Conditioning by Teachers in Society

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Conditioned

We live in a conformed society. Our society revolves around the conditioning of others. Webster's Dictionary defines conditioning as a learning process in which an organism's behavior becomes dependent on the occurrence of a stimulus in its environment. With this said, there is a lot of conditioning that occurs in everyday life. For example, why do grade school teachers reward their students with candy? When a young child receives candy for answering a question his mind relates answering questions with receiving candy. Thus, if the child wanted to enjoy candy he must answer the teacher's questions. School systems as well as parents in our society tend to have the biggest impact in conditioning the youth to act a certain way. Although teachers may help a child to adjust to the ways of the world, they may also be taking away from creative thought and one's desire to be a pioneer.

In the book Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, conditioning is largely evident. The world revolves around sex and the use of a drug called Soma. Soma is a drug that makes one feel good. The use of soma and free sex is to control the citizens and make them satisfied with the life that has been created for them. People are conditioned in the World State to achieve "perfect harmony." However, John, the central character of the novel who represents the author's viewpoint and whose father was the Director of the World State, is disgusted by these conformities. Everyone was conditioned to believe that as long as they feel good and conform

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to what rules society has made, everything will be perfect. This type of conditioning, although on a much higher scale, is slightly similar to the conditioning we face in our school systems. Throughout schooling, teachers drill the idea that one must work hard and get good in order to go to a good college and be successful. Much like the people in the New State, students conform to a set of issued "guidelines." I witnessed numerous students in high school break down in tears over bad SAT scores. Some people honestly believe that one cannot achieve success if he scores low on his SAT test.

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