Against School
anonymous
November 2 2003, 12:11:42 UTC
What the school system did to you - and to millions of others is precisely what it was designed to do. This system originated in early Victorian England and for the US in Prussia (Germany) in the nineteen century. In England there were 4 different languages spoken (called dialect) not counting P-Gaelic (Scots-Irish) and Q-Gaelic (Welsh-Cornish). The task of the school system was to beat the “dialect” as the other languages were called or the Irish out of the kids so that they would speak a standard English. It was also required that they be able to read and write well enough to read signs in factories and take written instructions as well as do simple arithmetic. Finally they had to learn the kind of discipline the would be required of them in the newly spouting factories. In Prussia there was an additional task assigned to the new school system - prepare kids for the army and all that that entails.
The predominant philosophy of that period was a kind of mechanical materialism which essentially saw human beings as multipurpose machines (or later as cheap computers). This materialist thinking was picked up by Marx and company and permeated the thinking of the opposition and reform movements from then untill now. The system reached it’s purest expression in the residential school system here in Canada where they terrorized and beat the “indian” out of the native kids. (Just remember it can always get worse;-)
It was this kind of knowledge that sent me into the revolutionary movement in the early 60's for the first 13 years of my adult life. But I realize now that part of what put me there was the contrast between the school I went to and the system as a whole. I went to school from grade 7 to grade 12 in a place that had a 1000 or so people and about 80 kids spread across all those grades. On top of that the town was about 460 miles into the mountains from Vancouver - the train trip to the coast was 24hrs. The road into the town from Nelson - the nearest “big city” of 8000 or so - was single lane and unpaved for much of the way. (I know you know a lot of this but I may be useful to others.) In my later years in that school the principal himself was kind of a refugee from “the system”. He though that a lot of what the department of education required was crap and he didn’t hesitate to tell either the senior students or the teachers. He had only one rule in the whole school - no smoking. The rest was common sense and just don’t be stupid. He would often tell us about the stuff that the red neck types on the school board were trying to impose on the school. All this I think may have been to get us to go easy on the teachers. They were carrying an incredible teaching load and they didn’t have time to get involved chicken shit. My mother (who was one of teachers) for instance was teaching an algebra course when she was literally one lesson ahead of the students. This because she was primarily an english teacher but carried several other courses - as did others - to provide a full spectrum course availability. Respect for most of the teachers was not a word, it was an unspoken fact. Some them were teaching 7 different courses every day. The periods were 45 minutes long.
It was only later after I started going to university in Vancouver and listening to kids from other schools talk about what had happened to them that I realized how different that school was. I guess it was that deep knowledge of what was, and what could be, even with limited resources, that sent me to the revolutionary movement. (I’ve since learned of course that that movement is afflicted, at a very deep level, with the same problems as the system it’s trying to replace. But that’s another story.)
I see I’ve exceeded my character count even earlier than I expected. I’ll post this and put the rest up later S.
The predominant philosophy of that period was a kind of mechanical materialism which essentially saw human beings as multipurpose machines (or later as cheap computers). This materialist thinking was picked up by Marx and company and permeated the thinking of the opposition and reform movements from then untill now. The system reached it’s purest expression in the residential school system here in Canada where they terrorized and beat the “indian” out of the native kids. (Just remember it can always get worse;-)
It was this kind of knowledge that sent me into the revolutionary movement in the early 60's for the first 13 years of my adult life. But I realize now that part of what put me there was the contrast between the school I went to and the system as a whole. I went to school from grade 7 to grade 12 in a place that had a 1000 or so people and about 80 kids spread across all those grades. On top of that the town was about 460 miles into the mountains from Vancouver - the train trip to the coast was 24hrs. The road into the town from Nelson - the nearest “big city” of 8000 or so - was single lane and unpaved for much of the way. (I know you know a lot of this but I may be useful to others.) In my later years in that school the principal himself was kind of a refugee from “the system”. He though that a lot of what the department of education required was crap and he didn’t hesitate to tell either the senior students or the teachers. He had only one rule in the whole school - no smoking. The rest was common sense and just don’t be stupid. He would often tell us about the stuff that the red neck types on the school board were trying to impose on the school. All this I think may have been to get us to go easy on the teachers. They were carrying an incredible teaching load and they didn’t have time to get involved chicken shit. My mother (who was one of teachers) for instance was teaching an algebra course when she was literally one lesson ahead of the students. This because she was primarily an english teacher but carried several other courses - as did others - to provide a full spectrum course availability. Respect for most of the teachers was not a word, it was an unspoken fact. Some them were teaching 7 different courses every day. The periods were 45 minutes long.
It was only later after I started going to university in Vancouver and listening to kids from other schools talk about what had happened to them that I realized how different that school was. I guess it was that deep knowledge of what was, and what could be, even with limited resources, that sent me to the revolutionary movement. (I’ve since learned of course that that movement is afflicted, at a very deep level, with the same problems as the system it’s trying to replace. But that’s another story.)
I see I’ve exceeded my character count even earlier than I expected. I’ll post this and put the rest up later
S.
Reply
Leave a comment