3 As is true for most people I know, I've always loved learning. As is also true for most people I know, I always hated school. School gives us tools for surviving in our culture, and teaches us what it is to be a member of this culture. The validity of these two functions is rarely questioned - and we should question them. 4 A primary thing I learned was how to kill time. How to wish away my life. Not to openly question authority. Not to ask difficult questions. Not to expect meaningful answers. How to regurgitate memorized facts. How to read authority figures and respond appropriately. In short, I learned to give myself away. 5 We are never asked if it's good to standardize tests and children. School isn't about learning information, it's about learning behaviors - and schools teach behavior exceedingly well. What does our society value most? Money.
6 In order to get money, we generally have to give ourselves away. We live in a culture that believes that happiness lies outside of us - in the hands of those who have power. In our adult lives, we are expected to be arrive on time, submit to our bosses, and not to leave early. We spend our lives watching clocks, until we retire. We are taught to never question country, God, capitalism, science, economics, history, and the rule of law - we must always trust the experts. 8 DJ has taught at Eastern Washington University and at Pelican Bay State Prison - and the processes are remarkably similar. 9 The goal of our culture is to create a nation of slaves. Slaves have an urge to rebel or escape. It's better to convince the slaves that they're free, so that if they're not happy, it's their fault. It's best to begin the brainwashing at a young age.
18 DJ's students were natural storytellers. People don't need to be taught this - you need to use cheerleading to bring out the storyteller already in them. 19 An economics teacher once told DJ: Never believe anything you read, and rarely believe anything you think. 20 In this age, it is vital that we learn how to think critically and question everything. 21 Say "bullshit" to everything. 25 DJ's seating rule: always put chairs in a circle, never sit where you sat yesterday, and never sit next to the person you sat next to yesterday. 26 The papers you write for this class have to be good enough that I would rather read them than make love. 28 Readers are giving you the gift of their time, which they could be spending doing something else. 32 The first rule of writing is: "Don't bore the reader." The second rule of writing is: "Don't bore the reader." The third rule of writing is: "Don't bore the reader."
Teaching in prison is quite similar to teaching in universities. 33 The job is to respect and love the students into becoming who they are. 35 Illustrate their strengths, and their weaknesses will become obvious. 36 The education system destroys students' souls. 37 In the 19th C, schools taught students to think for themselves, and this became a principal cause of dissent among the working classes. In the 20th C, schools became factories. 38 The goal was to produce hominid automata, who did exactly what was expected of them. The fact that we all hate school is a good thing. It means that we're still alive.
41 There is only one real question in life, and one real lesson: who are you, and what are you going to do? Civilization intends that we become automata. The most revolutionary thing we can do is to follow our hearts and manifest who we really are. A revolution is desperately needed now, because we're killing the planet, each other, and ourselves - and while we're doing this, our non-human relatives continue to ask us "who are you, and who are you in relationship to us, and yourself?" 42 The current system divorces us from ourselves, from the world, from decency, even from basic intelligence (How smart is it for us to destroy our habitat?). It is only through the violation of our hearts, minds, and bodies that we can participate in a system that exploits and eliminates everything we can get our hands on. Thus, it is a very dangerous question: "Who are you?" We couldn't live the way we do unless we avoided that question at all costs.
43 Question to students: If I gave you a million dollars, would you remain in school? Almost all say no. Would you get or keep a job. All laugh. 45 It's very important that we all find a way to be of service to something bigger than ourselves - something more meaningful than upward mobility (the only major offered by our education system). 46 What is the biggest problem that I can solve with my gifts and skills?
47 DJ was scared about talking to boys in grades 8 to 12. So, he told them the truth - stuff he wished someone had told him. (1) It's OK to hate school. 48 (2) Things will get better, especially if you take charge of your own life - DJ's life didn't become pleasant until his 40s. 49 (3) Don't be such a wimp (ask her out). (4) Make sure she's 18. (5) I regret my mistakes of timidity more than those of recklessness. Timidity is destroying the planet as surely as greed. 50 I want to apologize for the mess we've left you. (6) [extremely important] You're not crazy, the culture is crazy! We pay more attention to sports than ecological destruction - that's insane! It's OK to be happy. It's OK to never get a job. It's OK to find what makes you happy and pursue it. It's OK to dedicate your life to discovering who you really are.
59 A huge failing in our culture is the belief in the universal - students can be taught in the same manner, living in Tucson or Seattle is the same. We turn trees into boards; fish in to fish sticks. 60 If we ever heal, we will need to learn that every location is unique. 61 Nearly everyone likes to be listened to. 62 Inside each of us are 100 people who can write well - the bitter old man, the lonely old woman, etc. The one inside us who can't write well is the one we wear on our faces all the time - the polite one, the bland one, the one who wants approval, the one who hedges every strong feeling. 67 One classroom exercise teaches students how to give the middle finger gesture - do it often, at all authority figures, especially your internal critic. [Discussion about teaching writing.]
101 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." [Many pages of discussions of various experiences while teaching writing classes.]
174 Some class periods are hot, and others are excruciatingly ineffective. Some entire classes are hot, and some are dull. Some were dead for the entire quarter, every session. 175 The once question arose in class: Do you like to think? DJ has found that about 1/3 of college students simply do not like to think. DJ came to understand how easy it is for corporate or government propaganda to succeed in shaping opinions. People like to listen to the radio or watch TV in order to avoid the unpleasantness of thinking. Do corporate people and politicians who promote ecocide ever really give ten seconds of serious thought as to the effects of what they are doing? Are they intentionally evil, or just hollow? DJ asked students what they do with idle time - driving or in the shower - the most typical answers were "I don't do anything" and "I don't know." 176 He asked a lad who watched football if he ever thought about it. No. I just watch. DJ discovered this lack of thought ten years ago, and still can't comprehend the meaning of it, or the implications.
182 DJ wrote a novel about love and abuse. He wrote it with passion and love, and his life changed. You can't write without engagement and love. When that energy isn't there, he stops writing, because he can only write crap. Sex and creativity are closely linked - creativity is highly erotic. You have to care when writing, have a reason - other than meeting your daily word count requirements. How do I help students discover their passion? 183 What infuriates, terrifies, or enraptures them? How can I feed their passions so that they lose their self-consciousness and fall completely into the feelings, the words, the messages? Three questions: Who are you? What do you love? What do you want?
187 One friend didn't go to school until fourth grade, and she hated it. None of her teachers ever loved her into becoming herself. They were all too damaged from their own educations. She had started with home schooling. All children love to learn, and it's a dark achievement of the education system that it can beat this love of learning out of the kids in a very few years. 188 The education system is beyond reform - it needs to be brought down. It's a horror that loving parents turn their precious children over to this abusive system at age five - and their reasons for doing this are so empty. All mothers cry when first taking their children to school. Why? Maybe because they know it's harmful to their kids. Should we attempt to work within our rotten system, or tear it down? The teacher/student relationship is one of domination.
189 What is the difference between leadership and coercion? In larger classes, students will often screw off until the teacher plays the authority card - a teacher who is open and gentle is perceived as being weak and vulnerable - and this inspires hate and ridicule - rebellion against authority. Many students expect to be lead. "How do we enact relationships that are not coercive in a system that does not support that?" 190 Many students are so wounded by parents, teachers, and other authority figures that I can't reach them, because they can't hear me.
(1) Is the material that comes out of the white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy worth teaching? (2) I know that the purpose of real education is to allow people to learn about themselves and the larger world, but what then substantively is worth learning? (3) How can this system work? I hate industrial civilization for what it does to the planet, to non-humans, and to humans. I hate the wage economy because it forces people to sell their lives doing things they do not love - and it rewards people for harming each other and the land. I hate industrial schooling because it leads people away from themselves, training them to be loyal slaves - taking everything and everyone they encounter down with them.
191 Industrial education is similar to Auschwitz, but it murders souls instead of bodies. I am a hypocrite to teach in the university system. Most perpetrators of the Holocaust did not shoot or gas their victims - they wrote memos, answered phones, went to meetings. 192 Industrial civilization is killing the planet, and we're all doing our parts. This deathly systems needs us all. 193 I've been stuck for years by asking the wrong question: reform or revolution? (1) We need both. (2) Morality is circumstantial - you do what is right for the moment. The vast majority fail to question industrial civilization, the wage economy, or industrial education. 194 Constantly questioning one's context is vital.
If he had students for two consecutive quarters, the first would be about liberation, and the second about responsibility. Responsibility without freedom is slavery. Freedom without responsibility is immaturity. Put them together, and we have an entire culture of immature slaves. This is good if you want to grow the economy, but bad if you're interested in life. 195 DJ is delighted when the students arrive at the point where they question his authority. 197 He did a writers workshop in a junior high classroom. The walls were plastered with authoritarian statements. It was depressing. "I don't know how I survived it. I don't know how any children survive it. I guess the truth is that in a very real sense many don't. And that is the point."
209 I ask the class: Are you happy? Most are not. Do you think you'll ever be happy? Most say no. Do you think we live in a democracy? They laugh. Of course not. Do you think the government better serves corporations or human beings? They laugh again. Of course corporations. Do you think the world will be a better place in twenty years? No. 210 Forty? No. One hundred? No. What do you think it would take for you to be happy? What do you think it would take for the world to be a better place? They don't know.
211 Once you look inside and figure out who you are, you can do amazing things, like walk on water. Support comes from everything around you - the whole universe conspires to support you. We need to think about committing miracles. The whole system is fucked. Everything is fucked. The planet's being killed. We're going into these awful fucking jobs we all hate, and what's being required of each of us individually and all of us collectively is a miracle. 212 Or a million miracles. 213 Nobody needs to be taught. We need to be encouraged, to be given heart, to be allowed to grow into our own large hearts. We do not need to be governed by external schedules, nor told what to learn. We all so want to love and be loved, accept and be accepted, cherished, and celebrated simply for being who we are.
215 As midwives attending to the births of their students, teachers carry an awesome responsibility with correspondingly awesome possibilities. Education, if it is to be worthy of its true meaning, can, should, and must be at the forefront of resistance to the routine dehumanization of our whole industrialized mass culture. That is possible. I have done it. But it is rare. 216 Too many teachers, like too many students, too many workers at too many war manufacturing plants, too many writers, too many politicians, too many people who could be human beings but who have been trained by their schooling and by their work and by their pursuit of money and their pursuit of acceptance an by their very real fear of being who they are step away from this responsibility, and in so doing lead themselves and shoes around them ever farther from their hearts, and lead us all ever closer to the personal and planetary annihilation that is the looming end point of industrial civilization.
We must not forgive the processes of industrial education. There are countless alternatives. The most revolutionary thing we can do is to follow our own heart. Once you have done this, then help others find their hearts. It's much easier than it seems. Time is short. It's short for our planet - the planet that is our home - that is being killed while we stand by. And it is even shorter for all of those students whose lives are slipping away from them with every awful tick of the clock on the classroom wall. There is much work to be done. What are you waiting for? It's time to begin.