Predicting the next juvenile revolution

By Denis G. Rancourt


The establishment, not so very long ago, had a healthy fear of juveniles. In the 1950s:

A thousand conferences, agencies, committees, and newspapers alerted the country [USA] to the danger. Juvenile delinquency was the only rebellion around, and it had to be stopped.
   Articles on teenage delinquency gushed forth. Experts labelled it a "national epidemic," projecting some two and a half million cases. "Unless this cancer is checked early enough," warned one popular book, 1,000,000 Delinqints (1955), "it can go on spreading and contaminate many good cells in our society.... [1]

Although politicians called for it, there was no purge like there was against Communism [2], only a tightening of civil and institutional controls, including city-wide curfews. But the genie was out of the bottle due to changing economic reality and modern technology:

The greater access to money and especially to automobiles, which allowed the young to escape watchful parents, fostered their identities as individuals with specific sexual, musical, and consuming needs. [3]

However, the first modern juvenile revolution did not occur until newly populated campuses exploded in the 1960s. The students rejected being treated like owned children, while being drafted for war.

The students revolted, walked out, demonstrated, and squatted without relenting. They obtained:

• independence over their personal lives (no oversight of off-campus activities, no curfews, no discipline for non-academic matters)
• the right to unionize and collectively own buildings and businesses on campus
• respect of their power when it came to imposing a military draft
• minority representation on all university committees (including the Senate and Board)

These were lasting victories of a true and bloody [4] juvenile revolution.

While the revolt vehemently and explicitly expressed a desire to be free from the clutches of true legal power over the institution (which resides in the Board), as in Mario Savio's iconic speeches



the furthest success in that direction was to obtain representation on university "governance" committees, which is no small accomplishment if the representatives impose themselves rather than allow themselves to be co-opted tokens.

But the 1960s achievements of partial democracy and partial student liberation in the institution were perceived as threatening and have been systematically eroded by the concerted efforts of establishment forces.

The counter-revolution was already well underway by 1975 when the Trilateral Commission, founded by David Rockefeller in 1973, published The Crisis of Democracy: On the Governability of Democracies. The report recommended restructuring public institutions to address the identified threat stemming from "an excess of democracy". They knew how to fix that...

What followed, starting in the 1980s, was a catastrophe on the scale of a macro-economic and macro-societal restructuring:

• Reversal of The New Deal and of post-WWII middle-class access to economic independence, 
• gutting of professional independence of teachers, 
• gutting of tenure (replacement by contract staff), 
• complete corporate alignment of the university mission, 
• codification and confinement of radicalism within allowed "justice and equity" programs, 
• student-debt slavery extended far into post-studies life, 
• tighter ideological processing in all the professional programs, and new imposed programs for journalists, etc., 
• totally institutionalized childhoods including after-school activities, 
• more grading and performance evaluations than you can shake a stick at, 
• more homework and "volunteer" work than ever, 
• "zero tolerances" of drugs, traffic violations, petty crime, payment delays, improper language, etc., 
• more surveillance than in any novel about a dystopia, 
• being fired for comments on social media at every corner, 
• etc.

... the list of post-1970s abuses that most citizens actually celebrate and defend is a long one. All of the "99%" (non-elite) suffered the same fate, to varying degrees.

As a result, more than ever these days, all school pupils are literally in a prison, with locked doors, yard time, prison guards, and parental home visits. College and university students have no time to think, but instead are on a brutal and meaningless treadmill, with periodic PowerPoint torture [5], while being shackled with financial debt, rather than being paid for their labour [6].

What has kept the lid on USA juveniles (except in Canada's province of Quebec, to some extent)? What has stalled the next US-Canada-Europe... juvenile rebellion?

Several factors have contributed, as I see it.

First, juveniles are seriously constrained and corralled in every aspect of their lives, but that alone is not normally enough to suppress vital instincts.

Second, the state, like any police state, is vicious in attacking and punishing student dissidents with police-induced judicial consequences, augmented by punitive measures applied by the educational institutions themselves. This is a strategy to kill any spontaneous or planned emergence of rebellion. 

Third, many students themselves have been largely neutralized in their brains, to be seekers of justice fairly provided to them by the very system that imprisons them, to seek "being oppressed fairly". A mass of students has essentially been zombiefied by the poison of the "radical" "justice and equity" programs, anchored in "critical theory" "at the service of the design of a better society". They have swallowed the myth that liberation is establishment-regulated participation in the design of a "just society".

Fourth, in a divide-and-conquer attack against the mind, students have been turned against each other with manufactured hyper-concern for their own religions, skin colours, genders, sexual preferences, and superficial "privileges", rather than recognizing the common enemy of an oppressive establishment that eats them alive, irrespective of their individual attributes.

Ageism is a unifying psycho-social force that channels a juvenile rebellion against the systemic oppression of youth. There is ageism, but it is presently used as a strategy for survival, rather than a force for rebellion. Ageism and inter-generational solidarity with trusted agents and coalitions with trusted cells are not opposites in a juvenile revolution. The former is visceral motivation while the latter are strategic choices. [7]

Fifth, and possibly most importantly, juveniles are both drugged by their parents and self-medicated to escape and "perform".

The pharmaceutical industry for drugs that optimize the shoolability of children is massive. These potent mood-altering drugs are widely prescribed against the symptoms of repressed childhood (so-called attention deficit disorder, etc.), and are now frequently marketed as "smart drugs". These are the Ritalins, etc., known as nootropics. Nootropics have spawned a pervasive black market among juveniles forced into "performance" work and are widespread among students. [8]

The self-medication to escape meaninglessness and powerlessness is both from substances and from technologically enabled stimulation (personal music devices, social media, communication technology). Much of the needed identity management is authentically communicative, such as YouTube testimonials, status posts, and tweets, and is often supplemented by face to face continuations.

In addition, there is a significant pot culture of escape. While pot (like all drugs) is a helpful personal exploration tool, it is also frequently primarily used to escape the brutal world by creating a safe space, and simply to dull the pain of being violated by the institutions of "education".

Thus, there are many effective avenues of personal identity management that allow long-term survival. The mental space is self-managed away from the visceral impulse of authentic rebellion. This is combined with the fact that students are still able to physically escape the institution, both in separate physical spaces, which can be as small as a student apartment, and via their computer and phone screens in the classroom or elsewhere.

Sixth, although the school and university environments are brutally dehumanizing, in terms of institutional obedience-training and indoctrination, they are also accompanied by a constant brainwashing that the student has merit and high status by virtue of being in school, and that the student has entered a privileged club whose members experience fulfillment and meaning. And, within each program, there is "choice", which some students reason to themselves allows them to personalize their experience.

Seventh, the media and institutional spaces are actively cleansed of any eminent examples of successful rebellions, and of the personal rewards of authentic rebellion. Teachers and professionals are harshly prosecuted for anything that could resemble "corrupting the youth". Instead, professional status and military service are portrayed as providing the ultimate personal rewards.

The May 1968 message "Sous les pavés, la plage!" is both absent and written in a very foreign language. There are no teachers writing re-mixes of the 1969 "the little red schoolbook". You cannot even utter the "N-word", let alone assign unconstrained reading of the 1967 essay "The Student as Nigger" [9].

At my own recent binding arbitration into my 2009 dismissal from my tenured full professorship of more than two decades, after I had been critical of the administration and created a popular activism course which had to be given in the largest auditorium on campus, the hired university lawyers spent the majority of their efforts to argue the propositions that I incited students to violence, had incited students to bonfire the campus at UBC via an invited talk, had connections to fire-bombing domestic terrorists, had publicly called the president a "douchebag", etc., etc. [10], with such "exhibits" as the fact that one of the clips in one of my YouTube-channel playlists is this one, which, for no other reason, was played during the arbitration hearing:



The anarchist video is an example of fringe-culture rebellion connected to anti-globalization demonstrations, not an example of campus rebellion against institutional suppression of student lives.

Eighth, the constant and overbearing propaganda that there are mega-threats to humanity, including global warming, potential health epidemics, etc., that require dedicated collaboration with the establishment and its scientists. Add the threats from "foreign invaders", and homegrown "terrorism", etc. All such research and propaganda also serves US corporate and geopolitical interests. Institutions and governments do not work against themselves, ever. [11][12]

For all these reasons (first to eighth, above), therefore, so far, there has not been a new juvenile revolution against student slavery. You can't even use the word "slavery" because that would be "misappropriation", blah blah blah.

But it is slavery, just as wage-slavery is slavery, and its damage is deep and lasting (see [6]). And as with any slavery, there is a large psychological barrier against recognizing the slavery. Every slave has invested into the system and identifies with the system. To reject slavery would be to vaporize one's identity and could induce massive grief at the prospect of having lost one's past life.

So, will the student-slaves ever revolt again? Will there be another mass juvenile revolution?

I believe it is inevitable. There are constant sparks, and the gasoline of human suppression is just under the corporate facade. Institutional totalitarianism is advancing at a furious pace. The war economy of global exploitation has endless needs... Rebellions are emerging all over the "developing world", and new geopolitical blocs (e.g., BRICS) are emerging that challenge US domination, which breaks the isolation and forces some moderation both abroad and at home.

At any moment, the sight of beach sand from under the broken pavement could cause a frenzy. There could result real physical solidarity against the targeting of the most daring, the emergence of vision, and the organization of a committed juvenile front.

This can only work if the next juvenile revolution goes significantly beyond the juvenile revolution of the 1960s, beyond minority representation on committees, and on towards true power to run the institutions of juvenile imprisonment and make them into institutions for and by juveniles. Students are workers in the economy and must, as a start, be fairly paid for their labour (see [6]), as the first transitional demand.

Never mind tuition, students must be salaried. If society wants juveniles to do the hard work of learning skills, because society wants those skills, then a living wage is an immediate prerequisite. This was understood in the Middle-Ages but has been "forgotten". Youth cannot be used as a pretext to exploit and capture.

Children were taken from factory wage-slavery and put into factory schools. Now juveniles accumulate debt for the "privilege" of being molded into service professionals.

Sooner or later, there will be the next juvenile revolution, and university president salaries will drop. Students will fire and choose their teachers, and will decide what needs to be learned. They will learn how to make all the most important decisions about their own lives, by the practice of making those decisions. And they will learn how to make and re-create powerful institutions made in their liberated image rather than controlled by outside occupiers.


Endnotes

[1] Jacoby, Russell, The Last Intellectuals, 1987 (2000 edition, Basic Books), p. 63
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
[3]  The Last Intellectuals, p. 64
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings
[5] Rancourt, Denis G., "On the sacred space of the university classroom", Activist Teacher, October 3, 2009, http://activistteacher.blogspot.ca/2009/10/on-sacred-space-of-university-classroom.html
[6] Rancourt, Denis G., "Adult Students Please Get Real", Dissident Voice, April 27, 2015, http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/04/adult-students-please-get-real/
[7] The same is true of racism in racial liberation struggles, and of violence in struggles to survive attempted genocides. See: Rancourt, Denis G., Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism, Stairway Press, 2013. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchy_and_Free_Expression_in_the_Fight_Against_Racism
[8] For example, this 2009 5 O'Clock Train - CHUO 89.1 FM investigative radio interview: "Upper Year Psychology Students on School, Deadlines, Medication and How to Survive University", December 3, 2009 show: http://trainradio.blogspot.ca/2009/12/upper-year-psychology-students-on.html
[9] Farber, Jerry, "The Student as Nigger", 1967, first published in the Los Angeles Free Press. Canadian Union of Students re-publication: http://www.studentunion.ca/cfs/1968/1968-cus-student-as-nigger.pdf
[10] A transcript of the lengthy hearing is fascinating and was published by a former student who attended the proceedings: Cover-article-LINK, Transcript-LINK. The emails of a hired student spy to the university executives, explaining her use of false cyber-identities and covert machinations are most instructive: Spy-emails-LINK.
[11] Rancourt, Denis G., "Climate Stupidity and Human Survival", Dissident Voice, May 26, 2015, http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/05/climate-stupidity-and-human-survival/
[12] In particular, carbon politics is domination geopolitics. The US is branding itself as "the clean-energy superpower", including at the recent G7 parade. Next it will continue to attempt to strangle and extort the energy development of the emerging BRICS global economy, using a combination of green blackmail rhetoric, global carbon-economy monetary instruments, military posturing, covert and direct targeted nation destruction, and sanctions. And, of course, the same folks always suffer the destructive consequences of these global economic instruments that purport to be intended to "save the planet": The Carbon Rush documentary film trailer.


Dr. Denis G. Rancourt is a former tenured and Full Professor of physics at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is known for his applications of physics education research (TVO Interview). He has published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals, and has written several social commentary essays. He is the author of the book Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism. While he was at the University of Ottawa, he supported student activism and opposed the influence of the Israel lobby on that institution, which fired him for a false pretext in 2009: LINK.

Links to Denis Rancourt's essays about the student condition and student liberation

Plato as the post-60s student: Rancourt’s only chance? (2009)

Need for and Practice of Student Liberation (2010)

University Student for Sale (2010)

Concrete Accomplishments of Student Activism of the 1960s (2011)

Student liberation as an integral part of civil guerrilla warfare - audio lecture, in English and Spanish (2011)

Students: Plan your escape from academia before you enter it (2012)

CLASSE analysis of Quebec student movement tactics (2012)

Adult university students are entrapped unpaid workers, captured and broken by institutional schooling (2014)

Adult students please get real (2015)
Etudiants(es), soyez sérieux(ses) ... (2015)

Predicting the next juvenile revolution (2015)
Predicting the next juvenile revolution (2015) (on Dissident Voice)


And on transforming education:


ACADEMIC SQUATTING - A democratic method of curriculum development (2007)

How to not teach physics (2012)

On the sacred space of the university classroom (2009)

Can we be neutral on the question of affirmative action in the hiring of university professors? -- A radical perspective (2015)

Manufactured ignorance is a primary function of public education (or, how the world economy really works) (2017)



Media interviews and reviews:


TVO interview (2009)

Interview with Evita Ochel (Evolving Beings) (2013)

Interview with Julia Tourianski (Brave The World) (2015)

"No grades in higher education now!" -- The academic freedom case of Denis Rancourt inspires leading education research -- But is the revolution any closer? (2015)
No Grades in Higher Education Now! Is the revolution any closer? (2015) (Dissident Voice version)

 

Other social theory essays by Denis Rancourt HERE and HERE.

CLASSE analysis of Quebec student movement tactics

The Coalition large de l'Association pour une solidarité syndicale étuduantes (CLASSE) is a vibrant and inspiring non-hierarchical student activist collective that, more than any other group, catalyzed and ran the revolutionary "Maple Spring" ("Printemps érable") which recently shook Québec society and its political elites. It is the largest student union in Québec. This year, it engineered the largest, longest, and arguably most effective student strike in Québec (and Canadian) history.

One must admire this organic, yet disciplined and thoughtful organization. It has shown North America how unity and persistence can halt a government agenda. Nonetheless, I wish to make a critique of its "working principles", which can be surmised from its 2012 Manifesto.

There is a major critical flaw in the CLASSE's analysis about education.

The CLASSE takes education to be a "service" and argues that the point of justice is accessibility of this essential service. Its struggle is thereby focused on securing equitable access to education as a vital societal service, by making an analogy with health services (see CLASSE Manifesto).

This is equivalent to arguing that justice is being exploited fairly.

The CLASSE is making a fatal flaw of paradigm assignment since its assignment prevents the student from correctly seeing herself/himself as a worker, through her/his work within and constrained by the educational complex. The student is not a patient accessing a service. The student is a citizen being forced by economic "reality" to be processed by an institution -- in the same way that a laborer is forced to sell her/his labour and be processed into a life of productivity, except that the laborer is paid rather than being extorted into paying.

If the student were simply a free paying client, then this student-client could choose to buy or not buy the service, and could determine the nature of the service through her/his buying power.

Such is not the case. Rather, the student is an unpaid and exploited worker, a slave that is forced to buy her/his own freedom. The chains are the debt load and the coercion is the real social/financial/class status that is sought through being processed by the educational system for further (higher level) service to the economy.

If the student were simply a free and paying purchaser of a service, then the problem of government impositions would be solved by simply withholding payment! If students could survive and/or thrive in the economic "reality" without education credentials, then mass non-payments of fees would solve any dispute between the purchaser and provider of the educational "service".

After all, it is the student that must write the cheque. Yet students absolutely do not have this option. They must instead use the less effective pressure tactic of a strike. The fact that the strike is the effective tactical option of the circumstances shows that the student is a worker and that the "education" is an intrinsic component of the economic structure and activity.

Why do students accept slavery, degrading and dehumanizing work conditions, no salary, and confinement via a debt load which persists into mid life? Paulo Freire would say "because the slave cannot see that he is a slave" [1].

Students should be striking for a fair salary and to define their working conditions. No fees. No students loans. And no need for another job. Period. There is a desperate need for student liberation [1]. Abolitionism or bust! And that would be an education.

Endnote

[1] See: "Need for and practice of student liberation" by Denis G. Rancourt, Activist Teacher, June 2010.

Denis G. Rancourt is a former tenured and full professor of physics at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He practiced several areas of science which were funded by a national agency and ran an internationally recognized laboratory. He has published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals and many social commentary essays. He developed popular activism courses and was an outspoken critic of the university administration and a defender of student and Palestinian rights. He was fired for his dissidence in 2009.

Student liberation as an intergral part of civil guerrilla warfare - audio lecture, in English and Spanish

.


February 15, 2011, opening lecture by Denis G. Rancourt (Ottawa, Canada) in the Estudis Crítics des de les Ciències Socials series - Barcelona, Spain.

The series was an academic squatting exercise at the University of Barcelona.

The lecture was given by skype (with large screen) and was translated on the fly into Spanish and sometimes Catalan. It is the first presentation of Rancourt's developing "civil (unarmed) guerrilla warefare" model of social change.

The web site of the project course is:
http://estudiscritics.wordpress.com/

Some essays by Denis Rancourt

Concrete Accomplishments of Student Activism of the 1960s

The system needs to erase and replace any memory of success of past social movements. The student activism of the 1960s is not so distant but the memory of its concrete political and socio-structural accomplishments and the memory of its effective methods of change have been wiped out.

It's quite remarkable.

I write this out of a crying societal need to remember.

Ever since I introduced academic squatting to my university courses in 2005 [1] and beyond my dismissal as a tenured professor in 2009 [2] I have been regularly invited to "intervene" in the classes of several of my colleagues on different campuses, to relate my observations and to catalyze examination of self in society.

On the question of "what can we do?" I have noticed an astonishing ignorance of recent student movement history. Even in the minds of activist students and students who academically study social change there is deep ignorance in the form of "replacement".

I am virtually never able to get students to name the concrete accomplishments of their peers from the 1960s, including students who have read on the topic. One of the only common responses, beyond the superficial observation of the occurrence of large protests, is the myth that 1960s students significantly contributed to ending the Vietnam war [3].

Fortunately, a vivid historical account of the 1960s student movements was recently penned by the late historian David F. Noble who was an avid contributor at the time [4]. In addition to following the paper trail, my research has also consisted in informal interviews with Noble and several other student activists from the 1960s -- ones that remained activists throughout their lives.

So, here, in point form, were the concrete achievements of the student movements of the 1960s that redefined the university institution on our planet:

(1) An end to in loco parentis for adult students, an end to the institution as parent. No more curfews or gender segregation or invasions of private lives, etc. No "codes of conduct" where academic sanctions can be leveled against students for legal or illegal behaviours deemed undesirable.

(2) Substantial presence in a new "collegial governance" model that included student representative members on every departmental council, faculty council, key selection committee, university senate and board of governors. The students acquired a legal front seat in the governance apparatus having statutory control of the institution.

(3) Freedom of expression. Students acquired the right to speak, poster, flyer, gather, radio-transmit, demonstrate, etc., ON CAMPUS without being censored, arrested for trespassing or disciplined in any way.

(4) Students won the right to own and manage their own real estate on campus. As a result, new "university centres" were student built, owned and operated, thereby guaranteeing a legally defined "territorial base". This was extended to such student organizations as the "Public Interest Research Groups" and so on.

Note that these victories directly addressed the student condition rather than being expressions of "solidarity" with distant causes, just as opposition to the Vietnam war was an immediate student concern via the draft.

The system makes every effort to mask the significant student power (institutional and legal) that the above victories represent, makes every effort to infantilize students and their representatives, and actively works to reverse the above gains.

Meanwhile, too many neutralized students concentrate their activist attentions on "safe space" pathology, behavioural and attitude propaganda, and organizing ineffective demonstrations without a clue about what would constitute an effective demonstration.

Endnotes

[1] http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2007/04/academic-squatting-democratic-method-of.html
[2] http://rancourt.academicfreedom.ca/component/content/article/25.html
[3] "Pacifism as Pathology" by Ward Churchill.
[4] "Beyond the Promised Land" by David F. Noble

List of background and related essays by Denis G. Rancourt HERE.

Real news from Barcelona - Students and workers prepare to challenge EU capitalism

"Un grupo de activistas 'okupa' la sede del banco Banesto de Barcelona" (LINK)

This Saturday, in Barcelona, a gigantic empty bank was squatted right in the main center of the city, and right now it's being used as a center of coordination for all people getting ready to the general strike of this Wednesday (September 29).

All those who live in the city and cannot take part in the strike for several reasons (precarious situation at work, minimum services obligation, etc), can pass by and ask for help; all those who are not aware of the different committees working on the strike can find the information there; groups who needed a meeting place, now found one; those who want to share the resources they have now have a place to do it.

We believe, that capitalism is not a destiny and that there are many ways of living outside of it and creating conflict. In moments like this we can, together, find answers and solutions for our questions and create links with the people who, as us, want to take back control of their own lives.

Here you have a collection of news about the occupation. Most of it will be in Catalan or Spanish, however if you have doubts or curiosities, write me!

Cheers to all,
Deb
(at the bank, Barcelona)

Happiness is rebellion-shaped
http://29-s.net/
http://blip.tv/file/4166889
http://movimentdel25.wordpress.com/
http://desdebaix.wordpress.com/2010/09/26/des-de-baix-a-la-manifestacio-combativa-quina-es-la-teva-vaga/
http://assembleadebarcelona.wordpress.com/
http://barcelona.indymedia.org/newswire/display/403427/index.php

http://es.noticias.yahoo.com/5/20100925/tes-un-grupo-de-activistas-okupa-la-sede-44b36e8.html
http://www.acn.cat/acn/573349/Societat/text/banc-central-de-credit-banesto-ocupacio-moviment-25-S-vaga-general.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUwbiILGhaY
http://es.noticias.yahoo.com/5/20100925/tes-un-grupo-de-activistas-okupa-la-sede-44b36e8.html
http://www.lavanguardia.es/ciudadanos/noticias/20100926/54011463352/ocupan-el-banco-espanol-de-credito-en-la-plaza-catalunya-de-barcelona.html
http://www.lavanguardia.es/economia/noticias/20100925/54011334779/un-grupo-de-anticapitalistas-ocupa-la-antigua-sede-del-banco-de-credito-en-barcelona-mossos-ccoo-ugt.html
lahaine.org
http://elperiodico.com/es/noticias/barcelona/20100925/centenares-activistas-ocupan-banco-espanol-credito-plaza-catalunya-para-llamar-huelga/499240.shtml
http://www.diariovasco.com/agencias/20100925/centenares-activistas-ocupan-banco-credito_201009252132.html
http://www.kaosenlared.net/noticia/500-anticapitalistas-ocupan-antigua-sede-banco-espanol-credito-plena-p
http://www.abc.es/agencias/noticia.asp?noticia=530587
http://www.3cat24.cat/noticia/871306/barcelones/Els-joves-antisistema-decideixen-continuar-locupacio-de-lantiga-seu-del-Banc-Espanyol-de-Credit-fins-el-29-S
http://www.3cat24.cat/noticia/869686/catalunya/Un-grup-dactivistes-ocupa-lantic-Banc-de-Credit-per-fer-reflexionar-sobre-la-vaga-general

Seguimiento:
http://barcelona.indymedia.org/newswire/display/403999/index.php
http://barcelona.indymedia.org/newswire/display/404012/index.php
http://barcelona.indymedia.org/newswire/display/404020/index.php
http://www.naciodigital.cat/noticia/18361/fotos/ocupacio/antic/edifici/banesto/barcelona
http://www.naciodigital.cat/galeria/602/pagina1/ocupacio/antic/banesto/barcelona/promoure/vaga
http://barcelona.indymedia.org/newswire/display/404061/index.php

Need for and Practice of Student Liberation

(A why for and how to guide)

by Denis G. Rancourt


The modern middle-class First World school and university systems are violently repressive [1]. These institutions are designed for replication and obedience training and rob the student of her natural thrust for independent inquiry, free expression, natural influence, and zeal for life [2].

Using the pretext that technical training requires “discipline” (read mindless repetition) and “standardization” (read demonstration of loyalty to imposed doctrine) the institutions of “higher learning” impose a regime of obedience training followed by professional and graduate school indoctrination [3].

The obedience training and whole-person neutralization is accomplished by strict and artificial disciplinal divisions, an authoritative classroom structure, an imposed unnaturally partitioned time use, unreasonable and repeatedly sequenced production deadlines (for assignments, tests, reports, examinations, etc.) that do not allow time to think, rank ordering of students to produce competition, a continuous administration of punishment and reward via grading and accreditation steps, isolation of the student where collaboration is cast as “cheating”, normalization of behaviour and opinion via imposed group think value judgments, liberal applications of double speak, and a myriad of other such methods – all constantly adjusted to the evolving cultural and local conditions.

After the student is broken down by the obedience training, she is ready for the high level indoctrination of graduate and professional schools. This is achieved by the sophisticated process described by Jeff Schmidt [3]. The professional worker must accept, make hers and project the doctrine of her “chosen” profession, in order to participate in the management of the First World Empire.

The repression of the student is real and is violent. The school and university institutions are the greatest forces in the student’s life. The outcome determines the economic and societal status of the graduate and this status in turn is the single most relevant (statistical) indicator of life expectancy and personal health.

The violence is seen in student suicides and assaults, in the widespread use of prescription psycho-pharmaceuticals and their trafficking, in widespread apathy and cynicism, in isolationism and escapism, in the modern array of self-destructive behaviours, and in the apparent relative inability to bond and form community. The root of the violence is maybe best explained by Paulo Freire [2]:

“Any situation in which “A” objectively exploits “B” or hinders his and her pursuit of self-affirmation as a responsible person is one of oppression. Such a situation in itself constitutes violence even when sweetened by false generosity; because it interferes with the individual’s ontological and historical vocation to be more fully human. With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun.”

“If people, as historical beings necessarily engaged with other people in a movement of inquiry, did not control that movement, it would be (and is) a violation of their humanity. Any situation in which some individuals prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence. The means used are not important; to alienate human beings from their own decision-making is to change them into objects.”

There is therefore a need for student liberation.

But the first barrier, as explained by Freire [2], is that the slave does not recognize that she is a slave. “We need the master because he organizes the work, feeds us, protects us…” (see also [1]).

Activist students prefer to fight for reduced tuition fees to ensure access to the oppression and its rewards. The slave should not have to pay with her future life (student debt) for the privilege of serving the master – fair enough. Slaves want to be oppressed fairly. I have known many activist students to leave demonstrations, actions, and teach ins, in order to hand in assignments for deadlines and to obediently return to an oppressive classroom on Monday morning after a weekend of “solidarity action”.

What can the student do to liberate herself?

Following Freire, I have come to believe that the answer is praxis, the “praxis” of Freire [2]. Only such action fighting one’s own oppression, in a cycle of repeated action and reflection informed by the oppressor’s backlash, leads to both a deepening understanding of the oppression and an exhilarating liberation. True solidarity in battle then arises from the coalescence of these individual revolts and builds the culture of resistance essential to any societal liberation.

At the heart of this praxis lies “authentic rebellion”. In what is perhaps the most profound statement ever made about education and learning in a hierarchical society, Freire puts it this way [2]:

“If children reared in an atmosphere of lovelessness and oppression, children whose potency has been frustrated, do not manage during their youth to take the path of authentic rebellion, they will either drift into total indifference, alienated from reality by the authorities and the myths the latter have used to ‘shape’ them; or they may engage in forms of destructive action.”

How does this look in practice? How does praxis start and develop?

Students already resist a lot. Resistance is widespread and takes many forms. “Work to rule” is common, to the dismay of baffled teachers. Most students refuse to adopt an artificial interest in the horse shit that is downloaded on them in the guise of intellectual discourse and that will be “on the exam”. Students know when they are being spoken to rather than engaged with. And what would it mean to engage when the other side has a gun to your head?

Students turn off and regurgitate on command to appease the oppressor. Teachers see the result but must grade satisfactorily (with an emphasis on factory) rather than confront the system’s generalized failure and their part in it. Actually, we must conclude that this universal outcome is a desired feature of the school factory [4]. It ensures apathy and compliance and guaranties suppression of participation.

In addition, students secretly (among themselves) ridicule and criticize the professor, in a healthy expression of sanity-preserving resistance. Only at the higher levels of indoctrination, when the student emulates the teacher as role model, does this behaviour subside to be replaced with ass kissing adulation.

Students also make heroic attempts to sabotage the obedience training by challenging the deadlines, workloads, grading schemes, work conditions, and atomization. They individually and collectively negotiate for extended deadlines, reduced production, mitigated punishments, etc. They challenge the isolation and imposed competition by forming workgroups and by sharing output – they find ways to cooperate at the risk of being banished via the system’s ultimate charge of “academic fraud”. In the words of David F. Noble “When did cooperation become cheating?”

More frightening are the students who are able to feign interest and to self-indoctrinate and who aggressively defend the system by punishing dissidence in their colleagues. These students want their special efforts to be recognized, rewarded, and not questioned by alternative behaviours. They want to “excel” and aspire to joining the club.

All forms of resistance are healthy and preserving if the resister sees herself as resisting and acts in defiance of the oppressor rather than succumbing to negative self-talk and negative self-image along the lines of the oppressor’s imposed ideology. Authentic rebellion is where it’s at.

More direct and satisfying forms of rebellion, that have greater potential to empower the resister, might include the following: Speaking out in class to question aspects of imposed discipline, such as the deadlines, grading scheme, relevance of the material, imposed methods, disciplinal perspectives, etc.

Such direct interventions have the benefit that the teacher will react and thereby inform the class about real aspects of the system that it would be impossible to learn otherwise. Professors will show their true colours. The students will see them deflect, misinterpret, quash, impose, negotiate, etc.; a highly instructive experience.

Start small and see if you want to push it a little further. Ask to clarify the professor’s response. Maybe ask “Why not?” Maybe state that you do not understand the reasons given? See which colleagues side with you after class or express similar questions or opinions during class. Build on that support by developing ties with potential supporters and co-resisters.

Never accept overt intimidation or abuse from the professor. Stand your ground in such violent attempts to repress your agency in the classroom. Explain the nature of the unacceptable behaviour and request an apology. Do this either privately with a witness or publicly in the classroom. If the potential for escalation of the repression exists, consider using modern technology to voice record the encounter for your protection. Such recordings of conversations that you are party to can be done secretly and are not illegal. No one needs to know and you have the benefit of knowing that you have physical proof if you ever need it for protection.

Only you can decide how far to go and how much to risk. The main point is that the lesson NOT be that you are powerless and must be subservient. Find a way for the lesson to be that you have power and can defend yourself. Find a way to win. The victory is not necessarily a policy change but rather your liberation.

In finding a way to win consider that making things public and exposing the institution’s in-class behaviour is a powerful way to both exert influence and protect yourself from further reprisals. Consider a blog and speaking to the student media or distributing flyers, etc.

A formal complaint to hierarchical authorities can also be useful, in that it will allow you to press further, to expose mechanisms of institutional cover up, and will show that you are not to be messed with. Keep your head up high knowing that you are right, that the violence against you is illegitimate, and that you need not fear the thugs that enforce the slavery from which you seek liberation.

You can always come back into the fold and power will be relieved to take you back in. This can be a good way to rest, reflect, and regroup, as you plan your continued liberation.

Eventually, you may find allies that will allow you to practice “academic squatting” of an entire class [5]. I have found this practice to be highly rewarding, even life-changing [5].

If the professor is not an ally, groups of students can consider “academic hijacking” of credit courses in which a professor is told how it is going to be and that he can either stay and participate or leave.

Students with squatting and hijacking experience have what it takes to impose reforms on the curriculum. And liberated students are independent thinkers that do not practice immoral exploitations of others. They continue their liberation into the workplace.

Such a program of liberation activism is consistent with Paulo Freire’s much repeated mantra that one can ONLY fight one’s own oppression. Individuals that accept their own oppression cannot help liberate others. They only replicate, defend, and adjust the hierarchy of oppression that they inhabit.

I wish you a joyful and intense liberation full of self discovery and learning. Kick ass, don’t kiss it.


References

[1] “The student as nigger - essay” by Jerry Farber.
[2] “Pedagogy of the oppressed - book” by Paulo Freire.
[3] “Disciplined Minds - book” by Jeff Schmidt.
[4] “Canadian education as an impetus towards fascism – essay” by Denis G. Rancourt.
[5] “Academic squatting – essay” by Denis G. Rancourt.

List of other essays by Denis G. Rancourt:
www.academicfreedom.ca/blogs/essays

Student Mario Savio speaks out against Corporate U

Students are the raw material. The products are obedient employees, indoctrinated managers, and service intellectuals. Mario Savio explains it in this video. The machine has only been perfected since that time and there are fewer Marios.



Student Mario Savio proposes this solution:



And we have no idea what he means, no idea what he is talking about, because we have no reference point, because we have been schooled too perfectly.

RELATED LINKS:
On the important question of corporatization
Physics-math student between a Rock and a hard place

On the sacred space of the university classroom

In this essay, I put forth that the PowerPoint(TM) presentation is a vehicle for fascism and that professors have pissed away their sacred duty to protect the classroom space from corporate rule; that the only way to fight indoctrination is to replace it with vibrant bursts of self-discovery that emanate from the rebellious self in conflict with the forces of oppression that assault the classroom.

In Canada the professor is the legal occupier of the university classroom during scheduled class times. This means that the professor effectively owns the space. University administrators cannot simply barge in, nor can the police come in without a warrant.

The professor can decide to have guests and can deny the entry of any person who is not a registered student.

In addition, professors have professional independence, known as academic freedom. They are bound only by their professional better judgement, all the usual laws forbidding criminal behaviour, accepted societal norms of ethical conduct, and any rules or policies that have been established by the collegial governance process for universities.

Only rules, guidelines or policies which have been adopted by the relevant collegial governance process have standing in the classroom. Rules unilaterally adopted by the administration cannot be used to limit an individual professor’s academic freedom.

National and international policy statements on academic freedom and legal precedent are unambiguous on the above points: Universities have institutional independence only to enable them to protect the individual academic freedoms of their professors and students. The university senate is the supreme authority on all academic matters originating through the collegial process. In law, university executives are managerial servants not CEO bosses.

Such is the legal status of the classroom in the Canadian university, irrespective of the corruption and hijacking that has led to the present de facto corporate-style managerial invasion that puts corporate branding and global player ass-kissing ahead of education and personal development. [See supporting links below.]

Given this legal status situation and given every professor’s first priority to provide all her students with maximized opportunity for learning, one would predict that the classroom would be a vibrant cauldron of debate, expression, creativity, challenges, questioning, influences, doubts, emotion, cooperation, competition, reflection, and synthesis.

Well no.

Like a nightmare into Orwell’s future, the classroom has become a PowerPoint presentation in which the answer to your question is three slides back – see? Monkeys with guns. Robots with clickers. Professors are too preoccupied with writing what is publishable to do anything but deliver canned trivia, too insecure to put themselves at risk, too standardized to think on the spot, too specialized to know anything useful, too afraid to allow student freedom … they spend most of their energy preserving the image they have of themselves.

The professor has the legal apparatus to create a learning zone, protected from the insanity of the curriculum as roadmap and from the deadening call of the corporate mental environment, yet he chooses to participate in the killing of his students instead. She chooses to continue her own death rather than participate in life and in the lives of her students.

After all, the students want what they have been moulded into. They pay tuition and they want what they pay for. Many believe that what happens in front of a PowerPoint presentation IS learning and they would not want that “learning” to be interrupted by a lengthy discussion.

Of course most students at least unconsciously understand that they are buying a certificate and being initiated into the priesthood. And they have been so abused and so denied intellectual engagement that this acceptance into the order is all that is left for them. There is little chance of rebellion at this stage and they, like their professors, will now defend this image of themselves. They will defend their deaths rather than face their loses.

Such is the present state of university education. The outcome is exactly what the system wants: Cardboard managers of the Lie. It pays. It kills.

The answer is in the slaves themselves, in their capacity to rebel and to take their place – one personal rebellion at a time, sometimes coalescing with others, often not, always liberating when vehement enough to not be crushed.

SUPPORTING LINKS
UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher-Education Teaching Personnel
Fourteen Defining Characteristics of Fascism
Rancourt case Academic Freedom website
U of O Watch blog
Academic Squatting essay

here it is – the essay that explains the student’s place in society

.

The Student as Nigger
.

by Jerry Farber

AGAINST CHOMSKY

AGAINST CHOMSKY
by Denis G. Rancourt
.
Chomsky invites us to peer into the functioning of the superpower and provides analyses and predictive descriptions of complex societal phenomena such as war, the US military economy, and continental-scale corporate predation. Using institutional and media and geopolitical analyses, Chomsky illustrates golden rules such as that an organization will never work against itself and unravels relationships between domestic interests, class divisions, and global pillaging.
.
As a professor at MIT, is Chomsky an exception to the rule or does Chomsky work for the man?
.

Chomsky once challenged the US war machine at its root and went to jail for his activism, an activism tied to a strong campus anti-war movement. But after jail and after Vietnam, Chomsky became a non-activist intellectual engaged in analytical penetration of the monster.
.

In debating Chomsky in 1971, Foucault stated [1]:
.

“One knows … that the university and in a general way, all teaching systems, which appear simply to disseminate knowledge, are made to maintain a certain social class in power; and to exclude the instruments of power of another social class. … It seems to me that the real political task in a society such as ours is to criticise the workings of institutions, which appear to be both neutral and independent; to criticise and attack them in such a manner that the political violence which has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight against them.”
.

Chomsky, from his position of power within MIT, has not done this. One can say that that is a question of personal choice; that one needs to “choose one’s battles”. But is this choice informed, in terms of action that creates justice – which liberates, rather than reinforces the murderous machine that Chomsky describes?
.

No, it is not. Chomsky feeds our need for truth by providing analysis, an intellectual framework that resides in inaction. Chomsky appeases First World cerebral wanderers by giving them their fix, thereby locking them into either cynicism or a non-ending quest to mentalize it all while being disconnected from any real battle. Chomsky feeds the false notion that one can understand the world and one’s place in it and oneself by reading books.
.

While this may not be Chomsky’s intent, it is clear that the great majority of Chomsky readers have never put themselves at significant risk by confronting the madness that rules our lives and that is destroying every region of the planet. It is clear that most Chomsky readers don’t read Chomsky as part of a necessary reflection within a high-risk activist battle, within a praxis of change [2, 3, 4].
.

Among activist readers Chomsky mainly serves to deepen the pathological pacifism of neutralized mainstream movements. This is mainly because almost all First World activists are of the latter variety [4] but Chomsky does not challenge us to step out. Instead, Chomsky feeds the disconnected and ailing trapped intellectual, the lost soul who has been socialized to study as a “first step” rather than to first feel and stand based on primordial impulse.
.

Education as a “first step” constrains us to study and precludes action until an “understanding” is sufficiently complete, in a manner not unlike compulsory and self-imposed schooling as a holding pattern. When one cannot perceive or will not fight one’s own oppression [5] and when the problem is taken to be the intractable entire planet and the systems of exploitation that occupy it, the “first step” is a non-ending self-trapped cycle of intellectual isolation in which the brain is severed from the heart; the heart that is defined by solidarity in battle and in shared risk and shared consequences, and by inter-dependence.
.

The same scientific method that has alienated us from nature and from our own selves also defines the framework in which we interpret the new world and our place in it [6]. It is a cold framework of measured consequences, weighed counter pressures, and legalistic morality, without the liberating impulse.
.

Chomsky is very careful to not provide any examples of how individuals can free themselves. At most, the prescription is to “organize” [7]: Organizing as a “first step”, leaving out the individual’s primordial quest for freedom to influence. The individual’s impulse to free herself must be constrained behind organizing and education, to the extent that the realities of “survival” permit. Anarchy as anarchism, not anarchy from anarchy [8].
.

In reality, one must first act. The world cannot be correctly perceived from involuntary observation and thought. Only knowledge from action allows one to realistically evaluate the proposals of others. Action, reaction, communication, reflection, action… There is a natural sequence that cannot be adulterated without separating us from ourselves.
.

The intellectual as mentalizer is a service intellectual [2, 9], just as surely as cerebral wanderers are trapped intellectuals. Only through action have I come to understand Chomsky and his place in the world. Let’s move on.
.

.

References cited:
.

[1] Chomsky-Foucault debate, 1971.
[2] Gradual Change is Not Progress.
[3] Activism and Risk.
[4] Churchill, Ward. Pacifism as Pathology. 1998.
[5] Friere, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 1970.
[6] Marcuse, Herbert. One Dimensional Man. 1964.
[7] Chomsky, Noam. Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky. 2002. (P.R. Mitchell and J. Schoeffel, eds.)
[8] Chomsky, Noam. Chomsky on Anarchism. 1969. (2005, AK Press)
[9] Said, Edward. Representations of the Intellectual. 1994.

Follow Up and Supporting Post:
Data in the study "Against Chomsky"

The SDS at UBC is Gearing Up

Students for a Democratic Society are on the move at UBC. Their secret is perpetual action and constant outreach. This is one of the most vibrant campus activism movements in English North America.

On the last day of their week-long Resisting the University conference they called for a demonstration. Nearly one hundred students gathered on the Knoll (the last free-access grassy and treed spot on the UBC campus) with banners and signs and megaphones in hand.

.

Below are photos of this spontaneous act of resistance.
.

They marched to the registrar’s offices to demand no tuition.

.

They marched to the central library to protest the military propaganda of its lobby.
.

They marched to the president’s office to demand a hearing. He was off campus.

.

They barged into the BOG/Senate boardroom to interrupt a planning meeting and to be heard.

.

They promised that board meeting would be interrupted until students had a democratic voice in campus “development”. They rejected the empty talk of unelected board members and resolved to save the campus from appointed corporate stooges.

.

They went to the construction site where their campus is being torn up without student consent.

.

They stopped the bulldozers for a brief moment of sanity.

.

And they took the Knoll.

.

I can report that the SDS and the Wreath Underground are strong tiles in a mosaic of resistance that is emerging on the UBC campus.

.

As they prepare to act directly on the economic levers that illegitimately transform a stolen campus, as they gauge the effectiveness of their strategies, and measure the risks they are willing to take to be in solidarity with the victims of the machine, one can sense that things are going to change.

.

One can sense that this is a school for activists who will be liberated from the pathology of pacifism to enter life in defence of the dying.
.

SDS slogan: "I say STUDENTS. You say: POWER."

Free(d) Public Space - Enjoy

LINKS

Global Research article on SDS-UBC conference

Rabble-ca article on SDS-UBC conference

Ubyssey article on SDS-UBC conference