Melissa Bray

8 March 2019

Midterm Part 1: Does Secondary Education Need Utopia?

     Not only am I a secondary English Language Arts and Literature teacher, but I like to think of myself as a lifelong learner and student as well. From the time I was sitting in a cramped desk in a high school classroom, most of the literature I have been exposed to has been canonical, from Shakespeare to Orwell, and I now recall that a lot of the texts I have read would fall into the “dystopian” genre of literature: Lord of the Flies, 1984, Anthem, etc. Even when I graduated and was able to pick my own texts, I was drawn to young adult fiction, many novels that are also categorized as “dystopian”: The Hunger Games trilogy, the Divergent trilogy, the Scythe trilogy, etc. I even teach and recommend many of these dystopian novels to this day, and in my first research post I addressed how and why, ironically, so many young adults are drawn to the dystopian genre of literature. One of the main reasons I signed up for this course is because I did not even really know that there was “utopian” literature, and I wanted to learn more about it and find out if it is something I enjoy and can fit into my own curriculum. For this midterm assignment, I will look at four other students’ works, authored by J. Gray, Chrissie Johnston, and Kristine Vermillion, in order to identify if all secondary education is “dystopian-centered,” and if there is room, or even more of a need, for utopian literature in the classrooms and lives of young adults.

     In J. Gray’s research submission “Modern Day Education = Modern Day Dystopia” (2019), Gray asserts that modern day, charter schools fit the bill when it comes to the description of a dystopian society. Many of the texts we have read, especially Herland, illustrate these perfect, equal, community-serving societies, much like Gray argues that charter schools originally intended to be (or give the appearance of being), but she admits from personal experience that these schools “create an even more segregated school system than the inclusive one they were aiming for.” As I pointed out in my own research post, Gray also acknowledges how students in secondary educational settings are under authoritative control each minute of the day, especially at school where they are expected to: dress a certain way, have their freedom of speech stifled, be under constant surveillance (by teachers, school police forces, and security cameras), move in coordination with the sound of a bell, and suffer through hours of curriculum that is strictly geared towards state testing. Gray observes how these restrictions makes it to where “students are unable to find true identity” because they are forced to “forego art, personal expression, and even access to technology,” which “sounds unwaveringly similar to [Anthem’s] Equality 7-2521’s inability to discover his true self until he breaks free from the system.” Just like Gray, I agree that this type of educational experience is not adequately preparing students for the “real world”; thus we (as teachers) try to find outlets and literature with powerful messages and themes about equity rather than equality, fighting for what you believe in, survival, etc. (often found in dystopian novels) to try and give these young adults a tether to or leg-up on the problems they will face after they have graduated. Through the analysis of Gray’s paper, I have realized how much her research and personal experience coincides with my own, and it proves how secondary (public or charter) schools are “dystopian-centered,” not just in what they teach, but how they are run.

     While Gray compares charter schools to modern dystopias, Chrissie Johnson analyzes the appeal of dystopias for young adults and how utopias might also appeal to them. Johnston has two research posts from 2011 that I have found valuable in my research, one titled “The Appeal of Dystopian Literature to Young Adult Readers” and the other “Teaching Utopias.” In “The Appeal of Dystopian Literature to Young Adult Readers” (2011), Johnston addresses many things that I unknowingly later addressed in my own research post: teenage students are very diverse and they are going through very radical changes, often having to balance their hold on childhood innocence and their being thrust into adulthood responsibilities. Like myself, Johnston questioned why dystopian literature is so appealing to students, and we came to similar answers, but Johnston more eloquently described it with the help of one of her sources. “Hintz says that in dystopias readers find well-designed and laid-out societies, intriguing leaders and masterminds, control over personal freedoms, and the needs and protection of the collective of higher priority than those of the individual. Hintz points out that in young adult dystopias a child or teenager is often the protagonist. Another popular story line includes a kid or group of kids creating their own specialized world as an escape mechanism,” Johnston states. Here in these dystopian novels, teenagers are presented with other teenagers who are having to make adult, life-altering decisions that often regard control, power, etc., and students cannot help but to find that intriguing while also relating to it. While students are drawn to the more aesthetic appeals (the characters, the action, etc.) of dystopian literature, teachers are drawn to the teaching opportunities that these kinds of novels pave the way for, such as a variety of messages and themes that teachers can discuss with their students regarding individuality, freedom, society, etc.

Johnston’s other research post “Teaching Utopias” (2011) appealed to me because this was my major question moving forward: where do I go next and how can I incorporate utopias in my secondary curriculum? Much like my initial research about teaching utopias in secondary school, Johnston also discovered that there are no utopias on the reading lists that schools create, nor is there specific mention of them in the TEKS, or Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, which means they are not banned from being taught in schools. One thing I did consider is something Johnston heard from another teacher she works with: if I did not know that a specific genre or text existed, how would I be able to teach it? I am very well-read, but if I did not know about the utopian genre, it is doubtful that many do, thus it would be almost impossible to incorporate into a curriculum without more exposure and analysis of the genre. There are two things that I did not consider though when it comes to teaching utopias that Johnston gives wonderful insight about. First, she quotes a coworker who said, “‘High school students are at an age when we need them to question so that they can be inquisitive citizens’ and with all the ‘social and political criticisms in utopian literature’ it is a valuable teaching tool.” I had not gotten far enough in my research at this point to consider the valuable lessons that utopias would provide these almost-adults, and it is definitely something I will be able to look into as I move forward in the class. Johnston later brings up more specific issues, such as “Utopia, Looking Backward, and Herland all deal with issues such as the economy, population control, and how people get along,” which coincides perfectly with the point that her coworker previously made. Utopias provide ideas and criticisms regarding certain social, political, and environmental issues that these young adults need to pay attention to and start considering before they are thrown into the “real world” where they will be surrounded by them, perhaps without a mentor to guide them or ask questions of.

While Johnston identifies how utopias offer valuable learning experiences for young adults, Kristine Vermillion’s midterm submission titled “A Collective of Individuals” (2013) offers some of the most important evidence that supports why utopias are needed in secondary education and would benefit young adults in high school. Not only do students need to be made aware of and create opinions about the issues Johnston addresses, but students need to see that schools “fail to account for the fact that society is made up of parts,” and understand that high school is only a temporary dystopia that they will eventually break free from, and they will have to find a way to be an individual in our collective society. Taking away individualism in high school (seen in rules like dress codes) makes the “community static and lifeless,” so with all the same rules that each student must follow, it is no wonder that they find school boring, stifling, and unbearable. But Vermillion addresses how “healthy individuals make healthy societies,” so maybe schools and education should focus more on discovering a child’s individual personalities and interests, and then foster and embrace their individuality as they grow into young adults. A couple of ways to do this would be career-geared courses that do not lose funding or placement because of a district’s focus on state testing, or amending dress codes with student input. Vermillion also addresses the “power of literature and its function in culture and society.” Everybody reads something, even if they do not enjoy reading: the news, Facebook posts (that are often drowning with political and social messages), magazine articles, billboards, novels, etc. Every type of literature or simple written word (such as a billboard) has the potential to affect culture, society, an individual’s beliefs, etc. Any form of the written word has the power and potential to change things. Thus it is important to give students both sides of the story and let them make up their own minds (meaning not only dystopian literature, but also utopian). “For this reason alone, in my opinion, it is a particularly powerful genre, especially if it helps steer us away from making dystopias but rather helps us to build better societies, and this is ultimately a process deeply involved in the interpellation and development of individuals within the collective,” as Vermillion puts it. In other words, we as teachers need to help students find themselves as an individual, and then foster and embrace that individuality, while also teaching them how to function as that individual in society. Utopian literature provides students an opportunity to see characters that are creative, out-of-the-box thinkers that make an effort to positively impact and improve their societies. And those are the types of individuals society needs young adults to grow up to be.

 From the research gathered in the other students’ texts, it is safe to assert that a majority of secondary schools use dystopian texts in their curriculum because they are familiar and captivate young adults. It is also not far off the mark to compare secondary educational institutions (whether they are a charter or public school) to familiar dystopian societies found in literature. If given the resources and the time, teachers could analyze utopian texts and find ways to incorporate them in secondary curriculum, and it can easily be justified to district and campus administrators due to the valuable lessons and conversations that utopian texts would ignite with students, identified in Johnston’s post. However, one of the most valuable things that utopian literature offers young adults is the lessons of how to think outside of the box, and generating opinions and ideas about how to not just improve their lives, but how to improve the environment, government, etc., and the lives of other people. This lesson can be taught by pointing out a student’s individuality, and what ideas and skills they have that makes them unique, and how that can best be used to make a difference or positive impact for others than just themselves. We as teachers can teach kids how to be functioning, productive, unique members of the collective society that Vermillion mentions. From this class and midterm experience, it has become quite obvious to me that secondary schools are in desperate need of utopias so that students can see what they could look forward to and build, instead of just the temporary messes and decisions they need to escape from.

Midterm Part 2: Crawling Before Walking, Learning Before Teaching: Utopian Edition

Upon entering this course I knew about the concept and the generally accepted definition of utopia due to my past exposure to dystopian novels, but I did not know that utopias are like their own genre or that there were so many utopian texts. Because of a past course with Dr. White (Literature of the Future), I knew most of the terminology, such as dystopia, utopia, and millenium, etc., and I had learned about popular beliefs regarding these terms in literature. For utopias, it is common for readers to dismiss utopias and believe they are all about “perfect worlds” that will “never work” or happen, but I have come to develop my own working definition for “utopia.” For me, a utopia is not just an “ideal society” that someone has conjured up in their imagination and written about. Instead, the authors of these texts are visionaries, reformers, and they are attempting to solve the world’s problems. When we looked into web posts about the authors we learned that many of them worked with the law, social and political reform, etc. Therefore, these texts are full of out-of-the-box ideas concerning issues that the author wants humanity to recognize, think over, and perhaps steal bits and pieces of commentary or suggestions from, so that possible solutions can be implemented in order to better improve “real” conditions and situations found in society. It seems like utopia being defined as a “literature of ideas” is more relevant and accurate considering there really cannot ever be a fixed definition of utopia because “one man’s utopia is another man’s hell,” or dystopia. Humanity and people are not “one size fits all,” thus these texts give people a number of ideas that could be implemented in order to improve humanity and the ills of society.

Before diving into how these authors identify, discuss, and make suggestions to “fix” society, I would like to point out that often the concepts and ideas explored in utopian texts are exaggerated, but it is just to draw more attention to those particular issues. For example, the author of Herland and all of the “real” world knows that each nation is made up of both men and women, and that fact will probably never change. The focus was not on telling the world that women need to get rid of the men and take over, but instead the message being communicated was more about how humanity, as a whole, needs to focus more on the education of children and replenishing the environment (specifically concerning trees and food-bearing plants), things that are not considered “masculine” and that are not generally undertaken by patriarchal hierarchies. In Ecotopia, Callenbach’s characters have completely done away with cars in order to prevent further air pollution, but vehicles are such a staple in society today, so that instead of completely doing away with them, as Callenbach might be suggesting (what would we do with all that plastic and metal anyways?), society has just tried to find ways to make them more fuel-efficient and eco-friendly. Even though some aspects of utopian novels are exaggerated, it does not mean that authors do not include features of realism and other conventions that help readers identify novels of the genre.

In every class I have ever taken with Dr. White, I have always heard him emphasize that literature has two purposes: to instruct and entertain. Literature must be entertaining in order to keep readers interested in turning the pages, but authors are often crafty in their ability to subliminally (or even more obviously) include their beliefs or criticisms about particular aspects of humanity, culture, or society. In doing so, many authors use particular features and conventions that are often common in the genre they are writing in. One major commonality in the dystopia/utopia genres is that the texts we have read can be generalized to where dystopias tend to focus on individualism (i.e. Rand’s Anthem character Equality realized he was different from his “brothers” and left with the Golden One to start a new civilization), while utopias tend to focus on community and people doing what is best for one another or humanity as a whole (i.e. Herland’s women focus on children and the practices of motherhood, while Ecotopia’s characters focus on improving the environment in order to improve everyone’s quality of life). While individualism vs. community is a prevalent theme and convention, there are several other features and conventions that appear that I might not have been able to identify on my own without the help of this course and my classmates.

While reading the texts throughout the course, our class has discussed several standard text features that appear in our utopian literature. For example, one of the biggest features that struck me is how these utopian societies tend to be hidden away, guarded, or separated from the “outside world” by geography. In Thomas More’s Utopia, the utopia is an island that is separated from the rest of the world by water, thus it is secluded in the sea. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland presents readers with a woman-dominated society that is hidden away in a jungle on a secluded cliff. Even Ernest Callenbach presents us with a society that is attached to, yet still secluded from, the United States in his Ecotopia, where the Ecotopians are separated from the rest of the country by the Sierra-Nevada Mountains. Another common feature of utopias is that there is not a lot of plot or conflict development because much of the story has to be dialogue/monologue in order for the narrator to explain to the reader how the utopian society functions, its laws, etc. Minor conflicts do arise, usually in the form of relationships or adjustments to the new society, which can be assumed to be for entertainment value to hold on to the reader. For instance, in Herland, Terry causes quite a bit of conflict with his misogyny towards the women and trying to sexually force himself upon his new wife, and Weston in Ecotopia experiences some conflict with Marissa’s openness about their relationship and during the war games. While there are several text features that can help readers identify utopian novels, I think what makes identification easier is the writing and storytelling conventions that the authors employ.

Aside from text features, there are a number of conventions that appear in utopian literature. One major convention is that the authors of utopian texts find a few of what they think are their society’s errors and then focus on those in their novels. I already discussed the concept of individualism vs. community, but there are numerous other issues and ills of society that our course texts focus on. Thomas More’s Utopia did not have one particular focus, but instead on several, such as: the judicial system (particularly when it comes to prisoners), poverty, institutions such as marriage, etc. Ayn Rand’s dystopia Anthem shows a utopia-gone-wrong, and emphasizes how when there is too much focus on the “we,” or society, that we lose ourselves, our individuality, and our ability to progress and move forward. Gilman’s Herland focuses on issues that have to do with patriarchal societies, such as: women being viewed as nothing but a sexual object or a person thats only work is to keep house and raise kids, how children are educated, etc. Callenbach’s Ecotopia tends to give readers a more “hippie” focus, with the story’s emphasis on sexual freedom, reforestation, recycling, and ridding the world of harmful pollutants. Most of the utopias do express this decentralization of government factions or hierarchies (such as social and patriarchal ones), but readers do often see segregation still present in these societies (separation of men and women in Herland and Anthem, separation of races in Ecotopia, etc.). While the list of conventions could probably go on forever, these are just some that have been the most obvious and interesting to me, but another thing this course has taught me is how much utopia intertwines with other literary genres.

     In class, we have discussed several genres and subgenres that tend to go hand-in-hand with utopian literature, such as: travel narratives, science-fiction, fantasy, speculative fiction, and even romance. Utopia, Herland, and Ecotopia all tightly fit the bill of a travel narrative, because in all three texts we have a narrator that tells us how they got to the utopia, what they saw and experienced, and descriptions of how the people of these societies function. The genre of science-fiction appears especially in Herland because women are able to become pregnant and give birth without requiring male fertilization of an egg, which is also known as parthenogenesis. While I have not gotten very far in the book, science-fiction and fantasy also seem to appear in Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel The Dispossessed because of the popular convention of using space-travel in the novel. Romance, or at least romantic notions, appear in many utopian novels because of the travel/quest conventions, and even in its simplest definition, some of the characters in utopias find lovers/love while on their adventure, and they either decide to stay in the utopia for love or take their lovers with them (seen in Ecotopia and Herland). Last but not least on my list, I especially identify the subgenre of speculative-fiction in utopian novels. According to the speculative fiction page on the course-site, speculative fiction has richer characterization and gives readers “less escapism and subtler attention to society and politics than standard science fiction.” Most of the characters in the utopian novels we have read so far did not have characters that were trying to escape, but were instead more interested in exploring and learning about the utopian society, and readers were given characterization and details to learn more about the characters they were following and having to learn from (primarily from the narrators, i.e. Weston in Ecotopia gives a lot of detail about his lovers, his sexual experiences, and his own appearance/personal life). Additionally, utopias definitely focus on societal ills (i.e. environmental factors, politics, poverty, etc.) as mentioned in the previous paragraph of this essay. I think most of literature experiences crossovers between genres, so it is nothing unique to utopias, but the fluidity and flexibility of literature is part of what makes it so interesting, and it reveals how authors can take so many different types of techniques and ideas and meld them into one work of art.

     While some of their ideas seem far-fetched and unattainable, these authors of utopias are have only tried to communicate the concept of unified and serviceable communities, but there are many people in the “real world” who have tried to achieve such communities, some of which have worked better than others. The first utopia to really appear in a book (which many people believe is the world’s real origin and history) would be the Bible’s books of Genesis and Revelations. In Genesis there is the utopia known as the Garden of Eden, where Adam, Eve, and (would have been) all of mankind could live with no fear of hunger, pain, etc., and everyone would have worked together to tend to God’s animals and garden. Because of Eve’s indiscretion of eating the apple, mankind was forced out of the garden and into a world of sin, but Revelations offers a second coming of a utopia after the apocalypse, where the world would be restored to God’s order in the garden and become paradise. Outside of texts though, we have examples such as the Pilgrims and Puritans. On the course-site, there are quotes from Pilgrim documents that announced how they were coming to America (a “new world” where a utopia could be built) to flee prosecution and “recover primitive order, liberty, and beauty,” and how they would “combine” in order to do what would be best for the “good of the colony.” The Puritans appeared to be even more community-centered, even communistic, because they wrote about how “anyone who has too much must give to those with not enough,” and how “if one member suffers, all do.” Both the Pilgrims and Puritans attempted to create Christian commonwealths, and build communities that would be unified and work for the best for everyone. In the 1960s and 70s, hippie communes and intentional communities started to arise in America more frequently, such as Twin Oaks, which is an intentional community that is still thriving today. Suburbs and residential neighborhoods have also become miniature, modern, utopian communities with their gates, rules, identical houses/lawns due to HOAs, and some even have their own community/recreation centers, restaurants, and shopping centers. All anyone wants is to be happy, so we cannot blame historical figures or modern developers for trying to create these picturesque, “perfect” communities for others to join and strive to live their “best” lives in.

Like each person must crawl before they can walk, in my case it is I must learn before I can teach. What initially drew me to this course is that I did not know that utopias were “big enough” to have their own genre, let alone a course focused on them. As a lifelong learner and educator, I love learning about new genres, new novels, and new ideas that I can take back and incorporate into my own curriculum for high school students. I used to think that utopias were simply the reverse of dystopias, one being about good societies where the other was about bad ones, but after reading these texts and engaging in conversation and research with present and past students, I have learned that there is so much more depth to be found in utopian texts. This depth is what has driven me to read and explore the course texts with greater attention and with the course questions and objectives in mind.

     I am particularly interested in course objective 5c, “Why do American curricula emphasize dystopias?” If I were to revise this objective, I would like to include how utopias can be incorporated into secondary curriculum, and what lessons, themes, and values do utopias bring to readers that dystopias might not. My first research post and the part one section of my midterm has focused on these additional questions I would add to objective 5c because of my background as an avid reader and an educator. After reading these novels and learning more about their authors, I have come to the conclusion that utopian literature serves as a guide to history and issues our world has dealt with in the past, but these authors are also serving as guides, activists, and educators about possible ways to create a better future for ourselves. Since I teach young adults and our next generation, I find these topics and messages very important and I think it it crucial to expose students to this kind of literature and lessons so that they can carry on and make changes in the “real world” after they graduate.