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Teaching Fahrenheit 451 and Censorship w/ a Tech Twist?
scrimmer asks: "
I'm a second year high school English teacher--heaven forbid I misspell something in this post! I'll be teaching Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 for the first time this semester, and I was hoping Slashdotters could help me out a bit. I want to make the novel as relevant as possible to my students, but I would also like to work DMCA-related stuff, free speech-on-the-Internet stuff, and other issues--as seen on Slashdot--into the unit to give it a fresh spin, in addition to the traditional censorship issues normally taught alongside this novel. I've been chasing web links for weeks, but I'm afraid I might miss some salient issues. If you were a student in my class for a few weeks, what kind of angle would you most like to investigate while studying this novel?"
... if Michael hadn't killed censorware.org - as it stands censorware.net is a good resource for the info you want to teach.
And yes, I'm talking about the Slashdot editor ("User" if you will) who's username is michael.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
Also point out the television content! Game shows and game shows and game shows...
P.S.: don't forget to completely ignore the hideous movie Truffaut made! It ignores several key points and simplifies the plot to a disgusting level.
"Trust me - I know what I'm doing."
- Sledge Hammer
One story springs to mind, but I can't remember if it was on Slashdot or not. If you type a document using MS Office 97 containing words such as cretin (S.P.) or buffoon then spell check it the words exist. If you carry out the same exercise using MS Office 2000 they are now missing. All the words that could be used for personal insult are now gone from the on-line dictionary.
Given that the folks at Redmond are now controlling the English language I'd say that that's censorship.
PMG
Ok, regarding your question, may I suggest that you have the students do a little leg-work themselves? I don't know what country you're in, but here in the USA, dissident thought (something other than, "My country right or wrong"), doesn't really start until late high school, and develops into full blossom in college. So this is the right time, because your students are probably starting to question The System, if they haven't already. So have them research censorship in these modern times. Heck, if you're in the US of A, there's plenty within the last six months. Have them research charges of censorship, then make a case: was it censorship? Was it right? (This is an excellent time to introduce the limits of free speech, ie, "Don't yell 'fire' in a crowded theater.")
Bradbury has an appendix in some later versions of the book, where he details how F451 has itself been censored. (Mostly for language, although there have been some cases where it was to "condense" the story.) Get the students thinking about what it means to "edit" a story. How does this effect the author's intent? What about just replacing swear words with milder equivalents?
High school students are at that very precarious stage where they are beginning to form their own ideas about politics and the nature of government. Use it! I'm one of those who believes that a little distrust of the government at all times is a healthy thing. Teach the book in such a way to create thoughtful, questioning citizens who aren't going to take what they hear from the talking heads on TV as gospel truth. Instill in them a desire to learn more about what's going on beneath the surface.
I know you will mention the relevance of the title (451 degrees F) but you could note that Data (tapes, floppies, HDs, optical) fails and therefore can be destroyed at a much lower temperature; digital makes obliteration easier.
A second though is the role of firemen pre/post 11SE. The depiction and public perception of the job has changed. They have moved from "save a child/keep my insurance cheap/friendly alternative to scary policeman/drain on my taxes" to what amounts to trench soldiers in the battle against "evildoers".
You could ask if they think the events depicted in the book would be easier, about the same, or harder to implement with this new public perception of the fireman, the now-widespread belief that there are enemies amongst us, etc.
Firemen themselves have always been dedicated, hard-working, and commit to a very dangerous job for the public good. But has our perception of them changed, and if so, how?
This story shows the reaction of our government to limit information potentially damaging to the United States. In this case, librarians are being asked to become "Firemen" and destroy information in their care. Many people who are tasked to protect their data (backups, archives, etc.) , would be outraged if they were then asked to destroy it before scheduled, that is, unless they work for Enron. How would your students react to being asked to destroy books from their library, or music CDs?
One quote from the LA Times article sums up the motivation behind these acts that your students will be forced to challenge on their own when they graduate:
I'm not sure if sheep can recognize their own sheepness, but have your students try to identify such traits in the characters of the book as well as the main character's transition. It is safe to think freely, but eventually you are forced to act on those beliefs. Have your students discuss amongst themselves what concrete beliefs they are willing to stand up for.
give them a copy of j.s. mills' on liberty and have them read that as well and draw parallels to mills' concepts of liberty and how free thinking individuals are prone to the liberty of thought and the way the society in Fahrenheit 451 eschew those values.
Be cruel. Tell them to select a passage - any passage - that they will protect from the firemen. It just has to be at least 2000 words, and they have to memorize it and recite it during class.
(Obviously there would be some restrictions on content - nothing indecent, and possibly no scripture.)
There's actually a connection to your question here. Technology has allowed us to avoid developing our own memories, yet the same technology is now making it easy to rewrite history in a way that's nearly indetectable. Changing microfilm copies of a newspaper in a dozen libraries is hard, changing a database entry feeding a newspaper web site is trivial.
We need to develop our memory, and a 2000 word passage is long enough to be a real challenge to your students. Yet it's nothing compared to a novel, and maybe a third to half of a 30-minute sitcom.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
In the two weeks I was waiting for this question to be accepted, I put together for my students a small, research-oriented group project. I've asked them to scour the library and web in search of, among other issues, real-life incidents of "book burning" and censorship (in books, film, and music). I've pointed a few students to Neil Postman's work as well.
Unfortunately, I did not have the pleasure of reading this book until recently. It has fast become one of my favorites, and I really hope I can share my enthusiasm for reading this novel with my students.
Oh, and I put a li'l bit of Socrates in all of my lessons, not just this one.
Thanks again for the ideas
Am I the only one who don't think the theme of F451 was about censorship? I've read it several times and I think it is more a work on sociological decay than censorship. The concept of censorship manifested through the burning of books is not really a central theme. It is merely a derivitive of the enforcement of the society's weird form of socialism. The secondary and tertiary events in the book have more to do with the central theme rather than the primary actions of the primary characters. Clarisse being killed by a wreckless driver and Millie not concerning herself enough to tell Montag for over a week conveys an idea of humanism being supplanted in their society by secular socialistic consumerism. The little things like the lack of porches on houses, 200' billboards because cars go over a hundred miles an hour, televisions that take up four walls of your house, ect.. Those are the thematic elements of the book in my opinion. F451's society is a not so far out extension of American society in the 1950's. The act of censorship was just another tool used to pacify the human spirit in their society. If you wanted to use a real censorship piece 1984 would be a much better candidate. Censorship in that society was an end rather than just a means to an end.
I think if you want to add a tech twist to studying F451 have students examine things from the novel (like houses built without porches) and have them find them in real life. When I first read it forever ago I'd never seen a house with a porch except on TV when they showed some old house in some old part of the country. Then my friend rented a house with a porch on the front in a pretty old part of town. We spent a lot of time out there and met several of her naighbors just by being outside. Every time I went to her house I was reminded of the book. It isn't every day a book makes such a big impression on me that I think about it for years after reading it. Activities like that might make for a pretty cool way to study the book. Consorship issues in the tech sector might apply if you were reading The Wealth of Nations but I don't think intellectual property fits in well with F451. I'm envious of your position right now, I'd love to be able to teach that book to kids.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I'm not a right-winger nor anti-intellectual. I simply made a typo. Grammer fascists on sites like Slashdot make me mad. :D
The problem that I have with Indymedia is that while they present themselves as journalists, in reality the "coverage" it offers is Kuro5hin-style editorial content.
When I read the New York Times or Washington Post, the editorial opinion is generally found in the Op-ED section of the paper or can be derived by the selection of stories that go to print.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK