Reading Utopias

 I am preparing a lesson plan for an upcoming Gulliver's Travels class for the Grade 4 students, where I plan to talk about Laputa as a "scientific Utopia" or a model of a society as an operating machine. It seems that this analogy of the social machine rises to prominence in the 1500s and 1600s,with Francis Bacon's New Atlantis and Thomas More's much earlier Utopia as examples of the genre where society is set up as an operational, functioning machinery. I am not so sure if Swift's Gulliver's Travels follows the same pattern, but I suspect that its particular depiction of a futuristic society is more akin to a satire than a literal depiction of the author's social or moral ideals. In presenting a society governed by the less savory extremes of science (including pedantry, animal cruelty, and a tendency to over-abstract to the point of diminishing human contact), Swift seems to warn his readers much more than encouraging them to foster dreams of a future society governed by technology.
   I think, from a curriculum perspective, it's important for young learners to play around with these ideas. Part of my fascination with science fiction at a relatively young age is that I was able to step into alternate views of the world, as a way of questioning whether the customs and patterns I enjoy in society today are really the best or most realistic ones. As kids start to get older, I don't know whether they retain the sense of awe or wonder, but at least they do have the habit of considering ideas or proposals from fresh and new angles.
   So far, I have not read a single Utopia that doesn't have its downside. For More, it's the slaves who are kept chained in every household. For Plato, perhaps the pessimism was in hiring "outside" mercenaries to do warlike behaviors, thus sparing the lives of those in the state. I wonder if what is implied here is that Utopia doesn't make everyone's lives better, but only shifts the burdens of forced labor or war onto the "others" who are considered less deserving of certain rights. Swift certainly suggests the "downside" literally in his depiction of the island that is below Laputa, as a place where people do the necessary toil to support the flying city. Besides the oblique historical references to Ireland and England (or other forms of political oppression at the time of Swift), I wonder if this section of Gulliver's Travels can invite a wider discussion about what makes a "good" society, and whether the good society always must incorporate or "handle" the downside of people not wanting to perform the necessary services of the social world. Can a Utopia be pleasant for everyone or only for certain entitled, meritorious classes? What happens to the unpleasant tasks used to sustain such a society? These questions might form an inquiry where students reflect on similar experiences in their school.