Animal Farm: Education and Learning

By: Jake Highton, John Ward and Laura Samways

Why did Napoleon concentrate on teaching a small group to

read and what were the results of this?

• Napoleon didn’t teach all the animals to read because he used his ability to read as a power against the animals, which he couldn’t have done if they could read and write too.

• Like the 7 Commandments – he got Squealer to change the commandments so when the animals went to see what the were, they couldn’t read them so didn’t know the difference.

Does education and intelligence help to bring equality across the Farm?

• No - because the pigs got better educated than the others which gives them power and then they take charge of the other animals. The Pigs also learnt how to walk which leads to the pigs having more power than the others, therefore it just becomes unfair on the others.

What does education, and ultimately, intelligence, give the pigs? And yet what

has it not taught them

• Giving the pigs education and ultimately intelligence gives them an edge and a power over all the other animals. I know this because Squealer is a very intelligent pig and is very good with his words and is able to manipulate the animals using very long and complex words and sentences to tell lies to the other animals and confuse them so that they just turn their heads and get on with their lives with no questions asked.

How would the revolution have been different if all the animals were able to read and write, not only the pigs?

The only animal that could really read on the farm, apart from the pigs, was Benjamin. If all the animals could read and write then they would be able to tell that the 7 commandments were changing and this might then mean they will rebel. This might then have show that communism can work on the farm.

Making reference to the other characters, explain the difficulties that Snowball encountered when trying to teach the animals how to read?

One of the main difficulties that Snowball discovered when try to teach the animals how to read and write was that they could only remember 1 or 2 letters from the alphabet. I know this from the quote “ none of the other animals on the farm could get further than the letter A ”. However, some of the animals can read but choose to only read the seven commandments. We know this from the quote “ The dogs learned to read fairly well, but were not interested in reading anything except the seven commandments”.