И като каза, рече...

Хипнопедията (Υπνοπαιδεία) Hypnopædia (Sleep-Teaching), е концепция развита от Олдъс Хъксли (Aldous Huxley) в романа му "Прекрасният Нов Свят" (А brave new world), която е и една от любимите ми книги.

Накратко:

Идеята за обучение чрез повторение на текст по време на сън не е нова. Спомням си като в букварчето разни рисунки на мързеливи хора дето лягат с отворена книга под възглавницата и се надяват, че ще попият знания по този начин. За да се стигне до това вярване, явно се е тръгнало от някое народно поверие, според което човешкият мозък е способен да запаметява, при това да запаметява повече и по-добре по време на сън, отколкото в будно състояние.

Хъксли казва, че "преподаването" на факти от точните науки по време на сън е обречено на неуспех, мозъкът приемал единствено концепции за чувства и порядки. Груба представа за английския текст:

Опитите да се преподават научни факти се провалили и дълго време минало преди чрез хипнопедията да започне да се употребява с цел възпитание и втълпяване на лишени от смисъл убеждения.

While the child was asleep, a broadcast programme suddenly started to come through; and the next morning, to the astonishment of his crash, Little Reuben woke up repeating word for word a long lecture by - George Bernard Shaw, who was speaking, about his own genius. To Little Reuben's wink and snigger, this lecture was, of course, perfectly incomprehensible and, imagining that their child had suddenly gone mad, they sent for a doctor. He, fortunately, understood English, recognized the discourse as that which Shaw had broadcasted the previous evening, realized the significance of what had happened, and sent a letter to the medical press about it.

The principle had been discovered; but many, many years were to elapse before that principle was usefully applied.

"The case of Little Reuben occurred only twenty-three years after Our Ford's first T-Model was put on the market." "And yet …"

Furiously the students scribbled. "Hypnopædia, first used officially in A.F. 214.

Why not before? Two reasons.

(a) …"These early experimenters," "were on the wrong track. They thought that hypnopædia could be made an instrument of intellectual education …"
A small boy asleep on his right side, through a round grating in the side of a box a voice speaks softly.
"The Nile is the longest river in Africa and the second in length of all the rivers of the globe..."
At breakfast the next morning,
"Tommy," some one says, "do you know which is the longest river in Africa?"
A shaking of the head.
"But don't you remember something that begins: The Nile is the …"
The eyes are blank. "I don't know."
Tommy burst into tears. "I don't know," he howls.)

That howl, discouraged the earliest investigators. The experiments were abandoned. No further attempt was made to teach children the length of the Nile in their sleep. Quite rightly. You can't learn a science unless you know what it's all about.
"Whereas, if they'd only started on moral education," "Moral education, which ought never, in any circumstances, to be rational."
....
"What's the lesson this afternoon?"
"We had Elementary Sex for the first forty minutes," "But now it's switched over to Elementary Class Consciousness."
"Elementary Class Consciousness, did you say?

"… all wear green," said a soft but very distinct voice, beginning in the middle of a sentence, "and Delta Children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly colour. I'm so glad I'm a Beta."

"Alpha children wear grey They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfuly glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able …"

"They'll have that repeated forty or fifty times more before they wake; then again on Thursday, and again on Saturday. A hundred and twenty times three times a week for thirty months. After which they go on to a more advanced lesson."

For that there must be words, but words without reason. In brief, hypnopaedia.

"The greatest moralizing and socializing force of all time."

И сега един опит за отговор.

Може да извадиш някой от мозъка си чрез метода от края на клипчето: