April 29

In the Sparknotes summary of the last part of "The Hearth and the Salamander," we read:
Beatty explains that after all houses were fireproofed, the firemen’s job changed from its old purpose of preventing fires to its new mission of burning the books that could allow one person to excel intellectually, spiritually, and practically over others and so make everyone else feel inferior. Montag asks how someone like Clarisse could exist, and Beatty says the firemen have been keeping an eye on her family because they worked against the schools’ system of homogenization.

One of the criticisms of the educational system in the United States and the U.K. is that schools homogenize the students who are taught in them. 
homogenize: to make uniform or similar; to blend and make similar, especially by reducting one element and blending with the other substance
Example sentence: It is nice to attend a school where the students feel like they can dress in their own, unique way rather than becoming homogenized.

Watch the following video on our public educational system. I think that you'll really like it
(Wow, something in my English class that I'll actually like?!!)
Changing Education Paradigms by Sir Kenneth Robinson
paradigm: model or pattern
Example sentence: There is a new paradigm for education: we now feel that different things are important because we now value different things

Writing assignment (2 pages handwritten)
Citing three examples from the Changing Education Paradigms video, explain why Clarisse and her family don't fit into the world of the novel Fahrenheit 451.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U
Remember, Clarisse is very different from most people in the book. Most people are like Mildred (Guy Montag's wife), who anesthetizes herself with sleeping pills and sits in front of the TV like a zombie. Clarisse puzzles her psychologists. She says, "They want to know what I do with all my time. I tell them that sometimes I just sit and think"(20).