Blind Obedience

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the characters with a minimum of prose. The major theme is critiquing education systems that teach children what to think by repetition and memorization. Clavell uses the story to point out how that makes individuals vulnerable to manipulation.
How many education systems look at the students as individuals? Most education systems lump all the students into a nameless, impersonal mass. In the story, the “old” teacher doesn’t always remember the students names, has never had children of her own, and her memories of all her classes led to a “legion” of faces of which none stood out. In contrast, the “new” teacher memorizes in advance all the students names and birthdays. That is enough to impress any child.
Although the children in the story resist at first, it doesn’t take this “new” teacher long to convince them to do away with the Pledge of Allegiance and to rip up the flag. Not a single child could explain why they say the pledge or what they were pledging ...

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