According to Wikipedia, which my
students all claim is a super-credible source, a dystopia is: the
idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise
of being utopian.
I have read no less than
twenty of these books in the last little bit, and in each one there’s usually one
major crack in the foundation of the world, including: a bloodthirsty Capitol
(need I say more?); love’s been excised from people’s brains, everyone dies in
their early twenties; no one dies and young people are illegal; teens have to
go live in the woods and learn to defend Canada or something. What’s with all
these broken worlds? Why do they speak to teens? Heck, forget about the teens
for a second, why do I keep reading
these things? Because I just bought another one about some sort of crying
disease that’s killing everyone.
The drama queen in me says I
already live in a repressive and controlled state. My life is governed by
bells, which ring at set times, and must not be disobeyed. I eat my lunch, while
working, out of a brown bag, and then when I go home I have more work to
do. Since a lot of my students
work at lunchtime too, this description applies to them as well, though I do
get to sit at a bigger desk. So maybe dystopias simply take a semi-familiar
setting and amp up the stakes.
I think we respond to these
increased stakes most of all, because we as a culture often lack a true sense
of purpose, in our education and in our lives. Just this past year, I think I
accidentally broke some of my best students. We read Neil Postman’s The End of Education: Redefining the Value
of School. (If you are a teacher you should read this book—seriously.)
Postman’s main thesis is that there is no longer any true sense of purpose for
education. When America was younger, there were what he calls gods which inspired us, chief among them
was one he called The God of Economic Utility. This god’s tacit promise was
that if we work hard in school, we will be rewarded with a well-paying and
secure job, perhaps even one we enjoy. Beginning with my generation in the
eighties, this god fell on hard times, along with the rest of us, and I think
we all now realize that this promise is not one that’s always kept. One of my
students who has always stayed up half the night to complete her work
flawlessly, for years, sat in our discussion after reading this book and asked,
“Why did I do all that? What was it all for?” But much as I hate to be the one
to pull back the curtain, I do think it’s better than living in the dark.
Postman discusses other past
inspirations for learning, including a true sense of civic responsibility and a
feeling that we have a voice in the direction of our government. Obvi, these
ideas are toast too. Part of the problem is doubtless growth—as our nation gets
bigger, each of us has a smaller share of voice in how things run. But I think
kids are savvy—even those who don’t get stuck in my AP Language class realize,
if only on a subconscious level, that they are working hard, but don’t really
even know what they’re working for.
(I speak here of the kids who still work hard in school, who are also probably
sharing the part of the Venn diagram that includes the YA readers. I’m glad these kids are
reading anything, but I love the idea of dystopias because they are A)more accessible and widely read by teens than Neil Postman
and B) I think they accomplish some of the same effect: waking us up, helping
us to not lead unexamined lives, stuck on our treadmill of work and preparation
for an uncertain future. The best, and scariest of these books, I think, is
M.T. Anderson’s Feed. Anyone who
thinks that teenagers are not capable of receiving a cautionary message aimed
right at them should give a teenager a copy. Most of them get it, and they look
down at their cell phones and tablets with horror—wide awake, at least for a
moment, to the path we are all on.
When
I feel a little trapped by the bells and the doubt, wondering what I’m actually
accomplishing and what kind of world I’m getting my students ready for, books
like Feed actually give me hope. I
don’t know what the future will look like. I hope it’s not completely broken
and doesn’t feature reapings, feeds, or zombies*. But I know that the readers
will be a bit more prepared for whatever the future brings, because they are thinking—not just about what they have to do to put a roof over
their heads, but about why we are all
here. I think it’s important that at least some of us stay awake to ask those kinds of
questions.
*I’ve taken several quizzes online. I know the odds aren’t
in my favor in the event of a zombie apocalypse L
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