The Upbringing Process: Children Assimilation

In Aldous Huxley's dystopian novel Brave New Word, people are conditioned on how to exist in every aspect in their society from the day they are born until the day they die. They are told what to feel, what to believe, what to enjoy, how to spend their time, and what emotions are acceptable. This starts with recordings played in their infant sleep and transitions into the things they are taught as children. Of course, this is all fiction, but taken from a different perspective this can be relative to the American society today. There are processes in the raising of an American child and the public schools they attend that American children are put through that can be very closely compared to the conditioning that people experience in Brave New World; Just as people are formed to fit into society in the novel, so are we from an early age.

Sustainable development is a term used to describe the education in the American school system. Curriculums are set in stone and regulated in some cities. Select school boards believe all students must be held at the same level, therefore learning at the same pace and by the same methods. Former mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg was quoted on the strict curriculum policy, explaining it as “a unified way of teaching our children.” But as always with unity, there’s something that is lost. Children learn in different ways; while some are visual, others are kinesthetic or auditory. Children who are not taught in creative ways will lack creativity themselves eventually and have the potential to become unified with their classmates in more ways than one. If a strict curriculum policy becomes widespread throughout the United States, all children will be held at the same level and will all assimil...

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...dea should never be forced upon a child, religion must be a choice.

Training American children can take many forms; whether it is how to acquire knowledge, recitation day by day in attempt to instill allegiance to their country, inducing fear of not being completely socially accepted, or forcing them into a religion they don't truly understand. And if a child were to speak up, punishment would surely follow. Children must learn in the school accepted ways. Children must stand every morning for the pledge. Children must fit in and confide in their peers. And Children must believe the religion they are fed. They don't have a choice; this is all what they are conditioned to believe. Just as the belief that everyone is important is conditioned in infants in Brave New World by a speaker repeating it in their sleep. Children aren't as free as perceived from the outside.