Brave Old World

Due to the long commutes to school and back, I have begun listening to audio versions of books that I have on my "Want to Read" or "Want to Read Again" list.  Tonight as I was driving to pick my husband and children up from a Super Bowl Party, I listened to a bit more of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.  It is early on in the book and one of the characters is telling the story of how they happened upon sleep conditioning.  There was a description of a long list of facts that had been read to a child while they were asleep.  Specifically, they spoke of the length of rivers in the world.  When the child who had received the sleep conditioning was prompted, they could recite the facts that they had heard in their sleep.  However, if they were asked a question about the facts, they had not actually learned anything about the rivers and could not answer any questions.  This was terribly frustrating for the child and brought them to tears.  I could not help but think of drilling students for standardized tests.