Photo Courtesy Sir Mervs
In the movie, The Matrix, machines have taken over the world and created a virtual reality designed to keep humans in a content, comatose state in order to harvest the energy produced by living bodies. Agent Smith, a virtual G-man designed to capture and destroy humans that have rejected the virtual program, explains the Matrix to Morpheus, a human that has rejected the program:
Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world—w ere none suffered, where everyone would be happy? It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this: the peak of your civilization.
Agent Smith’s observation would be the crux of my ideal class. Agent Smith speaks of contempt for humans, but hidden in this observation is a real question: “How do humans define themselves?” I believe this is a huge question. Literature, at the very minimum, can be described as an attempt to define the world. Teenagers, at the very minimum, can be described as attempting to define themselves. I believe that a literature class that focuses on this core question, “How do humans define themselves?” would create a high level of interest to students and hopefully help them become more enthusiastic readers.
The course would need to span the entire school year as I intend to go as deep into the rabbit hole as time would allow. The course would begin with the scene I described above and a discussion about whether the students believe that we are at the peak of civilization and what role, if any, do students feel they play in that society. We would then end the discussion by asking students to discuss how they think that society is created.
After the introduction, and our focus on the “peak of civilization” the class would start moving backwards in time by examining the foundations of societies, beginning with our own. The class would first look at the “Declaration of Independence” we would look at it is the foundation piece for the United States of America. First the students would examine the language to see what values are implied and debate whether our current society reflects theses values. Then we would put on a historical lens and view the document in light of our relation with England.
At this point we would examine why people started coming to America, e.g. for religious freedom, for profit, to escape or because they were forced to leave. We would ask why America was the “land of opportunity”. During the discussion we would read selections from Thomas More’s Utopia. The students would examine how More created the concept of a Utopia and discuss the possible consequences it had on our society. The students would then be ushered further back in time to read Plato’s Republic to see how he influenced More. It is here that students would begin to think about the concept of utopias and building the perfect society. The students would be given a discovery writing assignment that would help them identify their own values and priorities. The paper would later be used when they are given a project of creating the ultimate classroom society.
The introduction to creating utopias and the paper on writing about their own values would then lead into the different types of utopias. We would begin with religious utopias. The students would read passages about the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic versions of the Garden of Eden. They would also read about the Hindi concept of Moksha and the Buddhist concept of Nirvana. The students would also look at heroic resting places such as Elysium and Valhalla. The students would be asked to examine why these utopias all seem to be places of attainment in the afterlife and they would be asked to compare and contrast the different values that seem to be placed in achieving the utopias. Were there any universal values that all societies seemed to value? Finally they would be asked to research each of these places and determine if the societies that had adopted these religious utopias reflected their values in their every day interactions.
The students would move on from religious concepts of utopia to economic and political versions of utopia, the students would examine Capitalist, Socialist, and Communist utopias through theoretical texts. The students would be given definitions of different forms of government, Authoritarian, Anarchy, Anarchism, and Democracy (Wikipedia.org) and asked to compare and contrast the advantages and disadvantages of each form of government and then evaluate which form of government they believe is most effective for the various economic societies.
When the students finish evaluating the forms of government they should be sufficiently grounded in the concept of creating a society and how to implement the societies. They would then be given the following quote from Plato:
The students will be asked to discuss the quote in relationship to the first scene we watched and the utopias we have studied and finally they will be asked, “What happens when it all goes wrong?”
The students will be read parts of Mien Kopf by Adolph Hitler, watch the movie Schindler’s List, they will listen to some radio broadcasts from Joseph Stalin, watch the History Channel presentation Joseph Stalin: Declassified, finally they will watch a video: Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple. The students will be asked to do the same assessment of values that they did for themselves on Hitler, Stalin and Jones. They will then be asked to examine how each of these leaders was trying to achieve a utopia. They will hopefully see that each of these men was trying to force their values on others.
When the students have finished examining how one person can exert their values over a society, they will then examine how societies impose on other societies. The students will watch Kingdom of Heaven to briefly touch on the Crusades. They will read A Particular Discource Concerning the Greate Necessitie and Manifolde Commodyties That Are Like to Grow to This Realme of Englande by the Westerne Discouries Lately Attempted, Written in the Yere 1584 by Richard Hakluyt (Wikipedia.org), which was one of the first writings calling for the “planting of the English race” (Wikipedia.org). The students will also read Annexation by John O’Sullivan where they would learn of the concept of “Manifest Destiny.” The students would use this background information to watch a series of films from a postcolonial and historical perspective. The students would watch, Last of the Mohicans, Gandhi, Mister Johnson and Rabbit Proof Fence. After fully inundating students with a history of colonization the students would continue to keep their postcolonial glasses on and read The Tempest. The students will discuss how our literature shaped our views of different cultures as Western Civilization collides with them. When we have finished, we will reflect on how all the ways we have seen utopias go wrong, then we would look at how authors try to teach us to create better worlds by exploring dystopias.
Students would watch 1984 and Fahrenheit 451. The students would be asked to examine what the author is reacting to and the intent of writing these stories. The students would then be split into Literary Circles for independent exploration of different dystopia novels. The students will choose from Nueromancer, Herland, Brave New World, and Ectopia. The books will offer a variety of perspectives for exploration. Nueromancer represents a technological utopia with many new words that can be examined from both a structuralist and deconstructionist perspective and Herland is perfect for feminist criticism. Throughout the literacy circle interactions, the students will explore the different forms of literary criticism and share what insights these explorations bring them.
The final project for the students will be to create a multi-media project based on all of their research and understanding of the utopias. They will be asked to create a utopia based on their values and demonstrate what type of social structure they will use to create it. They will need to demonstrate how they will address concerns and pitfalls of developing societies. They will be asked to be conscious of the language they use and demonstrate how it can affect the conscience and values of their society. And they would be asked to answer the question asked at the beginning of the course, “How do humans define themselves?”
At the completion of this course the students would have covered nearly all of the standards for the state. They will have explored mainly literature from the western world, but they would have also explored its effects on citizens from around the world and this historical evolution of different societies. They will have written, read, listened, challenged to speak and debate their point of view. They will have researched websites to understand other cultures; they will have been exposed to a variety of media from traditional literature to obscure documents to film and popular culture.
Implementing this course would not be difficult. I have done much of the leg work in designing the course, the school has nearly every in the course, and because of the literary circle format, only a few copies of each book the school does not possess would be needed to purchase. Many of the film and video clips are available free on line. The rest can be purchased at a minor cost.
I have already implemented Literary Circles in the classroom. The students are studying a scaled down version of the curriculum I have detailed above. They are exploring the same question and will do a similar final project, however due to time constraints the students do not have time to do the historical exploration.
Mr. Pippenger 