Paul Goodman Protests the Firing of Activist Teacher

December 12, 1959*
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Commissioner of Education
Albany
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Dear Dr. Allen,
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I understand that the case of James Worley of Croton Falls has come to you for review. Allow me to say something in his behalf.
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In content, his original protesting action (refusing to prepare a two-week lesson plan) seems to me beyond doubt correct. I myself have taught every age from ten-year-olds through Ph.D. candidates and other adults; it has been my universal experience that formal preparation of a lesson plan beyond the next hour or two is not only unrealistic but can be positively harmful and rigidifying, for it interferes with the main thing, the contact between the teacher and his class. Worley’s disagreement with the administrative order is, to me, simply evidence that he is a good teacher and knows what the right teaching relation is. A teacher who would seriously comply with the order would likely be a poor teacher. (Our model must always be the Socratic dialogue, for the aim is not to covey some information but to get the information across as part of the student’s nature and second nature, so he can make an individual and creative use of it.) On the other hand, if the compliance is not serious it is a waste of time; and, as you know well, teachers are burdened with paper work, much of which is absolutely necessary.
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In form, his protest was certainly insubordinate. But obviously each of us has the moral and social duty to draw the line somewhere against obedience to error. Worley has drawn it at a very crucial point, namely, where the order interferes with the right performance of the job. In the end this is the sacred and final obligation of every professional, to do the work and to defend the conditions under which the work can be done well.
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The issue is of immense importance. Our country is being systematically emasculated by a sickening waste of human resources. The efforts of a Dr. Conant to salvage some scientific talent are ludicrously inadequate by our social relations that keep the inventor from his materials, the workman from honest labor, the teacher from his students and subject matter, and the artist from his public. We cannot afford to throw away good teachers to save face for mistaken administrators. It is the glory of good administration precisely to smooth the path for objective work to proceed. Therefore I urge you to intervene in this case and reinstate Mr. Worley.
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Copy to Gov. Rockefeller
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Sincerely,
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Paul Goodman
New York City
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(PG notes: The appeal of Mr. Worley was rejected by the Commissioner who said that, though he was much in the right, he ought to have acted through the proper channels.)
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*From Appendix A in the 1960 edition of Growing Up Absurd by Paul Goodman.

Plato as the post-60s student: Rancourt’s only chance?

This article was first published in the print edition of the CAUCUS, the political science students’ magazine at the University of Ottawa. The print version on the back page of the Spring 2009 issue of the CAUCUS looks like THIS (alternative LINK). It was written before I was fired on March 31, 2009, from my position as Full and tenured physics professor at the University of Ottawa. My statement about my dismissal is posted HERE.


Plato as the post-60s student: Rancourt’s only chance?
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By Denis G. Rancourt
February 2009
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My case (as best documented at http://academicfreedom.ca/) leaves few conscious students indifferent. Students either vehemently want me to go away or care about my case and side with me against the administration. Both reactions are based on an understanding of the facts. Students who oppose me understand that I threaten their comfort in aspiring to integrate the system. Students who side with me understand that I fight with them against our common oppressor – institutional hierarchy, administrative control of our lives, and undemocratic rule.
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I am gambling that a meaningless life of servitude is not enough for some of us, irrespective of the perks and brown nosed social status. I am gambling that enough students and citizens want to be in charge of their lives, want to own their personal influence on the community and society, want a full political dimension outside of management by manufactured representation. I am gambling my profession on it.
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A meaningless life of servitude was not enough on campuses in the 60s. In the 60s students fought and won. They repealed in loco parentis. They defeated trespass laws to win freedom of speech. They won representatives on every committee and council up to and including the Senate and Board. In the 60s students kicked ass because they wanted to be alive rather than be treated like barn animals watching PowerPoint presentations. YouTube “Mario Savio” to open a small window into what the 60s were: “Beneath the cobblestones there is the beach” meant something.
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Then there was the long sleep as increasingly globalized and corporatized universities clawed back the gains with codes of conduct, ever increasing tests and deadlines, ever increasing tuition fees, professors hired for their corporate ties, politician presidents, etc. And, now, trespass to property is back and used against student demonstrators across the country – UBC, U of T, York, Ottawa…
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Now the admin tells the SFUO who the student reps on committees can and cannot be and the SFUO lies down and dies because it doesn’t stand for anything. Student unions are now federations and associations that manage services and educational campaigns rather than being the cutting edges of student power that they could be. SFUO executives could start with one simple rule: “No more secret meetings with the admin behind closed doors. Period.” Everything open, recorded, and transparent.
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On the professorial side, it’s a measure of the state of affairs, of the present state of academic freedom, when a university administration judges that it can fire a full and tenured dissident professor using a pretext as bold as high grades in one course. My case is one that all university administrations are following with interest: “Can we now cleanse the campus of dissidents and radicals?” Welcome to Sterile U where all the answers are in the PowerPoint slides, where discourse is forbidden, and where that is not in the syllabus.
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So-called radical professors who promote radical thinking are the top-end neutralizers of activist students. They teach that the pen is mightier than the sword, and that problems are solved by good ideas, and other such nonsense that distances the service intellectuals of tomorrow from anything that would threaten power. My practice is one of liberation, not one of constructing mental prisons for the castrated priests who will serve hierarchies. I am an anarchist. I seek to press the pyramid down into a more horizontal shape, by any means, starting in the classroom.
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In the classroom, I give up my power by giving up the grade. The only way to precipitate independent thinking is to give freedom. Students who are preoccupied with reading my mind or with regurgitating on command for a grade distance themselves from themselves; from even the most basic ability to know when they don’t understand something. It is to remove a student’s humanity to reduce him/her to a trained parrot and to an obedient slave, no matter how “progressive” the ideas are.
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Go to academicfreedom.ca and read the more than 75 letters from former students about my pedagogical experiments and the impacts on students’ lives. Then contrast these testimonies with the administration’s zeal to fire me. It doesn’t make any sense – until you recognize that it’s not about education. It’s about control, external power, class privilege, and an emperor who has no clothes.
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Like Socrates, I’ve worked hard for my hemlock. Plato watched and was silent but Plato had not seen the 60s. What part will you play? Start your education: Reject the syllabus.
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[Oh, and do sign the on-line petition.]