Introduction
“Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters in your skull” (1). These words are part of the musings of a fictional character, Winston Smith, in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984. Winston lives in a totalitarian, quasi-oligarchic London society where Big Brother is always watching and erasing people from existence is the norm. This concept mirrors the main theme of my unit, which approaches the novel with an examination of Orwell’s portrayal of future socio-political structures that actually have turned out to be not too far from the truth--especially in their representation of how those structures have thrived on the inequality of the people living among them.
School Context
I have taught at Mt. Pleasant High School for five years (six if you include my yearlong residency in which I student taught at MP), which has been the entirety of my teaching career. California has the California School Dashboard, which “provides parents and educators with meaningful information on school and district progress so they can participate in decisions to improve student learning.” This report includes performance statistics as well as demographics. The most recent Dashboard Report for Mt. Pleasant is available from 2019--statistics from 2020 have not been recorded because of the pandemic--and it identifies our enrollment at 1,271 students. Of these students, 73.5% are identified as “socioeconomically disadvantaged,” 22% are English Learners, and many are RFEP: Redesignated Fluent English Proficient. We also had 16.5% of students with Individualized Education Plans (IEPs). At the time this data was collected, the racial makeup of the school was as follows: 1.9% African American, 17.5% Asian, 7.2% Filipino, 0.9% Two or More Races, 0.6% American Indian, 67.7% Hispanic, 1.2% Pacific Islander, and 3.1% White. The majority of our population is Hispanic, and the second largest population according to these categories is Asian. In terms of the “Academic Performance” section of the dashboard, we have seen a positive score in English Language Arts data, a negative score in Mathematics data, 42.1% English Learner Progress, and a positive score in College and Career preparedness. In 2019, Mt. Pleasant had a graduation rate of 91.4% (2).
One of the major threads throughout this unit has to do with civic education, an important facet of a “successful” democracy according to Robert. A Dahl. About the process of acquiring civic education, he asks, “In practice, how do citizens tend to acquire their civic education?...most citizens receive a level of formal education sufficient to insure literacy. Their political understanding is augmented further by the widespread availability of relevant information that they can acquire at low cost through the media” (3). As I am asking students to reflect on their own civic education, the availability of information in their daily lives--especially political information--becomes an important topic of conversation:
“Three interrelated developments seem to be likely to render the standard solution” of civic education “seriously deficient.” One is “Communications. During the twentieth century the social and technical framework of human communication in advanced countries underwent extraordinary changes: telephone, radio, television, fax, interactive TV, the Internet, opinion surveys almost instantaneous with events, focus groups, and so on....the sheer amount of information available on political matters, at all levels of complexity, has increased enormously. Yet this increased availability of information may not lead to greater competence of heightened understanding” (4).
There is rarely a student in my classroom who does not have a smart device (or two, or three) in their possession. These devices allow students even more access to information of all kinds, even more so than Dahl outlined in his book. Various types of social media spout political information, both accurate and inaccurate, and examining censorship and information control in Orwell’s 1984 through this context allows students to reflect on their own media consumption, especially as it relates to their education in general and civic education in particular.
In the novel, Winston’s narration shows the reader his thoughts on his own perception of reality and how it has been skewed by the government: “To begin with, [Winston] did not know with any certainty that this was 1984. It must be round that date, since he was fairly sure that his age was thirty-nine, and he believed that he had been born in 1944 or 1945; but it was never possible nowadays to pin down any date within a year or two” (5). He also reflects on the wartime situation in Oceania, where he lives: “At this moment, for example...Oceania was at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia. In no public or private utterance was it ever admitted that the three powers had been grouped along different lines...Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia” (6).
These conflicts--examples of DOUBLETHINK--between actual reality and the reality that has been constructed connects to the concept of democracy in general; “To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies...to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was guardian to democracy” (1984, 39). This particular example shows how the Party and its figurehead, Big Brother, are practically non-corporeal yet maintain totalitarian control over the people of Oceania. Contemplating these contradictions and connecting them to our first classwide discussion, where we examined Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, will help students grapple with and question contradictions in their own reality, such as the interwoven concepts of democracy and inequality.
Classroom Context
During my time at Mt. Pleasant, I have taught seniors every year. I started with the ERWC course (Expository Reading and Writing Curriculum, designed to specifically focus on non-fiction texts and college/career writing tasks), but in the 2018-19 school year I took advantage of an opportunity to teach the AP English Literature and Composition course, which is taught exclusively to seniors. One of my goals in the AP Literature curriculum has been to balance college preparatory skills (essay writing, test taking, reading strategies, etc.) with career readiness (resume building, professional email writing, etc.) and AP testing strategies. I do not require my AP Literature students to take the AP exam, but I encourage it and we practice the skills all year because those skills can also transfer into the college readiness category of the curriculum. Additionally, critical thinking and questioning skills--which will be practiced during this particular and throughout the rest of the year--are crucial in all areas covered by my AP Literature curriculum: college and career readiness, literary analysis, and preparation for the AP exam.
In the past, I have only taught 1984 by George Orwell as a summer read and instead focused on Brave New World by Aldous Huxley during the school year. However, I have found that in my multiple readings of 1984 as well as feedback from students that the novel has many themes worth exploring through the lenses of both history and current events, including the dangers of totalitarianism, psychological manipulation, control of information, rewriting history, technology, language as mind control, loyalty, resistance and revolution, and independence and identity. I plan to teach Brave New World after 1984 during the upcoming school year, and I hope to spark conversations comparing the two dystopian viewpoints. These topics are important to my students because they live on the side of the disenfranchised, lower side of the socio-economic system. In addition to this context, students in my classes are constantly on their cell phones or other devices, hence engaging with the manipulation, control, and rewriting that goes on every time they scroll through social media, as mentioned above.
In my AP Literature and Composition class during the upcoming school year, this curriculum unit will be taught during the first grading period of the semester as the first full-class text, and it will include supplementary lessons in which students will learn about literary terms, poetry analysis, and essay writing in addition to what I am about to outline for this unit.
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