Do We Live in a Brave New World?

Certain ideas prevail cmpletely in American society's ways of educating and in how people live atogether in Sir Ken Robinson's video and Huxley's Brave New World. These ideas can be helpful in some people's eyes, but mainly detrimental in my own opinion. The need for conformity in both selections ends up overpowering any creativity or variety that sometimes provides enrichment.
In the video, Sir Ken Robinson proposes that as technology improves and there are more distractions for children who are supposed to focus in a classroom setting. Instead of utilizing these "distractors" to channel learning potential in a different direction, more children are being medicated for ADHD. Robinson points out that as you move across the country towards the east coast, more children are "distracted." Similarly, in Brave New World, the people are told and encouraged to take soma, a drug that takes them to a simple, happy place.  "...gramme is always better than a damn . . . A gramme in time saves nine . . . One cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy sentiments . . . " the members of society repeat to themselves. By essentially "dumbing them down," the government can control society in the direction they wish. Instead of alloing the human minds to progress with the cuttingedge medical and technological advances that the society in this book utilize, people's thoughts are shut down before they can grow into something tangible. Additionally, in the video, the author notes that children are still educated based on age, not ability or learning style, like a factory. He proposes that students be given the best possible success rate by placing them in an environment most nurturing to their needs. Some students who work best in the  mornings, may have all their difficult classes in the late afernoon, for instance. In Brave new World, a close resemblance to this would be how the created humans are classified by their genetic makeup, and eventual appearance. Hiwever, this system does not always work out that well for social "oddballs" like Bernard. Bernard looks and acts differently than the other Alpha Pluses, and therefore struggles to succeed.
In these selections, according to the people in charge of education or society as a whole things are running smoothly, but in reality, nothing is really intellectually running at all.