Book Journal #2

Education:

One of the things that was a big issue in Agenda 21 was education. The educational system in the Republic is extremely different than what we are used to as high schoolers in the United States. Each child born into the Republic is not allowed to stay with their parents. The mother never gets a chance to hold the child, and the child doesn't even know who the mother is. Basically, the mother carries the child, births it and that's the end of their relationship. The children live from infancy in a place called "the children's village" a single building where the eat, sleep, live, and go to school. As infants they live in the nursery, where they are not brought up like normal babies. They aren't held, loved, talked to or anything close to what we experienced as little kids. There is no nurturing for these kids so they never really learn to be loving. They grow up to be cold people who don't really care about anyone else. Obviously this is not the intention of the Republic, but as one of the characters in the book says: "You can't mandate love."

Apart from the fact that these kids didn't learn to be normal (well what we'd consider to be normal) people, they are also taught a few things: skills they will need for their particular job, and the "history" of the Republic. When we learn history in school, we learn what actually happened (at least I assume we do), but these kids learn only what the Republic wants them to learn. They learn about the history only from when the Republic took over, nothing from before then is talked about. So really they are only learning the history of less than 20 years. They don't get to choose to go on to college like we do. their schooling basically stops when they reach of reproduction (so it varies). After that, they are "paired" and sent off to live with that pair, so they can begin to have children of their own.

The main character: Emmaline did not live in the children's village, she was on e of the last people who was allowed to be raised by her parents, so her learning experience was very different from that of the children who had never met their parents. Her mother home schooled her, and was supposed to teach her what she needed to know, but instead spent most of the time teaching her about the old times, from before the Republic had become the sole governing force. Unfortunately Emmaline was not able to learn everything she needed before she was paired, so she had to learn a lot as time went on. Also since her mother had not taught her about the history of the republic she learned some of it from her one of her co-workers. I don't know that I would say that it was better that she had been taught by her mother. On one hand she wasn't totally brainwashed, and she did have some opinions, but on the other hand her mother had been an odd character and didn't teach her what she needed to know. Both had their flaws, and nothing in this society was really what it should be.