In Montag's society, the educational systems seems built upon the strategy of teaching people about the danger of books, critical thinking, and controversy. The authorities in this culture want the people to be happy but complacent. The people should be primarily concerned with the parlour (television) shows and other distractions. They are taught to embrace anything that is a distraction from strong feelings and profound thinking. It is implicit in this pedagogical approach that human interaction is also discouraged or at least encouraged within limitations.
Beatty tells Montag that the goal is to keep people happy. (Ignorance is bliss in this society. What Beatty really means is that the goal is to keep people blissfully ignorant.) If anything is controversial or if it might cause one to think critically, it should be eliminated. Beatty goes on:
Coloured people don't like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don't feel good about Uncle Tom's Cabin. Burn it. Someone's written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Bum the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag. Take your fight outside. Better yet, into the incinerator. Funerals are unhappy and pagan? Eliminate them, too.
Eliminating literature is one way to keep people from thinking too much about things. The parlour shows and Seashell ear-thimbles (small radios) distract people from interacting with one another and they distract people from having the leisure time with which to sit and think critically. With such little social and even family interaction, why would people still have families? Well, one answer to that is that the society needs workers. In this world, families and/or couples are simply a means of reproducing more workers, firemen, automatons, etc.
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