pdp1@EARTHLINK.NET on mon 11 aug 03
Hi Nancy,
...difficult matters! difficult thoughts...conflicted
'Loyalties' ...
I appreciate your willingness to look at these things with
me.
Now below...
----- Original Message -----
From: "Nanci Bishof"
> Phil,
>
> without
>
> any hesitation whatever..>
>
> When you condemn the 'institution' you condemn those that
are that
> institution. In this case you condemn the people that are
the heart of any school, its
> teachers. Without them, there is no school, just a
building.
I say, it would be best if these 'Buildings' were empty,
with a breeze blowing through them, with weeds comeing up
through the cracks in the asphalt parking lots, and feral
Pigeons making nests in the shelves...If there were any
'windows' to be broken FOR a 'breeze' to blow through, I'd
like that too.
Necessary distinctions may be hard to arrive at...
I condem ( for lack of a better term) the entire process and
infrastructure in
which Teachers, Pupils, Parents and everyone associated with
the educational system is
involved...the 'text-book' suppliers, audio-visual suppiers,
all of it...building contractors...
Or phrased differently, I recognise and do not approve of
their tacit cynicism, their implicit condemnation of
themselves and eachother in the
deluded guise of 'education' as pretext for the protracted
reciprocal 'enableing' corruption, graft, waste, imposition,
and dehumanization of all concerned.
I say as well that the process and it's products are
innured to themselves as such, and, to the violence on which
they depend, and whose effects they exploit and are
exploited in.
And I say, in effect and as aetiology of it's pathology,
they
are all victims, and all exploiters and enablers of
eacother.
Any child as acquiesces to it becomes an enabler of it.
Becomes a victim of it, and...a keeper-of-te-faith...
> Teachers are not victims. They make an active choice to
teach.
In my view of the matter, Teachers (bye and large) are
victims, and they (unwittingly as may be) victimise the
self-victimiseing children...the children are enablers of
the teachers and the parents, the parents enable the
children and teachers...the whole thing is a mess...the
whole thing is a corruption...all the
waste, all the vast sums of money and graft and budgets and
suppiers, textbooks, low-level prison-buildings, texts,
tests and attituides and cirricula that would have insulted
ANY Edwardian
era Farm Kid...on and on...and...all are victims in it, of
it , as it...
> choice in the face of low pay & scorn from many thinly
disguised by some but
> blatant by those who do little if anything to cure what
ails schools.
The 'schools' are their OWN 'ailment'...they are qualified
to be called, their own dis-ease...they are inhumane, they
dehmanize and are dehumanized, they
are cruel, they are presumtous and insulting to the innate
intelligence OF any child as is not already succumbed, as
has not made him or her self stupid,
spoiled or damaged unto self-abnigation from parental
violences and 'love'...
They will insult that innate Intelligence untill it goes
away...
> Our
> society loves scapegoats and currently, teachers within
the public educational
> system are it.
'The System'...has had about eighty years now to produce an
unending confluence of useless, damaged, inept,
freightened, philosophically ignorant, normative-psychotic,
pedantic, facile,
other-dependant people who are incapable of self government
and incapable of thinking for themselves.
Penmanship has fallen as well...
The level of 'Literacy' one may find in the average 'Letter
Home', or Diary, of almost any teen-age Civil War Soldier,
( especially, it so happens, from the 'South')
exceeds our present graduate students...and...if you do not
believe me, try reading some of them sometime...
In fact, will you do that Nanci?
...do that and then tell me what you see, what you think?
> Private schools are perceived to do a
better job of educating
> kids.
Not be me...
> In reality there is not substantiation of that
charge. They are exempt from
> certification, standardized testing or the publishing of
the results should
> they choose to do so. They also generally have a hand
picked populace with
> parents that are interested and supportive of the
educational process. They do not
> have to deal with disruptive students; they expel them
from their schools.
> Neither do they have to take all comers through their
doors. Rarely will you see
> a private school that will while public schools accept
them willingly.
Public schools take them willingly...a 'them' as are made TO
go...a 'them' as bye and large have been robbed of their
reasonable autonomy and authentic unfoldments since birth,
or have had it denied to them.
A 'them' as have had, as have recieved
no Real respect ever, from the beginning, and who have never
had very much
self respect or it's appearance without it being punished by
adults in the guise of careing about them.
A them as is 'owned', 'sent',
'made-to-go'...told they must be 'taught', told they are
nothing without being 'taught'...implicitly coerced to get
good grades or else spurrned, rejected, invalidated, reduced
to an abstraction of marks-on-paper...THAT is their
'Life'...a 'them' as gets worried about.
The true 'god' is the supressed adapted corrupted anxieties
of 'adults'...to that idolatry,. on it's altar, Children
are sacrificed...and made into 'children'...
THAT is the essential curriculum...THAT is the essential
'lesson'...
Believe me...they 'learn' it...
Anything else as is 'taught' IS taught with that as a tacit
premis and context...with 'that' as the ontological
pre-requisite...
> To educate is to humanize.
Maybe it depends on our definition of 'educate'...as well as
of 'Humanize'...
No one 'educated' me Nanci, except to try and corrupt me.
I educated myself, with what was
left OF me after school's mischief, and utterly inimical
parents, and a society as could care less.
I did not learn nor was I taught anything whatever in school
as was positively useful, or
as I could not have got or found or made better on my own.
Tell me one thing school 'teaches', that a Child would not,
or
could, not find better on their own?
We as a society do not believe IN them do we?
That they would learn and do just fine without all this
interference?
> Your charge is way off base.
Education allows us
> to go beyond the provision of the basic needs of survival
to elevate ourselves
> and turn our gaze from ourselves toward the benefit of
others.
Like the 'Yuppies'?
Or...
In what way Nanci?
>
> >
> abandonment by parents, of Children, to 'schools', and
thus
>
> to teachers as exploit the anxieties of that abandonment
>
> under the guise of 'teaching' them something.>
>
> Phil, do you even realize the attack you make on the
integrity of teachers
> you create when you say teachers exploit children?
I say teachers, if unwittingly, as they have long since
abdicated the sensiitivity or perspicuity TO see it, exploit
the social-self-adaptation-to-wrongness 'anxieties' of
stress-compromised, emotionally compromised children...they
exploit the stressful compromise children are coerced to
endure, they exploit it to motivate them, they exploit it to
punish them, they exploit it to reward them, they exploit it
to recognise ONLY the false adapted 'self' the child becomes
in it's confusion and conflicts about how TO survive an
untenible context, where they themselves and all the 'turf'
is owned by someone else whose turf they are ON and will be
incessantly reminded of that 'fact', and teachers exploit
it to even contenance the situation at all.
> That is
the point you make in
> the above statement. By accusing us as exploiters of
children you paint us as
> despicable monsters.
No...I am being as straight as I can to the limits of my
imperfect wit to do so.
I was 'sent' to scholl Nanci, please do not forget, I lived
through this, I know from my own experience whereof I speak.
AND I have seen it since...in many ways, in daily life...I
see the products of it...I see the process...every day...
> In my opinion you have a very warped
view of both the
> education system and those that comprise it. And yes, I do
think you are one of
> those I referenced who lease vitriol upon teachers.
We were all had Nanci, we all got screwed...we were all born
into this, we all find ourselves wondering what to do with
what was given, and, maybe, trying to figure out just what
we were 'given'...
We may learn how to have those 'loyalties' as appease best
the source of what had been the most effective violence to
which we were subjected, which in our culture goes by the
(vulgar tense of the) term 'respect' ( fear and subjegation)
and maybe 'safety-from-the-violence-of-the-protector'...
As a culture, we are rife with it...
Can you see it?
> The subject I teach is art. What I teach are skills for
living; creative
> thinking, problem solving, critical analysis, appreciation
for viewpoints and
> messages other than our own. I also teach math skills and
concepts as well as the
> language arts we use in description or explanation. I
guide my students to an
> appreciation for the interconnections between what is
produced in art, the
> conditions of society, belief systems, and the government
of the inhabitants of
> an area.
Then take it a little farther Nanci...
Overcome your cross purposes as occulate your abilities to
see better...examine your loyalties and the source of those
violences you with to be safest from...and what they really
are in practice.
We are in a nightmare, the courage to see it is a worthy
occupation of those things you mention yourself to teach.
Maybe you will find you have woke up...in the 'Enemy
Camp'...
>I guide them to see the beauty in art made by
less skilled hands than
> those of a master. I guide them to see that assessment
should include
> incorporating the knowledge base and skill level of the
creator of the artwork not
> just how it stacks up to the Western European masters.
And do you believe they would come to no notions in these
matters from their own experience?
Is this like teaching Birds to 'Fly'?
How hard it is TO do, especially if it is mostly
interfereing with them?
They do not 'need' to be taught these things...it is a heavy
and undercutting presumption to suppose they did, and do not
think it is lost on them, either...no matter their exploited
fish-in-a-barrel 'need' for your approval, tacit ot
otherwise...
> I
lead by example through
> participating in giving back to our community through our
art by serving on
> the organizational committee for brAIDS' ArtReach and
donating works to local
> charities for fundraising events. As a class we create
bowls every year for the
> Empty Bowls project. I also teach fairness in dealings,
respect for others,
> socially acceptable behaviors, dispute resolution and
hopefully responsibility.
Nanci...these matters are not so simple as you have
supposed.
Or...they are more simple, but not on the basis you suppose
them to be.
What we do not see Nanci, is the absence of what in
ourselves, as would have seen it.
Clearly, to me, you are a very dedicated, resourceful,
brave, committed, careing Woman.
I am confident we would regard eachother well if we were to
meet or get to talk in person.
Or maybe you would think I am an annoyance and that I do not
appreciate things...
Clearly to me as well...is that you have been satisfied with
what you were given, and your common-sense has been
distracted...and you have not examined it so carefully as
you could.
It may just have been more of a 'Trojan Horse' than you
realize...or, more of a 'Cookoo'...
> The age group I teach is middle school and they range in
age from 11 to 17. I
> don't hold them responsible for their parents, but do hold
their parents
> responsible for them.
They are respoinsible for themselves and they have been all
along.
That does not mean that there are not effective ways to
corrupt them, and confuse them, to get them to loose Faith
in themseoves and vbecome dependant on the false identities
they may make 'in' a false and inimical situation as has
almost no way out.
It does not mean we can not make them stupid and afraid and
frustrated and desperate enough to appear 'normal'... Or
that having made-them-so, we may not then say they need our
help to be 'taught', since their Learning abilities
left-to-themselves seem to be in such poor shape.
'Science'...someone once said, is the ritual interferance
with something, to allow conjecture about what it may have
been doing if we had not interfered with it.
So too this...
> nanci
Yours,
Sincerely,
Phil
Las Vegas
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