require to be a functional part of society, or the functions my peers need to achieve to the best of their abilities. For instance, every morning on school announcements throughout the nation, the flag salute is mindlessly recited by millions. Yet do none of these reciters associate this salute with a brainwashing form of complete contradiction such as in Brave New World? Was this not the very country formed for the reason of religious tolerance? And do we not have an unmeasurable number of religions who practice freely here? Then why then are we "one nation under god"?  It is absolutely hypocritical of us a nation to have a national slogan representative of one branch on the religious tree. However, in most cases it is a mentally numb state of mind in which one recites the pledge, and I know not until recently I had been one of the mentally numb. So with that I challenge you to break free of the conformity, and be who you want to be, while giving others the chance to be able to be themselves the best way they know how. Whether or not we will ever acquire freedom from educational standardization is unknown, but one can refrain from being a standardized Twinkie packed and processed and ready to go for the world in the mold of what this educational system defines as successful.