Growing up in school we are taught that we have to write a certain way, read a certain way, talk a certain away, act a certain way, and if we do not follow the rules, we are punished. Since we have been doing these manipulated tasks, they have become part of our culture and they have been embedded into our subconscious. Earlier in the year, the class discussed for weeks at a time about the subconscious mind. The one thing I got out of is that the subconscious mind is something that becomes programmed when one is first taught something, and from then until the one’s last day alive, they will do that task perform that task the same way. In the book Animal Farm by George Orwell the pigs use manipulation so they can take over for power. Schools and Animal Farm are alike in ways when it comes to using manipulation to get what they want out of the animals and kids.
As we grow up teachers have been telling us certain ways to do tasks. Who taught us how to read left to right? Who taught us how to write in print and cursive? Who taught us the majority of our manners? All of these things have one thing in common, school. We are put in school at a young age and at the age we are put into school our brain is still learning and developing. Rita Sather from University of Rochester Medical Center says on urmc.rochester.edu “The rational part of a teen’s brain isn’t fully developed and won’t be until about 25 or so,” (Sather). When Sather says this they are telling us that our brain is still in a state or learning new things. A majority of the time people are not done with school until they are 23-25, so this just helps show that people can still be manipulated all the way through college. Since our brain is still developing, that means or memory is just taking in the tasks that we are told to perform, which causes muscle memory. The Developing Mind : How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are by Daniel J. Siegel says “If a certain pattern has been stimulated in the past the probability the chance of activating a similar profile in the future is enhanced” (Siegel 47). This quote helps show that our brain is programmed to listen and repeat tasks that we are told to do. Once we do those tasks over and over again, it becomes an everyday function. When we go to school we have teachers tell us to write, listen, think, read, comprehend, discuss, and ask questions. These are just things we do not question because we have done them for a long time because when we were just little kids they had started manipulating us. Now it is to the point where we can not reprogram those manipulative tasks they performed on us.
In the book Animal Farm by George Orwell, he shows how the pigs manipulate the other animals throughout the story. In class we discussed who we thought the animals would be in real life. We came to the conclusion that based on their actions throughout the story, Napoleon portrays Joseph Stalin, because he uses his power to where he has everyone listening to him. Squealer is like his military leader because he helps keep everyone in line and makes sure everyone follows what Napoleon says. Then the last of the animals in power would be the dogs and they play an important role in the story because they act like the armed forces and they report back to Napoleon about everything. Kayleigh Barber from onegreenplanet.org wrote an article on Duh! 6 Surprising Facts on the Intelligence of Farm Animals says “Pigs are one of the most intelligent animals on this planet, just as elephants and dolphins” (Barber). This quote relates to Animal Farm because the pigs in the story were smart enough to manipulate the other animals too listen to what they have to say. One of the major things they did in the story was change the 7 commandments. Changing the commandments is a major thing in the story because when they did this they manipulated the animals to listen and got them to believe that they were doing it for the best. The pigs only changed the commandments because they knew that the animals would not know the difference. The other animals would not know the difference because they are not as intelligent as the pigs. This idea is just a what teachers do to students when they are little kids.
Kahlil Gibran wrote a poet called The Prophet and in the poet he has a section called Teaching. The one quote that stuck out to me was when he said, “The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not his wisdom but rather of his faith and lovingness” (Gibran 35). People could say that teachers only want the best for us and want to teach their students how to do tasks correctly. When they are teaching these tasks to us they are using a way of manipulation. They are showing their kids way that they should do things correctly, and if the kids do not do them correctly they get punished. If they are punishing the kids for trying something new and not getting it correct, how are they showing us their lovingness? Parents should be able to trust that teachers want and teach the best for us kids, but in the end the teachers are just manipulating us to do tasks that may help us succeed when we are older. I have always wondered, what if these tasks that they tell us do not help us in the end? What do we do then? If people see signs of others being manipulated they can help prevent it from happening because if we do not stop it then it can just be a downfall effect of society. Orwell might be showing us what can happen to a society when they get manipulated, and that is one can not tell apart the difference from the other, like how they could not tell man apart from pig.
According to Del Stone’s Youtube video on One Minute Prospects: Production Line Education?, he says “We are still put into batches by age group, by subject, by how intelligent they are, but why do we do this” (Del Stone, 00:00:21-00:00:38). Stone is trying to help put perspective that schools are putting kids with certain groups of people. It is almost like a factory line, so the time from when we are little kids to the day we graduate we stay with that same batch of kids we have always been with. The factory line begins with the Superintendent and she would be the CEO of the company, she runs the whole show and factory. Then it would go to the Principal how would act as the manager and the manager has to listen to what the CEO tells them or they will be kicked out. The managers then tell the employees what to do and those would be the teachers. The teachers are the ones who have made the kids to who they are today. They have told embedded into our brains we have to be in class on time, we have to have assignments done on time, we have to raise our hands to talk, and many other things we do are because teachers have told us to do them. Once the employees are done with the product, which would be the students, they put them out into the market ready to go. But as students we have had our hands held through this thing called life and many of us do not know what to do with it after we have graduated.
Schools and Animal Farm are alike in ways when it comes to using manipulation to get what they want out of the animals and kids. We have been manipulated for our whole lives because for the first sixteen plus years we spend the majority of our time in school. Aniaml Farm is another way to help show that manipulation is a major thing that can happen to anyone. Even with people thinking that teachers are just trying to help influence us to do the right thing, that lovingness that they show us is a way of manipulation. With Del Stone’s video he showed the world, school acts as a factory line and in the end we all just end up the same, manipulated and confused on how the world works.
Works Cited
Barber, Kayleigh. “Duh! 6 Surprising Facts on the Intelligence of Farmed Animals.” One Green Planet, 28 Sept. 2015, www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/surprising-facts-on-the-intelligence-of-farmed-animals/.
Gibran, Kahlil. The Prophet. Pocket ed. New York: Knopf, 1995. Print.
“One Minute Prospects: Production Line Education?” Youtube, uploaded by Del Stone, 27 January 2013
Sather, Rita. “Understanding the Teen Brain .” Ice Packs vs. Warm Compresses For Pain – Health Encyclopedia – University of Rochester Medical Center, www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?ContentTypeID=1&ContentID=3051.
Siegel, Daniel J.. The Developing Mind : How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are, Guilford Publications, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/richland/detail.action?docID=864766.