Technology, Freedom, and the Persistence of Nineteen Eighty-Four:

Becoming Critical Consumers of Our Freedoms

Amanda Wlock

This curriculum unit, which may be appropriate for any classroom schedule, is designed to interrogate the intimate relationship between technology and the dangerous consequences it may have to our freedoms via George Orwell’s dystopian Nineteen Eighty-Four. In combining Orwell with the twenty first century, students will have a space to discuss and contemplate the effects of technology on their world and what that might mean for our evolving sense of privacy, freedoms, and why. Students will explore the novel throughout paying particular attention to significant, theme-revealing passages provided by the teacher or by themselves. Teachers are offered a reading guide model that can serve as an activating strategy or reading comprehension booster for the beginning of the novel to introduce readers to Orwell’s language, style, and the dystopian world he created. If the teacher would like to sue excerpts from the novel, an outline is provided as a suggestion for how to structure an outline to be used in conjunction with a lesson on effective writing techniques. Also included is a culminating project that combines research and creativity.