Animal Farm

1. S5 Animal Farm

2. Good Morning S5! • Today we are going to... • Consider how education is used in the novel. • Think about structure. • Continue work on chapter questions.

3. Education • Key Point • Two very different views of education...Educated versus uneducated animals. • Knowledge is power! • Find quotes in chapters 2 and 3 that show the pigs’ intelligence.

4. Intelligent • “The work of teaching and organising the others fell naturally upon the pigs, who were generally recognised as being the cleverest of animals.” (page 9) • The pigs use their superior intelligence to manipulate society to their own benefit. • They teach themselves to read and write. • “The pigs did not actually work, but directed and supervised the others. With their superior knowledge it was natural that they should assume leadership.” (page 17)

5. Intelligent • At first, they support the revolution by spreading it to the other animals. • As most of the animals cannot remember Old Major’s speech, the pigs simplify it for them into the 7 commandments. • However, increasingly the pigs take advantage of them. • With the knowledge that the pigs acquire, they are able to achieve and hold power over the other animals.

6. Work in pairs. • Are the other animals unable or unwilling to learn what the pigs try to teach them? • Read pages 20-23 to help you.

7. Unintelligent • The animals are hard-working, loyal and gullible. • They are naive – and not in a position to be better educated or informed. • Animal Farm demonstrates how the inability or unwillingness to question authority condemns the working class to suffer the full extent of the ruling class’s oppression.

8. Boxer and Clover • “Their most faithful disciples were the two cart-houses, Boxer and Clover. These two had great difficulty in thinking anything out for themselves.” • The horses are not natural thinkers – they represent the average working couple, without whom society would collapse. Also shown by their later difficulties with literacy which makes them easy targets for Squealer’s propaganda. • “absorbed” shows their complete indoctrination. This is shown later by Boxer’s total devotion to the farm and windmill despite the laziness of the pigs. • Without realising it, Boxer and Clover become as guilty as the pigs because they fail to realise that Animalism is at risk of corruption. • They are essential to Napoleon’s power because they recruited other animals to the positive nature of Animalism.

9. Snowball • He seeks to educate all the animals. • His attempts are commendable, but doomed. • Mollie uses her knowledge of the alphabet to pursue her own vanity, Benjamin refuses to read and the more intelligent animals (such as the dogs) will not extend their knowledge. • Few of them are willing to broaden their horizons and this makes them vulnerable.

10. The Education of the Puppies • Napoleon doesn’t have time for Snowball’s teaching. He concentrates on the puppies. • They are not educated, but INDOCTRINED (brainwashed). • “The education of the young is more important than anything that could be done for those who are already grown up.” (Napoleon, page 22) • “It was noticed that they wagged their tails to him in the same way as the other dogs had been used to do to Mr Jones.”