LITR 5439 Literary & Historical Utopias
Midterm Submission 2009
Amy Sidle
Utopia and Dystopia: Education’s Role
Initially my only knowledge of Utopia was Sir Thomas More’s book, completely unaware of it being an individual genre. Though I was familiar with books like Anthem, 1984 and Brave New World and their common characteristics, I was not cognizant that Dystopia could exist as one half of an entire literary movement. Utopia has always been a concept just out of reach, something synonymous with the unattainable. Plausible, maybe, but possible, doubtful. Yet this far-fetched initiative doesn’t seem to keep historical or literary instigators alike from creating their own realities.
Such alternatives to our society provide immense discussions and learning opportunities. As an educator, I rely on dystopian literature to evoke thought in my students. In our class discussion of Anthem, I mentioned a fellow educator’s delight in dystopias as “a great way to show a lesson without being didactic in the least.” Students are naturally curious about these societal substitutes, and this genre of literature introduces to students, or reiterates, the cruel facts of reality: the separations of class, race, and sex. As one educator states, “by presenting the truth in a safe environment [students may] react calmly, analytically and with some disbelief about the books.”
In our class discussions, I have been introduced to definitions of Utopia I never knew existed. From Celebration and Oneida to Herland and Anthem, each definition of utopia varies by the specifications set forth by each group; some insist on equality of the sexes while others eliminate a sex altogether; however, within each group, there seems to be only one variable that seems to succeed: education. Whether it is traditional schooling or a common edification of ideals, societies that make education a serious priority appear to prosper more so than societies that solely believe in the utopic foundation of their colony.
To this reader the definition of utopia is good place and no place simultaneously. For our texts, both More’s Utopia and Gilman’s Herland, and social utopian movements attempt to establish their own “good place” with equality, independence and religious freedom; nevertheless, history continues to demonstrate that Utopia doesn’t exist, that it literally is “no place” and even the most sincerest of attempts will eventually fail.
Within a utopic or dystopic society, education of the young or new is crucial to the society’s success. In Utopia, More discusses how the Utopians’ education comes both from “being bred in a country whose customs and laws are opposite to all…foolish maxims, and partly from their learning and studies;” however, “there are but few in any town that are so wholly excused from labour as to give themselves entirely up to their studies” (78). So though the young do learn and the adults “are taught to spend those hours in which they are not obliged to work in reading,” the majority of Utopians fixate on farming and leave the knowledge-gathering to the select “few” that can actual progress (78). This so eerily resembles Ayn Rand’s dystopia Anthem, in which only those that show promise, according to the Council of Vocations alone, is sent to the Home of the Scholars (26). How is Utopia supposed to live equally, commonly if only a few intellectuals thrive while the others are knee-deep in dirt? It doesn’t seem to hold up to its haughty name after all.
Anthem’s society regresses in knowledge and in life, hoping to alter greatly from the nightmare they deem the Unmentionable Times. However, they merely develop their own version of terror by reducing individual identity “to category and number; birth, education, occupation, and leisure (such as it is) are programmed and controlled by the state. It is a world ground in toil and drudgery, a collective of automatons, drones pledged to the glorification of the nation, the universal ‘we’” (Hopkins 2007). After leaving the Home of the Infants at age five, children are sent to the Home of the Students until they are fifteen. Equality 7-2521 expresses his unhappiness while in the Home of the Students, for him “it was not that the learning was too hard…it was that the learning was too easy” (20-1). Despite being against the law, Equality hopes to be placed in the Home of the Scholars, to pursue his curiosity in all things; but in the cruelty of his world the Council of Vocations sends him to the House of the Street Sweepers. Thus, in his rigidly equal and drab society, Equality feels empty save when he builds upon his knowledge:
We have stolen candles from the Home of the Street Sweepers, we have stolen flints and knives and paper, and we have brought them to this place. We have stolen glass vials and powders and acids from the Home of the Scholars. Now we sit in the tunnel for three hours each night and we study. We melt strange metals, and we mix acids, and we cut open the bodies of the animals which we find in the City Cesspool. We have built an oven of the bricks we gathered in the streets. We burn the wood we find in the ravine. The fire flickers in the oven and blue shadows dance upon the walls, and there is no sound of men to disturb us.
We have stolen manuscripts. This is a great offense. Manuscripts are precious [and] rare and they are kept in the Home of the Scholars. So we sit under the earth and we read the stolen scripts. Two years have passed since we found this place. And in these two years we have learned more than we had learned in the ten years of the Home of the Students (35-6).
His self-taught knowledge leads to his leaving the communism in which he lives, and he forms his own idyllic community where he is an individual free to read “rows of manuscripts, from the floor to the ceiling” (91).
In Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, Julian West awakens from a one-hundred and thirteen year slumber in a society that very much resembles the fundamentals of communism; however, through this equal society, Dr. Leete shows West the hazards of his previous one. In the year 2000, due to all occupations receiving the same income, students are free to choose an occupation that interests them and in which they will derive the most happiness. West states that in his previous society:
The vast majority of my contemporaries, though nominally free to do so, never really chose their occupations at all, but were forced by circumstances into work for which they were relatively inefficient, because not naturally fitted for it. The rich, in this respect, had little advantage over the poor. The latter, indeed, being generally deprived of education, had no opportunity even to ascertain the natural aptitudes they might have, and on account of their poverty were unable to develop them by cultivation even when ascertained. The liberal and technical professions, except by favorable accident, were shut to them, to their own great loss and that of the nation. On the other hand, the well-to-do, although they could command education and opportunity, were scarcely less hampered by social prejudice, which forbade them to pursue manual avocations, even when adapted to them, and destined them, whether fit or unfit, to the professions, thus wasting many an excellent handicraftsman (89).
With the quality and equality of education in the year 2000, West is proud to say that “All these things now are changed. Equal education and opportunity…bring[s] to light whatever aptitudes a man has, and [nothing] hamper[s] him in the choice of his life work” (89).
In relation to Objective 4a, Gilman’s women in Herland focus their time on education when with the three captive males. Each male is paired with a tutor to both teach and learn the language, history, culture and customs of each society. On their first day of imprisonment, Van notes that “by each of our plates lay a little book, a real printed book, though different from ours both in paper and binding, as well, of course, as in type…We were to learn the language, and not only that, but to teach our own. There were blank books with parallel columns, neatly ruled, evidently prepared for the occasion, and in these, as fast as we learned and wrote down the name of anything, we were urged to write our own name for it by its side” (29-30). The women’s quality and insatiable nature of their education allowed Herland to flourish without conflict or skepticism. Each woman took pride in her education and duty within the community, looking forward to her chance to mother, of which she learned from a young age to covet.
While I respect the relation of Objective 4a within our texts, I would like to see how the academic studies and societal lessons within a utopian or dystopian novel affect or compare to our educational system. In our class discussions, we mention the roles this genre of literature plays in both our education and the education of our students or children. Could the objective absorb all roles of academia, both in literature and history?
Much like Utopia or Herland, the Oneida Community could only thrive in its own habitat, away from other’s constant condemnation so they may focus on their utopic foundation. But much like Utopia the members’ occupations were set for them by the community’s few economic ventures - agriculture or silver - leaving their sole education to their adolescent years. However, the modern creation of Celebration, Florida thrives with its numerous educational paths. Though arguably not a utopia for the community is minimally isolated and members are free to come and go as they please, Celebration does function on common ideals, including the education of its children for an endless possibility of vocations as well as the opportunity for post-graduate studies.
Nelson Mandela once said that “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” Our society is clearly a dystopia, and to this reader, a utopia will only exist in literature, no matter how hard a community might try to emulate one; nevertheless, education will be consistently the only foundation upon which to build any society, perfect or not.
Time Log: W 4-5 pm, TH 8:15-10:20 pm