Robinson lecture video

There are many parallels being drawn by Sir Ken Robinson in this video to the culture in Brave New World. Something similar that was mentioned in this video is medicating the students in order for them to "focus" in school and to become "educated", or what it means to be educated in their society. Robinson theorizes that so many kids are being diagnosed with ADHD these days not because of an epidemic in our country, but simply because students are being distracted. All the new technologies introduced in our society today are distracting the kids and disabling them from being able to focus or become interested in school; therefore, their parents are giving them pills for ADHD to help them become engaged in school, which is really just slowing them down. But that's okay; there becoming "educated", right? These pills taken for ADHD are similar to Soma in Brave New World simply because these medications are altering their intellectual activity in order to meet the "standards" of what their government or society considers to be acceptable. For example, Lenina complains to Fanny how she cannot get John out of her head, even though he shouldn't be. Fanny tells her, "Take soma, then" (Huxley 188). Soma is used to forget things, as the pills used in society today for ADHD is used to "help them learn". Both are altering how one functions intellectually.
Sir Ken Robinson also discusses how in education today, the schools are kind of split up into certain groups  based on their ages. Why do they do this? He also includes that there are some kids that are younger that have more knowledge than the older kids simply because of the environment and the way they learned in school growing up. This is similar to Brave New World because in their society, they produce human beings that are split up into batches based on their intelligence: Alpha, Alpha Plus, Gamma, Epsilon, etc.