The Wild Dog Pains

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What Did You Learn in School Today?

What Did You Learn in School Today?

By Max Kantar

Having been subjected to a dozen years of schooling in preparation for adult life and the university, and having now been nearly five years removed from the setting, I should think that I am in good standing to reasonably evaluate my general experience. Without wanting to slight the kind and genuine teachers—a relatively small bunch, I‘m afraid—who have enriched my life and the lives of others, I will nevertheless stick to the more general experience of secondary schooling, rather than rare, unrepresentative exceptions to the rule.

The problem with school wasn’t so much a problem of individuals, but a problem of institutions. The broader institutional structures of the school system served to prepare us for a life of painful employment, perpetual ignorance, and mindless consumerism. We quickly learned—at least the good students did—to perform on command utterly pointless tasks with reflexive thoughtlessness. We were made to understand the importance of subordinating everything to time constraints erected without our consent. A dozen years of sitting still at desks—under the threat of punishment—in monotonous classrooms taught us that unhappiness, triviality, purposelessness, and surrendering one’s free will is not only an intrinsic part of enlightened and privileged existence, but an inescapable fact of life. (This couldn’t possibly have anything to do with why so many young people appear apathetic and superficial, right?) We unwittingly came to accept the view that authority is self-justifying and challenges to it can only exist within the rigid constraints that it firmly establishes. We certainly were not allowed to forget that the only alternative to American-style culture and civilization was a Third World dictatorship. Responsible people vote, we were told, and that, along with occasionally writing letters to your congressman, is the essence of democracy and hundreds of thousands of years of human development.
Predictably, like millions of other helpless children, I grew up believing that Christopher Columbus was simply a great navigator, likely a decent person, certainly not some savage, racist, torturer and mass murderer. Similarly, George Washington was not a slave-owning, genocidal maniac; he was a simple, modest man, who with his genius and love for humanity gave birth to freedom and democracy. Had we learned that the primary authors of the Constitution felt that “those who own the country ought to govern it” and that the role of the government in a liberal democracy should be to “protect the opulent minority from the majority,” perhaps the citizenry might be inclined to question the benevolence and intentions—that is, think rationally—of those holding power today.
We never discussed history in a relevant context or serious way, dealing with concepts, trends and principles rather than selective, useless and minute facts, embarrassingly vulgar clichés, and hero worship. No teacher ever explained capitalism or even thought it worthy of discussing. I would later come to learn that wage labor—another unmentionable concept—was strongly resisted for many decades by the American public, most of whom bitterly denounced it as ‘wage slavery’, an intolerable condition fundamentally similar to chattel slavery. I literally never heard the word “solidarity” once in school—a matter of some significance considering that solidarity was the major theme in American working class culture for many decades during the labor movement.

Not only did the school system fail to provide us with the means of intellectual self-defense necessary to combat the lies and deceit peddled nonstop by the dominant media and intellectual culture, it actually operated within the same misleading and destructive framework of assumptions, regurgitating official doctrine and constantly reinforcing conventional, power-serving world views.
So when the U.S. military invaded Iraq during my sophomore year of high school, did anyone think to even mildly question the right of our government to carry out, literally, by the standard of the Nuremberg Tribunals, the Supreme International Crime? Well over one million Iraqis have since been killed as a direct result of the U.S. aggression. How many more millions have suffered tremendously? Are our schoolhouses not soaked with the blood of Iraqi children who have been denied the right to attend school, or for that matter, the right to attend life, as a result of our government’s actions made possible in large part because of the complicity of the schools and their near universal failures to teach children the truth?
To be fair, I am sure that a few teachers may have opposed such a heinous and criminal act of mass murder and violence, but likely this (definite) minority felt immensely constrained by institutional and administrative controls, which are quite real, and could potentially cost someone their job. But how can an honest pupil respect or admire a teacher who is either too ignorant or too cowardly to speak out or act out against such grave and naked injustice? And what good are freedom and the first amendment if they are not applicable in a house of education, of all places?
At any rate, most teachers and all administrators were more concerned with disciplining students who skipped out on the shameless, daily barrage of corporate commercial propaganda, celebrity gossip, and wanton state worship provided by Channel One News. Naturally, such practices coincided well with the ever-presence of military recruiters in school and the free reign given to them to lure young boys and girls into fighting wars we were actively prevented from understanding.
Indeed, such conventions reflected some of the highest values of school authorities. I vividly recall our since-retired assistant principle who, while sitting in for an absent history teacher, lectured the otherwise defenseless class on the virtues of torture as a means of both extracting information and doing justice.

As it is, I can’t recall one bit of good sense bestowed upon me by either school administrators or teachers alike in all my years of secondary education. Indeed, it is all I can manage today to try and undo the many years of intellectual and moral oppression brought upon me by years of conditioning and subordination in the school system.

Haiti on our Minds

Haiti On Our Minds
[col. writ. 1/16/10] (c) '10 Mumia Abu-Jamal

The recent natural disaster in Haiti, has once again, thrown Haiti into the eyes of the world, and once again, brought out both the best and worst of us.

The sheer scale of human suffering has evoked massive compassion, as governments far and wide mobilize to assist those who are unable to assist themselves.

Haiti, once the colonial-era "Pearl of the Antilles" (Caribbean), then the "Mother of Revolutions", has suffered for nearly two centuries for daring to fight for, and win, its freedom from European colonialism, slavery and plunder.

Haiti, we are informed by the corporate media, is the poorest nation in the West. We are never told however, how it got that way. How many of us know that the U.S. brutally occupied Haiti, and stayed there for over 20 years? Or that Haiti, which had the temerity to defeat not one, not two, but three colonial armies (the French, the British, and the Spanish), was forced to pay France billions of dollars in reparations for 200 years -- the first and only time in history that a victor in war had to pay back the nation it defeated!?

Haiti isn't just poor; it's been impoverished by a global system of exploitation and a plantation capitalist economy that was designed as a sanction for Black Liberation.

The U.S., its nearest, richest neighbor, didn't recognize or trade with the country for nearly 60 years -- or until a Civil War brought a formal end to slavery on these shores.

C.L.R. James, the revolutionary scholar/activist, has argued that the Haitian Revolution was a singular event in human history, of more significance than either the French or American revolutions.

That an American preacher (and former presidential candidate could today liken the event to the devil gives us some sense of its continuing power.

Interestingly, neither of these other revolutions spelled an end to that truly demonic institution -- slavery. Indeed, the reverse is true, for George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were slave owners, and Napoleon Bonaparte sent his armies to Haiti to defend slavery.

Decade after decade of U.S. supported dictators, a legacy of plantation capitalism and exploitation, U.S. supported coups (like the Bush-era removal of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide), and corporate strangulation of poor Haitian workers, has left it severely under-developed, and thus, less able to cope with natural disasters when they strike.

Several years ago, when a hurricane hit a city in the world's wealthiest nation, the wealthy and middle classes had the resources to flee just before the worst struck town. The poor were left to fend for themselves.

In Haiti, those resources were even more rare.

But an earthquake isn't a hurricane. It strikes suddenly, often without significant warning.

But many nations, like Japan, have constructed buildings which resist the bumps and whirls of earthquakes. Such techniques, if applied to Haitian schools, homes and offices, could've greatly alleviated loss of life and suffering.

If it hadn't been bled and exploited for centuries, Haiti would've had the wherewithal to protect its people as much as possible.

Let us hope that Haiti's future will be brighter than its post colonial past.

--(c) '10 maj

http://www.prisonradio.org/haiti_on_our_minds.htm

The New Jim Crow

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelle-alexander/the-new-jim-crow_b_454469.html

FUNK THE WAR tomorrow in D.C.

EXTRA! EXTRA!

LIGHT THE FIRE IS COMING OUT IN IT'S PRINT VERSION ON WEDNESDAY MARCH 24TH!!!

R.I.P. Howard Zinn 1922-2010

Famous historian and activist Howard Zinn, left the world on Wednesday January 22, 2010. He was 87 years old. He is most famous for hiw work "A People's History of the United States,." Published in 1980 it was a wokr that challenged the way millions of Americans were taught hisotry. Zinn said in a interview on the book, "It seems to me it is wrong to treat young readers as if they are not mature enough to look at their nation's policies honestly.I am not worried about disillusioing young people

by pointing to the flaws in the traditional heros." Zinn out against injustices of race and class and was heavily involved in the antiwar movements from vietnam to the wars of present day. Back in October 2009 Matt Damon turned Zinn's "A People's History of the United States," into reading of excerpts by famous actors, called "The People Speak" which was featured on the Hisotry Channel.

Zinn, you will be missed but your words and passion will not be forgotten.