File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9803, message 101


Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 17:26:41 -0500
From: Yoshie Furuhashi <Furuhashi.1-AT-osu.edu>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Fall of the English Empire


Nancy wrote:
>No matter how hard we listers shut our eyes and wish for the revolution to
>happen tomorrow, it won't until the people are ready for it. So, how will
>the people become ready for it? By gaining awareness and confidence in their
>own power to make a difference.
>
>Revolutionary awareness can be created in the classroom by helping students
>see that (1) we have social, economic, and ecological problems which affect
>us all, (2) all our problems are related because they derive from one source
>-- the capitalist system, and (3) we must unite together to solve our
>problems by ending capitalism and establishing a democratic socialist society.
>
>Revolutionary confidence can be created in the classroom by helping students
>(1) realize that knowledge derives from one's own life as well as from
>"academia," (2) view the academic canon from the perspective of one's own
>perspective and vice versa, and (3) express one's values, opinions, and
>learning to their compatriots, while at the same time listening to values,
>opinions, and learning of their compatriots. Learning about ourselves,
>learning about each other, learning to communicate -- how to meet the other
>person where they are "at."
>
>This may be difficult to achieve at a mainstream school, because of course
>the schools are an arm of the state -- they teach everyone to do the same
>thing at the same time, and above all to accept someone else's authority
>over their own. I feel very fortunate that I am able to teach like this
>where I work, but I know that everyone can't where they work, cause I used
>to work in a traditional school too. If all schools were like my school,
>then we would be having the revolution today; and as we all know, we are
>not! (PS: Don't get all jealous of me now, because I don't get paid crap!)
>
>I guess the point is -- there is an "alternative" tradition out there that
>is good for something besides massage and aroma therapy (which is not to say
>that massage and aroma therapy is necessarily bad, either).

I agree that education can work to a certain extent *if* it is done in the
context of actually existing struggles. I am interested in what people do
in workers' education centers and places like that. (One of the
ex-moderators of M-I Zeynep used to do exactly that, I think.) My comments
were made with regard to what happens in classrooms within the ISAs (to use
an Althusserian term), especially when teachers are forced to grade the
quality of whatever "awareness" students are supposed to achieve.

That said, I think that the best education comes from organizing for or
against something concrete, learning through successes + mistakes, and then
going to theory when one realizes the limits of reforms under capitalism.

Yoshie




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