Soma Holication!

Free, public education was introduced to human society on a wide-scale when the American government was formed. Without the monetary restrictions set on students previously, the masses were allowed into school instead of merely an elite group of rich students. Although this allowed for a more intelligent working class, it has become taxing on a government which has to control a continually growing student population. A combination of population growth, technology, and what seems to be cultural paranoia have lead to a replacement of personalized teaching with standardized, more "efficient," government-mandated teaching.

In Sir Ken Robinson's statement about education, he stresses the harm of drugs and the "efficiency" of modern education. He says that schools are still built on "factory lines," and children are put in "batches," where the "date of manufacture" is the most important trait in their groupings. Contrary to this system, Robinson believes that children learn best through "collaboration."

In the context of Brave New World, Aldous Huxley paints an extreme version of what Robinson sees as a system of education which degrades students' minds, as all persons' ways of life. People are baked in "batches" on the conveyer belts of hatcheries and placed into social groups, such as Beta or Gamma, based on their date of creation. Instead of collaboration, every person is expected to be able to live on their own, without reliance on any other human being. No ideas are meant, or needed, to be shared. "Everyone belongs to everyone else." Yet, in the same way, everyone has no need for everyone else. Jobs are specific to one purpose and need no extra training or learning outside the requirements of their basic work. John's mother, for example, knows science only as that which provides the chemicals for her job and she is satisfied with that. Linda also has a book entitled The Chemical and Bacteriological Conditioning of the Embryo. Practical Instructions for Beta Embryo-Store Workers. She knows only that it provides her work description. She can follow its instructions word for word, but not explain them to her son. She much more likes to use "the reading machines [they] used to have in London." Linda also wishes to, after she enters her original society and every person she meets is disgusted by her existence, go on a "Soma" holiday. Soma is much like the ADHD pills given to students, in the way that it aesthetically deadens its victim to the world. Linda is a prime example of what the education Robinson refutes can do to a person; destroy their desire to think critically and instead be ready for only one purpose in life, a predestined role which keeps them incapable of improving society.