Alternative Schools and the Failure of Public Education, Part 2

the last great example a melody in what i consider the disguise indoctrination public's goes is the way we teach his tremendous very fast i liked it a lot alike to write down quickly even in the most innovative texts and i'm out i had everything individualized black leader in boston said to me last week the old days we used to have we have to read scott foresman basal readers see no streets and roads than it was a radical version called new streets and roads there is there a communist version called more street in roadside as if it would be all there's it's got fourteen we got racism on the full group now in e s are a reading a lab we get individualized racism is everybody gets it at his or her own pace about that it really hasn't changed the way g jester is the same thing you know about the methods are different continents and every culture studied not in terms of re solicitations uses them and not in terms of a a

struggle avoid deal the icon of oppression and injustice of exploitation of the of the of the of the ongoing antagonism between the rulers and the rule but always when says stability in the terms of the three major contributions this civilization and every every civilization is three major contributions to study jackson's sad is egyptian walking sideways across history has somehow faded analysts acres of sand stretching out behind his eyes somehow misplaced halfway between his nose and ear and walking along and he has three major contributions and they are but they're in it crop irrigation and big one discovery lonely too got any damage is in gaber is always one up on the egyptians naturally discover only one

god christians come along and discover the right that constant a mix of questionable decision to get himself converted and skipping some ana periods of history here john edwards seems that the cost and do it is a progress is slow down the images happiest is a marine squad in sleepy doc they call the dark ages but no textbooks don't describe it that way instead they said to everybody was resting and a getting ready for something big and then and then it happens cox bluntly of fluorescence the renaissance the reformation marlowe the hammers out his message without modern innovative hammer on the church door and all these little people is that textbooks you the impression story around or nearly painting frescoes everywhere they can find space above the door underneath the window up and then progress says most important moves into the realm of transportation

boats become ships grains become jazz admirals become audacious and so west to discover the new world and now with the founding of the united states progress are really comes into its own our cars before where it only happened by generations centuries decades periods of influence there is in the light now it happens every four years you thought millard fillmore was exciting wait till you arrive calvin coolidge now in i think i'm kidding i'm is schumer it was said and saw you and some of those i often find educators are dark they're disagree with me while i'm speaking want to sing it

at a college in the question period wait till the next day and then explain to those students that i'm a communist and stupid or a nano that i was just playing jokes and being funny oh i'm not playing jokes even if i am being funny as barracks and told us sometimes we love so that we shall on crime and there is an enormous a lot in the minutes i described the case of the myth of progress the evil is not simply that gives us an idiot optimism which it does of course is as a fool's hopefulness about the future you know isn't this evil is that it grants us at the goat exemption it everything good is going to happen anyway with out to why on earth should anyone here go out and put his her body on the line to fight for our beliefs

why do it why are the prices struggle risk and confrontation loss of brandon's loss of the loyalty of parents lost the loyalty of colleagues worst of all a loss of ten year why do it if everything good is going to happen anyway with how to live but it just like the use of the subjective it's the third person is of the condition know them at the progress let's stop each man each woman and each trial and sets us down outside of history and this point on our relationship to history is that of the object the bird oh that of the audience to the stage they know that the

actor to the play we watch we comment we agree we differ we observe we write our dissertation we do not rise and struggle to rebel i have some kids in schenectady few years back what is history gao these are very rich kids show that he exacts and i said what is history of first as they came back with this story is everything that ever happened in the past and now is over no jobs in history is what is done by rich and famous people he was the son of the vice president general electric third child said history it's something that happens every night at six thirty maybe here happens at five three and i'm sure i'm the little blue green space of moving thoughts on television narrated by extremely decent man with horn rimmed glasses after ten years he said it gets transformed into

even columns of graying wig unit questions every fifteen pages it's by accident that we learn as kind of less than the public's good bunch of the public's good to exile ourselves from history leave the work of history for those entirely alienated products cyclists surgery of the us public schools like henry kissinger gerald ford my question is why does this not from boston to confuse education with politics why couldn't you just bake a good innovative way to deal with children you

greeted iran's durable cages or water play individualized reading don't take the spelling list from the spelling book but take it from the children that's revolutionary why couldn't they stick to that you could get back a durable ok you are why does he have to join his talk of education these anguish issues of political decision a lot of people would dearly love to say that education could be nonpolitical neutral and consensual it isn't now and it never was and

it never will be after we're finished with the struggles of our times did your is can never be neutral in the presence of an unjust social order this is true in the soviet union does it really true are more so in the united states teachers in every case it included can i have collaborate by silence or read about unity just never speak a word or a non neutral buy their silence so we lived a smooth nine tenths of social studies the public school is nothing else but why we do it successfully and so we guarantee another generation every time a boss i'll soldiers monette to local consumers manageable voters haldeman's alex mearns

nixon's rockefellers at insults year low an odd another great concern our nation professes to win the hearts and minds of the rest of the world were never going to do it with a bigger bombs or slither kissinger's we just might do it if we have the courage an educated generation of young people with the courage to say no in place of evil hundred years ago the purpose of a public school to establish a strong homogeneous nation might have made good sense whatever censored made a hundred years ago it makes no sense today we're strong and not only can destroy the rest of the wide world wants

seems to me it is our obligation and this point are to turn the priorities of public school exactly upside down not to educate a nation of strong people but to education and educate a nation which is ethical and judicious and conscientious in its use of strength and this would be a battle and a half if we would only have the courage well i wonder speaker about five minutes about a good strong powerful alternative which was developed in the past seven years the years and this is the alternative school movement united states in boston some time back in nineteen sixty five sixty six after i was bounced never ever once said don't ever stick out your neck of black people were enslaved why was it colored

eyes and they said if you do not if you're in a bad very vivid metaphor a knife is a rather more knives they are the newer and italian neighborhood with a manufactured out and its allied him in the back with the parents did was to get a job running the freedom school in the basement of a church that church only five rooms the basement we expected about thirty five kids instead of thirty five kids within one month we had five hundred and five hundred teachers matched with them on the one my comrade or as we used to say olden days my girlfriend had flood data bank in that she couldn't do new maps or she began our math teacher and because this time we got a note from a local public school

every parent got a mimeograph note saying the job isn't a map workshop up the freedom school take her out take him out because the children getting over teacher and it's ruining her lesson plans around that time a school was spreading out into the neighborhood we obviously couldn't do this and five room so what we would do it be to rent an apartment we go in and put up black boys that we found that are that you could buy into buying blackboard the green board has more innovative green boards you could make them yourself you know that you have paid rewards we get down and green board so it begun by and they'd get it down in green boardman down wine we'd go up and green paint on them plays green and hammer out some cigar boxes including jochum collar school that day we go and lord landlady you're going to do until after he read it and that and that was our

school and the community that we were at about five different buildings throughout the neighborhood well sometime in the winter once the plant began getting these warnings from the school and we will work in ohio and teaching skills and i take that seriously i serve before say again right now if we wait if we don't consider ourselves rebels can't teach life skills numbers words the years of words as well as the folks at ibm and xerox and time life and we better give up the field about thomas died i like to have like the kids that i work with to be competent rebels and articulate radicals may write their manifest doesn't like them grammar to be good you worked hard and stuff like that and around christmas time branstad a second wouldn't be interesting if someday a group like isis in and impacted area like this

you know that were impacted that's the academic term for gallo impacted areas of the inner core like black people with their black people alike wisdom teeth didn't grow inner i am i said what are the interestingly the group like isis within the inner core should sunday have a chance to start the school of their own sewer elliott it wasn't a perfect exemplification the prices are described two words and everyone and then one day i met rip and starting to raise the stakes and i would say it would be something of a group like the us could start this glue of our own in our own neighborhood and run it for the sake of our own children and then one day i remember sadie morning wrap really early when i sent to sleep or eleven ms bunn rang and pat ms walker sang him a jonathan get out there on your pants were having him a mortgage stars who and democrat made a much

later dramatic moment that was when she gets a get up on your pat to rest our school because you know very it was just a natural momentum but as i look back on it later on i thought that was the day she entered history and recognized history was not a mistake was not it was not a mystic function and geo them have and haven't recorded on tv was something that was done by you and me we held a meeting and he stood up in the front you said to a group of a hundred and twenty people the last why were people from harvard med school and never would show up when we were having a money raising mean they're always showed up for meetings like this because broadway dissertations came out of that you know and they all showed up in a bag it's in the back row and laneway back and then in air brooks brothers were cheered summit sit way back until the chairs and i'm on the pad said i just kept wishing most chairs would go right on over and and everything we said they would whisper to recheck

and says the i'm like that we were you know well meaning that stupid people and and and i remember one guy got up suddenly when we sit with that and ran a lot where every classroom because kids didn't use the central library very much most public schools he said not good it is tonight and i forget the way said i really can imitate well isn't like good ideas tonight on air date him notions but there is that way they get the money to arm the financial is done and then this whopping jumped up great thinking vestiges of rich are five dollars to everybody comes to our meetings so in that water does right there and done however it's the males jumped up and said look you're starting to big start small start with k through three for those of you are

not professional educate dollars that means kindergarten through third grade we nea members know that i'm ready and it didn't start with k through three and then build up and began his walker stood up and look at this guy right in the eyes and said my son iran he said they kept using his phrase is it it really big is that is it makes more sense to do it this way he's a stack k through three makes more sense to do it that way and she stood up and use it but my son is in the fourth grade that makes more sense and in a case they at that and said i'm on those energy momentum which iran may complain they said to guide james to keep up with them to the next six months they're one out may hide a whole bunch of teachers are the best teachers had been

fighting in the boston public schools are about to be fired they hired an armed if they were getting whatever they were getting the bands offer them a bigger salary is in having money anyway so and that meant i thought man marvelous woman umbach hornby miller from chicago and she was really perfect for the job and i'm ok and she wants a mere fourteen thousand fifteen thousand dollars and they said well god we've already hard to giuliani money women's wires and i brought her on to boston two am i'm amazed that you know he's very logical thing this is long before the age of avon election the schooling i mean like this the weekday school ourself as the year because there is a step by step logic right away made well we get teachers now headmistress maybe later date women thought they needed that's a much debated then and all what else a building we always be useful so that day on the day that they get past that were passed out flyers in the main thing the kid said

all along the line was you want a building that doesn't look like a school one day when the band's driving down the street saw the building is a beautiful old hundred and forty year old building which was covered with it really beautiful look like an old manor never been shaved the prize was forty thousand dollars so we bought it when eddie money banks wouldn't lend us money for something like that so we did what anyone would do we went to a loan shark meredith kindly loan shark method or more reckless deal i'm actually a year later they got the building when a shaved off the idea not to building assessed they found that it was a very valuable historic period piece was worth eighty thousand dollars so wasn't a bad deal after all and i'm an entertainer skip it again as with great

civilizations giving by few minor elements like the fact we enroll children in september a school open now that's go didn't survive forever it had five six good years and then it got into an aunt enormous trouble and struggle because of financial pressures are so greg allen other schools however in the boston area blossomed out of that that really was the first significant alternative school in eastern party united states and the only school as early as that was the school started by bill aaron diana oden and in ann arbor michigan in the same year there it's important is that it began a momentum into day here twelve this goes like that thriving black and white and rich and poor and at their best all in the same school in the boston area they're forty six goes with him a half hour drive out of the loop in chicago

and dozens of similar schools in st louis and clinton in milwaukee a new york and portland and spokane in yakima at a manhattan kansas and san francisco and la and for all i know in texas too but i just don't know that a lot of people make fun of the schools because a lot of this goes at good people to be frivolous and it's true that some of them are assertive silly sounds ominous goes were really to be quite blunt with you i don't think they do anything worthwhile accept moving around from having a totalitarian power of the state in a game in the past day day day wired to avoid all power of adults altogether and so they've gone into the point not simply of having open school but essentially and in what at what

i call an innovative back him kmiec communal emptiness collective ignorance and thick and this goes always fall insofar as i'm concerned it's just as well because i really don't think they're going to save the cause of justice hell there'd be a social struggle by allowing kids to wait twelve years of their lives swinging from giddy sit downs and stopping plasticine up into each other's nostrils that they're an awful lot of schools like this and i do and i dont tell a party line and i condemn schools like this because i think it's cause of that kind of the ones that are gonna drive this nation state into a blind date and reactionaries like max rapidly would love namely back to basics if we can do a better job teaching skills by innovative ethical and open methods then the old time tyrants did

an air races to interact all schools then there's not a chance in the world that we're going to be able to prevail against them it seems to me if we want these goes to work we've got to fight like hell to make them just as good or better in the areas of bread and butter skills without which children can survive with in a nation like our nation you are like nineteen seventy six jonathan kozol activist for social change and well known critic of the public school system jonathan kozol is author of death in an early age and the recently published the night is dark and i'm far from home for a march you just heard were recorded at the university of texas at austin in march nineteen seventy six however the opinions expressed <unk> causal zone and do not necessarily reflect those of ut austin or the station to which you're listening

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