The Job

My students have been taught for twelve, long, boring years to be who they are not. My real job is to help them peel back the veneer of all that bullshit and begin to discover their true selves. Everything else is window dressing.

~ mce

Bill Ayers

"A related challenge is to look deeply into the contexts within which teaching occurs—social surround, historical flow, cultural web. While the unexamined teaching life is hardly worth living, the examined life is full of pain and difficulty—after all, the contexts of our lives include unearned privileges and undeserved suffering, murderous drugs and crushing work, a howling sense of hopelessness for some and the palpable threat of annihilation for others. To be aware of the social and moral universe we inhabit and share, aware, too, of what has yet to be achieved in terms of human possibility, is to be a teacher capable of hope and struggle, outrage and action, a teacher teaching for social justice and liberation.
The fundamental message of the teacher, after all, is this: You can change your life. Whoever you are, wherever you’ve been, whatever you’ve done, the teacher invites you to a second chance, another round, perhaps a different conclusion. The teacher posits possibility, openness, and alternative; the teacher points to what could be, but is not yet. The teacher beckons you to change your path, and so she has but one basic rule: to reach."

Noam Chomsky

“Mass education was designed to turn independent farmers into docile, passive tools of production. That was its primary purpose. And don’t think people didn’t know it. They knew it and they fought against it. There was a lot of resistance to mass education for exactly that reason. It was also understood by the elites. Emerson once said something about how we’re educating them to keep them from our throats. If you don’t educate them, what we call “education,” they’re going to take control — “they” being what Alexander Hamilton called the “great beast,” namely the people. The anti-democratic thrust of opinion in what are called democratic societies is really ferocious. And for good reason. Because the freer the society gets, the more dangerous the great beast becomes and the more you have to be careful to cage it somehow.”

Source: Class Warfare, 1995

Awareness

As a teacher, you must always ask yourself: do I really believe this drivel I am vomiting? If not, shut the fuck up.

` mce

Noam Chomsky

"If you quietly accept and go along no matter what your feelings are, ultimately you internalize what you’re saying, because it’s too hard to believe one thing and say another. I can see it very strikingly in my own background. Go to any elite university and you are usually speaking to very disciplined people, people who have been selected for obedience. And that makes sense. If you’ve resisted the temptation to tell the teacher, “You’re an asshole,” which maybe he or she is, and if you don’t say, “That’s idiotic,” when you get a stupid assignment, you will gradually pass through the required filters. You will end up at a good college and eventually with a good job.”

Source: Interview by Charles M. Young in Rolling Stone, May 28, 1992

Remember

It isn't what you teach that matters, it's what they learn. You are not the star.

~ mce

In Which The Correct Reaction To Professionalism Is Expressed.

When I hear the word "professional," I reach for my gun.
~ mce

Robert Heinlein

"I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do."

Robert A. Heinlein - The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress

More School Stuff

If we must have public schools, each should have no more than 300 students and they should all be within walking distance of the campus. Moreover, all school employees must live in the district, even janitors.

There can be no more that two administrators per campus and they share a secretary.

Sports (including those fucking bands) are pay for play, not financed by the school. Nor will any special sports facilities be built with taxpayer money.

There must be parity in regular and special ed spending, dollar for dollar. For decades special ed has drained the public school systems and achieved nothing, but swelling its own ranks.

The school day will be no longer than six hours and will not begin before 8 am. Other than in higher math, science and AP classes, no homework may be given. This will encourage teachers to get off their fat, tenured asses and get to work.

Anarchy is based on decentralization. Decentralization is built around communities. Communities are local.

This is a way to begin.

~ mce

Sad, But True

You should know that by today's standards none of us was supposed to ever make it.


HIGH SCHOOL -- 1957 vs. 2011


Scenario 1:
Jack goes quail hunting before school and then pulls into the school parking lot with his shotgun in his truck's gun rack..
1957 - Vice Principal comes over, looks at Jack's shotgun, goes to his car and gets his shotgun to show Jack.
2011 - School goes into lock down, FBI called, Jack hauled off to jail and never sees his truck or gun again. Counselors called in for traumatized students and teachers.


Scenario 2:
Johnny and Mark get into a fist fight after school.
1957 - Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up buddies.
2011 - Police called and SWAT team arrives -- they arrest both Johnny and Mark. They are both charged with assault and both expelled even though Johnny started it.


Scenario 3:
Jeffrey will not be still in class, he disrupts other students.
1957 - Jeffrey sent to the Principal's office and given a good paddling by the Principal. He then returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class again.
2011 - Jeffrey is given huge doses of Ritalin. He becomes a zombie. He is then tested for ADD. The family gets extra money (SSI) from the government because Jeffrey has a disability.


Scenario 4:
Billy breaks a window in his neighbor's car and his Dad gives him a whipping with his belt.
1957 - Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college and becomes a successful businessman..
2011 - Billy's dad is arrested for child abuse, Billy is removed to foster care and joins a gang. The state psychologist is told by Billy's sister that she remembers being abused herself and their dad goes to prison. Billy's mom has an affair with the psychologist.


Scenario 5:
Mark gets a headache and takes some aspirin to school.
1957 - Mark shares his aspirin with the Principal out on the smoking dock..
2011 - The police are called and Mark is expelled from school for drug violations. His car is then searched for drugs and weapons.


Scenario 6:
Pedro fails high school English.
1957 - Pedro goes to summer school, passes English and goes to college.
2011 - Pedro's cause is taken up by state. Newspaper articles appear nationally explaining that teaching English as a requirement for graduation is racist. ACLU files class action lawsuit against the state school system and Pedro's English teacher. English is then banned from core curriculum.. Pedro is given his diploma anyway but ends up mowing lawns for a living because he cannot speak English.


Scenario 7:
Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers from the Fourth of July, puts them in a model airplane paint bottle and blows up a red ant bed.
1957 - Ants die.
2011 - ATF, Homeland Security and the FBI are all called. Johnny is charged with domestic terrorism. The FBI investigates his parents - and all siblings are removed from their home and all computers are confiscated. Johnny's dad is placed on a terror watch list and is never allowed to fly again.


Scenario 8:
Johnny falls while running during recess and scrapes his knee. He is found crying by his teacher, Mary. Mary hugs him to comfort him.
1957 - In a short time, Johnny feels better and goes on playing.
2011 - Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She faces 3 years in State Prison. Johnny undergoes 5 years of therapy.

Certifications

Complete bullshit.

Anyone who has a Bachelor's or Master's degree should be free to teach.

All it takes to be a good teacher is subject knowledge, personality and passion. None of these things survive the education colleges.

This will mean fewer jobs for education professors. Too bad. Let them work for 10 hours a day in a warehouse. Remind them of what it is not like to be one of the elite.

~ mce

"Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent." ~John Maynard Keynes

Tenure and Unions

Once the government monopoly on education is broken, the federal DOE and state DOEs removed and payments made to individuals to shop for what they want, unions and tenure have no meaning. Everything will be negotiated by individuals. Individuals and consensual groups are the bedrock of a free society. Forcing someone to join a union clearly violates the 14th Amendment. Individuals teaching individuals - that is the goal. Not slaves teaching slaves.

~ mce

"I think everyone should go to college and get a degree and then spend six months as a bartender and six months as a cabdriver. Then they would really be educated." ~Al McGuire

Kill All The PhDs (Mostly)

The venerable PhD once meant something. It meant that the holder had mastered a body of knowledge and then added something original to that body.

No more.

Now all it takes to get a PhD is patience and ass kissing.

The damage begins when they attain their exalted status. This is especially true of PhD's in education.

At that point they stop teaching or only teach graduate students to be clones of themselves. They direct pointless dissertations to the same end. The become whores of the corporate universities who are responsible for hustling grant money for their pimp institutions. They conduct spurious studies on trivial, hyper specialized studies that benefit the culture not at all. Then they write papers so jargon stuffed as to be unreadable to all but their limited peer group. Apparently, they think in the passive voice. They travel to narcissistic conferences where they babble in jargon to their peers. Worst of all, some numb nuts politician takes them seriously and makes bad policy out of their unscientific "studies."

In other words, they become destructive, self-replicating parasites.

So get rid of the cursed degree in every field but the hard sciences and math. If you got a real master's degree in a real subject you should be able to read, research and write from there on on your own.

If not, you got cheated.

~ mce

The only objective of true education is the drawing out of your true self. The rest is dross. ~ mce

Let's Get This Straight

You are not living in a democracy. The saintly (but often wrong) Founding Fathers did not trust the people, whom they saw as an uncontrollable mob. So they set up a severely limited representative Federal Republic to keep the mob at bay, disenfranchising as many as they possibly could to protect their own elitist positions and, of course, slavery.

Nor do you live in a representative Republic now. The man you vote for is already busy protecting the donors who got him elected. Those rich folks, corporations and special interest groups are his real constituency, and he will do what he must to serve them. Your vote is just for show so the illusion of a Republic can continue to narcotize the sheeple. Only 50% of Americans bother to vote. Either they are stupid and lazy or the understand the futility of the action and choose not to participate in the sham. Probably both,

No, you live evermore so in an Oligarchy. Look it up. Think about it.

On the next election day skip voting and do something productive: watch a rerun of My Mother The Car, go for a walk, clean your guns, take a satisfying shit. All of these have far more virtue than lining up with the sheeple to make your mark,

~ mce

"If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." - Emma Goldman

England Is Burning

You can watch it on TV as you sip your latte.

The pundits are playing it down because they are afraid of admitting what the root causes are: austerity programs, higher taxes, high unemployment, students who can't afford college or get jobs after they graduate, increasing cost of living, a shrinking middle class, an increasing gap between rich and poor, and no hope all leading to RAGE!

Sounds a lot like America, eh? The pot will boil slower here but when it finally boils over it will be much worse than in England.

It will begin with an economic collapse and then the fault-lines in America will show themselves: rich against poor, black and Latino against whites, religious factions against religious factions and finally the formation of militias and Yugoslavian decent into chaos and civil war.

Rage engenders revolution.

And again, Europeans fight with Molotov cocktails, bricks and sticks; Americans will fight with guns. Blood will flow.

Anarchy: Look For It Soon In Your Neighborhood.

~ mce

"No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time." - Emma Goldman

The Anarchist Solution

You cannot reform the education system precisely because it is a system. Once something becomes a system it forgets its original reason for being and becomes an out of control entity bent on feeding, growing and self-perpetuation. It feeds on our taxes and perpetuates itself by adding ever more layers of hierarchy to itself so it can grow and become more powerful.

So what can be done. Abolish compulsory education and see who actually shows up. Give all families a check for their portion of education tax revenues and let them spend it as they will. The only caveat would be that they must account for their use of the money and if they can't, they pay it back with a penalty to the issuing authority.

Abolish the Department of Education and cancel all of its unfunded mandates. Under the 10th Amendment to the Constitution the Department is clearly unconstitutional.There is nothing in the Constitution about education; therefore, it is a matter reserved to the states. Period.

Make everything pertaining to education as local as possible. I'll speak more to this later.

Of course this will never happen. And the reason is simple and does not involve politics or economics. The reason is that these actions would close down the biggest babysitting operation in existence and the sheeples would baa very loudly as would the babysitters themselves.

~ mce

"The modern world belongs to the half-educated, a rather difficult class, because they do not realize how little they know." ~William R. Inge

Hey There Ants

Remember the story of the ant and the grasshopper?

Check your portfolios, noble ants. Having a good day?

The bullshit belief (not just of the financiers, but of the American sheeple) that credit, consumption and growth are eternal is coming home to roost.

As for me, I remain a happily fiddling grasshopper. I checked my portfolio today. I carry it in my pocket. Looks the same as yesterday.

As a good anarchist my solution is simple: abolish the Fed, go back on the gold standard and hang quite a few bankers and politicians.

While you're at it, buy guns, ammo and and canned goods.

Greeks throw rocks; Americans shoot.

~ mce

Compulsion

I despise compulsion. I was born a rebel and have resisted every form of compulsion imposed on me. I don't like structure, hierarchy, rules or regulations. This colors all of my thinking. This is why I'm an anarchist. Hey, I'm just stating my prejudices.

But here comes a contradiction. In this sorry and failing country in which we live, I believe some form of national service is necessary.

Take the military. I hated Vietnam and I hated (but couldn't avoid) the draft. Still, I believe that a standing, professional army is a threat to any country. Thus, I would say keep the professional army, but draft the Reserves and National Guard. This, I think, would balance the inherent dangers of a professional army, be more democratic, provide young people with a chance to meet and interact with people they might usually never meet, and make it less easy for the oligarchs to begin and maintain the endless "wars of peace" that we are currently mired in by simply getting more skin in the game. Right now, one percent of Americans serve in the military. That makes it too easy for the other 99% to ignore the fighting and dying.

As you can see, contradictions are the inevitable result of current conditions. Without a tyrannical central government, what I am proposing would not be necessary and I would oppose it. Sadly, for the time being, reality must trump principles.

- mce

Consistency

As Emerson pointed out, consistency is a sign of a weak and timid mind. You will find on this blog many contradictions. In a chaotic (one might say anarchic) universe, consistency is absurd. Find my contradictions if you like; point them out if you like; but get over them. Like Whitman, I contain multitudes. There are as many ways to look at things as there are things. Dogma is disastrous and one of the major poisons contaminating our schools and culture at every level. Questions matter more than truths. There is no end to thinking.
- mce

"Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding." ~Ezra Pound

Wayne Booth

"The man who cannot think for himself, going beyond what other men have learned or thought, is still enslaved to other men's ideas. To be fully human means in part to think one's own thoughts, to reach a point at which, whether one's ideas are different from or similar to other men's, they are one's own."

Generalizing About Generalizations

Yes, I will generalize a good bit on this blog. Yes, you will be able to present particular examples that contradict my generalizations. So what? An exception does not make a generalization untrue; that would require a mountain of exceptions. Specificity and detail are fine in their places, but if you can't generalize from them, they are useless. Generalizations are where the mind transcends its dull clutter and shines. If they are well thought out.

People who worship and mass details are called Experts; often they have PhD's. People defer to them because they are Authorities. The first step toward intellectual freedom is to mistrust and question all authorities. Mostly, they are people who know a lot about one thing and very little about anything else. They are standardized souls and a society that demands standardization values them. In reality, they are insects, and disease bearing ones at that. Never accept anything they say without thoroughly thinking it through and seeing if you arrive independently at their conclusion. You don't want to be an insect. Or do you?


"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
-Robert A. Heinlein

Jules Henry

"To think deeply in our culture is to grow angry and to anger others; and if you cannot tolerate this anger, you are wasting the time you spend thinking deeply. One of the rewards of deep thought is the hot glow of anger at discovering a wrong, but if anger is taboo, thought will starve to death."

Sources

 There are many good books on education and anarchism. I'm not your librarian. If you have half a brain, you can find them yourselves. That is what self-education means. Seeking out the truth on your own.

Obey Little; Resist Much!

The Dumb Class

I have taught a great many dumb classes, enough to know that mostly we are all (teachers, students and employees) caught in the dumb class.

You get into the dumb class by blindly following societal orders. Sit up straight, raise your hand. Don't ask annoying questions. Stand in line. Wait your turn. Kiss up. Say what the teacher or boss wants you to say. Major in upward mobility. Believe that money is the most important value and confers self-worth. Chase the money. Work at a job you hate just because the money is good. Never have an original thought. Live in fear of losing the job that you hate but that defines you. Retire poor and die miserably.

And most importantly: never, ever, ask: who am I and what do I really want. That is the greatest heresy in the corporate state, the idea that you might say fuck off and then design yourself.

So let us begin a random journey through the society that, largely through school, steals your self and replaces it with its own passive, obedient, loyal version of your self.

Schooling is one of the most sinister evils of our time and getting more so. We will bounce around in no order (I am an anarchist) and see how this came to be and what we might do to undo it.

The form of this blog will be mainly aphoristic, both mine and others.

NO GODS; NO MASTERS.