Animal Farm

Education empowers different groups in Animal Farm. Orwell explores the good that education can do while suggesting that a lack of education is disempowering. However, through the pigs, he shows that corrupt groups are aware of the power of education and exploit this power to perpetuate corrupt regimes.

One of the key messages of the text is the empowerment that education enables. The first scene is essentially an educational lesson to the uneducated masses; Major sees education as a key part of setting his vision for equality into motion, suggesting that true equality can’t be achieved until everyone has access to information. At first, the pigs continue this policy, teaching everyone about animalism. The animals also make efforts at first to preserve the farmhouse as a museum and keep the humans’ gun as an artifact, suggesting the power of collective memory when it comes to fighting for change. Later in the text, the power of education partly comes to fruition as the animals can read the words “horse slaughterer” when Boxer is taken away; while they cannot stop what is happening, they are at least armed with information, which reflects the novel’s message that people can hold onto Hope for Equality in difficult times.

Similarly, Orwell portrays the way a lack of education is disempowering. Although the animals are all educated to an extent, the supposedly less intelligent animals are taught simpler lessons, and soon their lack of education prevents them from being able to process complex information or critique the information that the pigs feed them. They are taught to memorize, not analyze. Many of the animals do not understand the policies regarding the windmill, and the younger animals accept new doctrines without question at the end of the novel. Furthermore, no one by the end can remember the old days since the pigs use the farmhouse and guns and don’t keep the museum, suggesting the destruction of collective memory to disempower people.

Orwell further suggests that education empowers the wrong people when it is not accessible to all. The pigs build a schoolhouse only for themselves, and they are the only group that learns to write; they recognize the power of education and preserve it for the ruling class. They also harness the power of education for indoctrination. For example, Napoleon takes away newborn puppies to indoctrinate them, and these puppies eventually chase away Snowball, suggesting that education is so powerful that it can change the thinking of an entire group. The release of misinformation and doctored statistics among the animals also suggests that the best education comes from a diversity of sources, which is prevented when a corrupt group controls education. The novella is therefore a warning that the power of education can be exploited.