15 Ways to Connect Fahrenheit 451 to the World Today
Lots of videos your students will enjoy.
Welcome to the Plug & Play section of Desk Notes! Every week you’ll receive an ELA/creative writing activity that I’ve had success with in my classroom.
To learn about my pedagogical design, check out Field Reports.
My sophomores just finished reading Fahrenheit 451. While not everyone enjoyed it, they saw why it is relevant to our modern society.
In today’s newsletter, I share with you my favorite videos/media for connecting the book to the lives of students.
The Plan
Overview:
Relationships
The Metaverse
Robotics
Time/Social Media
Relationships
There has been some recent buzz regarding these advertisements. I show my students these videos and have them think about the kind of people and relationships we’d have if we used these technologies as shown in the videos.
Connections to the book:
Beatty mentions how people seek out summaries of things rather than the things themselves.
Mildred and Montag don’t remember important details about their relationship.
Clarisse shares how people her age don’t talk about important things.
After showing these videos, I like to show this video that presents an alternative.
The Metaverse
The metaverse is a topic all on its own that could be explored at length. Megan Garber wrote an article for The Atlantic that has stayed in my mind. The thesis is that we’re already living in the metaverse. Society has been irrevocably shaped by social media. It beckons us to experience everything with the itch to capture what we see for an online world. We live in the real world, sure, but we also inhabit an online one.
Here’s a link to the full article as well as a Google doc of the excerpt I have my students read.
We’ve Lost the Plot - The Atlantic (excerpt)
Here are some more videos related to the metaverse and the immersive nature of entertainment.
Connections to the book:
Faber says he likes to have only a small tv, something he can block out with his hand, because if entertainment is immersive it becomes hard to deny/argue against.
Mildred would much rather watch tv than read a book.
Robotics
This category is less thematically rich, but there are some interesting connections between robotics today and robotics in the book.
Connections to the book:
The mechanical hound.
A smart home that does things for the characters.
Time/Social Media
Smart phone and social media usage are the most obvious ways the ideas of the book manifest in our world today. Mildred is always watching the parlor wall TVs and listening to her seashell radios. Sounds like AirPods and an iPhone to me.
Connections to the book:
Mildred’s and other characters addiction to entertainment.
Faber’s idea of leisure (or the absence of it).
DISCLAIMER: (I didn’t share the animated short “Best Friend” with my full class last year because it is intense, leans into drug imagery, and I wasn’t sure how people would react. I’m still deciding if I’ll show it this year. If you choose to share it, there is 1 f-word that is easily mutable. The students won’t even tell they missed something because it happens when the character is off screen.)
Thank you for reading! I’d love to hear from you if you use this activity or any adaptations of it in your class! If you find something that makes it better, let us know in the comments.
Cheers,
Brandon Merrill