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		Anarchy & Education

		     The Canadian Student Strike



This transmission contains: Strike For Student Rights

			    Don't Call Students...

			    Anarchism, Freedom is Free, & Anarchy



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Strike For Student Rights



University for the individual can be a time of conflict and

confrontation. Often for the first time, the truth, or at least

the closest thing, is presented to the post-secondary student.



The truth of a global exploitative system that wreaks its havoc

on all forms of humanity. Through various disciplines and

courses, the complexity and expansiveness of this system is

presented to students. For perhaps the first time in their lives

they are confronted with perhaps a less than perfect picture of

our so-called liberal democracy.



Here the student is faced with three main options.



The first and seemingly most common choice is to attempt to

altogether ignore the horrible truth being presented. This is

often accomplished through large consumption of beer, booze, and

many other recreational drugs, along of course with the generous

aid of television.



The second option, is to simply accept the truth as it is.

Accept that it is just a process of human development, and

communism has failed so what are you supposed to do. From this

standpoint it becomes easier to compete for a spot among the

elite, or their supporting class. Gotta get those good grades to

get a good job.



The third choice, really the only viable one, is to accept the

truth, while at the same time rejecting its implications. A

rejection of what is being taught, and the beginning or

continuation of the struggle for alternatives. The desire to

stand up in class and say, "This is shit! We gotta do something

about this!"



This third choice leads to the struggle for Student Rights...





Every person has the right to a decent, free education. The

pricing of education is an integral part of the commoditization

of human labour and subsequently humanity itself. We are always

learning from birth to death. Or at least we should be, free

education can help ensure this.



Every person has the right to learn what they want, how they

want it, and when they want it. This would include not just

choosing courses, but the curriculum and evaluations of the

course.



Education should be a process of empowerment rather than

submission to authority. Professors should be guiding students

towards the exploration and development of their studies.

Equipping them with the tools needed to find the truth/answers

to their problems. Students leading the class, the professors

provide the fuel. Instead of enforcing their views and

conclusions upon the class, professors should help create an

environment that encourages original and critical thinking.



Education should be a never ending process. We must escape from

the formal institution of education. It is our job to build an

environment that supports a continual learning process. Real

life as education.





Strike. Study. strike. study, will someone out there stop

studying and start striking, break down doors and throw some

MP's furniture out the window. This chance for protest doesn't

not just consider student tuition but rather the entire social

service industry. Unions might be self interested beaurocracies

but the reality of a capitalist system automatically calls for

either sacrifice or welfare. With the present liberal budget,

people previously dependant on government assistance will make

up a new lower labour class willing to work for under minimum

wage with less financial security. It is what Chomsky calls the

third world within the first world. The liberal budget is

following a fascist approach left behind by Reagan, Bush,

Thatcher, and Mulrooney, among others. If you render your rights

to an oligarchy and find yourself trapped in a cold institution,

one way of warming it is to burn it down.





A lot of schools across Canada have declined the opportunity to

strike on Jan. 25 1995. What the fuck's up with this?! A strike

is an excellent activity for class consciousness. Students need

to realize the power they have in numbers, not to mention desire

for change. I'm striking every time I skip a class. I've been

complaining about schools and the education system since

kindergarten. I wanna see lots o' changes in education. Rising

tuition is not one of them. Prices are going up, and active

student participation is going down. We gotta get our shit

together.



With the absence of a powerful "grassroots" student

organization, the onus for resistance and revolution lays on the

individual. It becomes the responsibility for student activists

to 'cause shit wherever and whenever they can. The most

effective often comes within the classroom. Professors authority

should be challenged at all points, as well as the authority of

those being studied.



Until a large collective of autonomous groups can rise up and

demand what is rightfully theirs, individuals must take the

weight of fighting back. Large student groups that wish to

compete with the government by forming large hierarchical

organizations, are doomed to pragmatic self-interested actions

rather than radical change of the education system. Change must

come from the bottom up, not dictated from the top down.



We've all gotta do our share to take our freedom...



Jesse Hirsh









Don't Call Students When the Revolution Comes



by Jay Terpstra

jterpstra@trentu.ca



There is a story about public education mirroring the assembly

line patterns of modern industrialization, creating a surplus of

information-glutton automatons. A university is run by

pre-determined laws and curricula. The danger is the end of

anything fresh. Neil Postman called the act of modern day

education to be an exercise in ventriliquilization and Malcolm X

called it miseducation. Meanwhile, minds continue to rot and

robotize and the castles still stand.



Sitting in the principles office, the spit of the principles

declarations started to burn my cries of defence. I would either

crack under the weight of his towering suited frame and broad

desk shoulders or I would be so shocked by his skits of faked

disappointed toughness and so unimpressed by his  desperate

attempts to coerce admission of my crimes carefully categorized

and moralized to fit guilt and shame that I would start to

laugh. The awful realization that I was being sucked into a game

of rank and rule pissed me off to the point where I'd be sent

off to a higher course of punishment.



In university the forces of beaurocracy are more subtle.

Students, like children have little effect on education past

paying the ticket price at the door. Just like members of an

industrial factory students have to put their hands in the lines

of standardized knowledge without pulling any of the wrong

screws. That infinite amounts of text are routinely recited is

not in itself a problem until a blindness to any alternatives

(often the realistic ones) occurs. Narrow education emerges with

the over examination of the specifics of a past theory such as

in politics; the structure of style as in english, the

rationalization of everything such as in sciences. It's often

impossible to keep an original opinion against previously set

guidelines and  significant data. For the professors to be able

to grade people they must have predetermined parameters. At the

outset of a course the professor already knows the purpose and

point of the course and just like a minister their job is to

sell the point, whatever the truth is that they profess.

Professors are only roles of  a wide structure that has failed

to influence much more than shit packing. 



 Noam Chomsky points out,  "Those whom we call intellectuals

have tended to see the state as the avenue to power, prestige,

and influence". University is a place of mass imitation of the

status quo. This is bound to happen in a place that masks live

experience behind sacred text. Memorization and mathematical

categorization is valued over  individual creations and

open-ended questions. It's easy to kill dissension when most

students are too busy figuring out guidelines, grades and

graduation. Paul Goodman  suggested that high school and post

secondary education be replaced with on-site direct education.

He goes on to say that university "should be reserved for adults

who already know something about which to philosophise.

Otherwise, as Plato pointed out, such 'education' is just mere

verbalizing". Instead of sections of  people in standardized

departments, students should  have the unconditional right to

pursue an entirely independent curriculum. Taking interest and

ambition into assumption this could be the most  efficient means

to a meaningful education. Goodman points out that  instead of

supporting costly institutions, the government could fund 

individual students directly . Yet  many would nevertheless sink

to the fear that students wouldn't acquire the essential

theories and prerequisites necessary for academically accepted

interpretation. The schools consider students to be the same

rather than interconnected, a group of successful and less

successful people rather than as individuals with unique

abilities and interests.



 The legendary founder of free schools, Francisco  Ferrer 

believed the true educator to be someone who "does not impose

his own ideas and will on the child, but appeals to its own

energies" . Almost a hundred years after Ferrer was shot by the

government for being too radical, his common sense vision of

education is still not a reality. After years of imposition,

students learn to insert their energies into ready-made roles.

Emma Goldman's critique of  university education  and liberal 

capitalism  is still a potent cry for  the freedom  and

deinstitutionalization of education: 



The ideal of the average pedagogist is not a complete,

well-rounded, original being; rather does he seek that the

result of his art or pedagogy shall be autonomous of flesh and

blood, to best fit into the treadmill of society and the

emptiness and dullness of our lives. Every home, school, college

and  university stands for dry, cold utilitarianism,

overflooding the brain of the pupil with a tremendous amount of

ideas, handed down from generations past. 'Facts and data,' as

they are called, constitute a lot of information, well enough

perhaps to  maintain every form of authority and to create much

awe for the importance of possession, but only a great handicap

to a true understanding of the human soul and its place in the

world.



 The castles made of sand still standing.





ANARCHISM



by: Lior Stecklov

ai797@freenet.victoria.bc.ca



"In the battle for freedom, as Ibsen has so well pointed out, it

is the struggle for, not so much the attainment of, liberty,

that develops all that is strongest, sturdiest and finest in

human character."

                                                               

                                                                     

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These  words of Emma Goldmann may best sum up what anarchism

means to me. Although I often think that I would like to present

a comprehensive theory of anarchism, I do not believe that there

is one. How can there be a theory to explain the yearning of the

soul for freedom, human dignity, the shame of repression ?  the

spark of spirit that seeks new and daring worlds ?       There

are some basic ideas underlying anarchism but they do not

constitute a dogma, scientific or otherwise. The first idea is

that people are inherently good, that human nature does not need

to be coerced for society to function. Human beings live in

society from the moment they are born to the moment they die. To

conceive of a person without society is an absurdity: thought,

language, belief, sexuality and love are what we give and take

with  others and are what define the deepest aspects of life.

Yet we are born into a society which is hostile to free thought,

which uses language as a means of control, which trivializes

beliefs and replaces them with dogma, which denigrates sexuality

to the level of a function and raises love to the level of an

ideal.  Whenever we question these perversions, rationalizations

are riveted into place and the cold steel hull of the ship of

social "order" is cast off into the ocean of historical

illusions.  But in a world where the multiplicity of human

interactions makes for unlimited spontaneity, the certainty of

social order creates a paradox which both poets and economists

must know.  A society based on illusions fostered by social

order cannot cope with reality, and the needs of the people will

assert themselves through revolution while the needs of Nature

will assert themselves as we continue to destroy the

environment.        Underlying the fear of human nature is the

great mass of repression and fear of change which characterizes

modern society. The fear of human nature is what keeps the

systems in place, it is the excuse given by most people who know

injustice but are afraid of change, it is the justification

given for every savage repression by the ruling elites. Yet

whatever systems are proposed are bound to fail because they are

resistant to change, the essence of humanity and nature.    The

very idea that there is an ultimate system that will run human

affairs is a product of the type of thinking arising from

hierarchical society, where individuals are alienated from

community, from real contact with each other and are simply

considered as abstract "agents" to be manipulated.  Hierarchical

society is a society where every person or group has power of

coercion over another: relationships are conceived through power

structures.  Sound strange or weird ? Open the T.V. or

newspaper, look around your workplace or classroom with new

eyes, look at your family. It is so close to us that we can't

see it or believe it. Our thinking has been appropriated by it. 

It is not just the words: it is what you don't read in your

newspaper, it is the tone of the announcer as the news is read;

it is the rightness of your boss or prof, it is the emptiness

found at home.



"Freedom without socialism is privilege and

injustice...Socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality."

  Mikael Bakunin



The same hierarchical relations apply to political systems which

 are a product of hierarchical thinking, of the belief that

something can be "over" people.  This is as much the failure of

Marxism as of  liberal capitalism or fascism.  The Marxist

system, which is supposed to be theoretically imposed by history

and practically  by the proletariat has failed as revolution.

Anarchism split off from the Marxist dominated revolutionary

movement in 1872 because anarchists such as Mikael Bakunin

believed that Marxist ideology would lead to a totalitarian

state. This is exactly what has happened in the Soviet Union,

Cuba, China and so on. And while Marxism has many important

contributions to revolutionary ideology, its subsumption into a

type of religion and its esoteric philosophical concepts have

done much to hurt the cause of true revolution.



" A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth  

 even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which   

Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it   

looks out, and seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is

the realization of Utopias." Oscar Wilde



 Of course, this does not mean that anarchism stands for riot

and mayhem and that Anarchists do not believe in thought.

Certainly, a dialectic of revolution is called for, but this

dialectic must be true to its origins: any dialectic that

presumes to know the answers it will find, that knows its

ultimate end must be called into question. As with philosophy,

as with real life. Any social movement which sets up an end

point and imposes it cannot be a truly revolutionary movement.

Revolution is never ending, it starts from one point, moves to

another, and again to another. Change is the rule, not the

exception.  Anarchism's "end point" is the point where society

can accept change without destroying human life or the

environment. If this is the Utopia, let it be.     Anarchists

are often charged with being utopian dreamers yet it is

Anarchism which destroys the illusion that power can solve human

problems. Power, and by this we mean the power to coerce, never

solves more problems than it creates ! Power is antihuman: a

being who relates through power will always dehumanize the

other. What Anarchists demand is a solution to social problems

without using power, and this is a lot harder than anything else

because it demands a human response, a spontaneous response, a

direct, personal, real, unmediated response !  Anarchism demands

that you think for yourself, never retreating into dogma,

useless and endless causality (henceforth called mind-fucking),

abstruse mysticism, bourgeois decadence and pettiness.   Freedom

>from  compulsion allows the development of all that is beautiful

in human existence. "Breath, breath in the air, don't be afraid

to care.." goes the Pink Floyd song. Without coercion, people

can reach out to each other and solve problems through

community. At the workplace, community will replace the power

games and enmity between the labourers and the managers. The

land will be given back to the People, and small, self-reliant

communities will spring up which practice sustainable

agriculture and resource use. Small communities will be able to

harness renewable energy and the exploitation of fossil fuels

will be minimized. Work will become play: instead of the torpid

monotony and stress that most people find in work there will be

diversity and personal growth. Urban lands that were once set

aside for cars and for the rich will be turned into

horticultural gardens where food is grown.



Listen to your inner voice, Which you've sold under stress:

Contractual agreement on emptiness The mouth not yours now the

lips slightly taught, the jaw set: A wind stirs they begin to

shake the breath too Anger, joy and even fear, form into sound,

into thought and word, whispered in love, embraced as life,

spoken by toil, screamed through struggle Freedom ! Freedom !



History teaches that there are two opposing forces that shape

political destiny: revolution and reaction.  Revolution, the

force for change, the new, the creative; Reaction, the

opposition of change, keeping things the same, keeping things

"stable" in the doublespeak of the Bourgeoisie.  Everything that

is happening in the world today is a product of history and the

dialectic of opposites formed by revolution and reaction. This

dialectic forms the basis of revolutionary thought, both Marxist

and anarchist. The word dialectic simply means reasoning through

the synthesis of two opposites. Once we see the revolutionary

dialectic, we can understand the necessity of revolution and

nurture it rather than pervert it into totalitarianism. This

situation is especially urgent in the tension between the

"North" and "South" which is actually a tension between reaction

and revolution. The wealthy powerful world are using every means

to keep the majority of the world oppressed and poor. The

rebellion in Chiapas is a good example of this trend and we must

support the rebels in every way possible.    Next issue I will

expand on the dialectic of revolution and discuss the meaning of

Statism, Capitalism and the international imbalance.



GOOD BOOKS



Shulman, Alix Kates. 1972.   Red Emma Speaks. Random House: New

York.  Bookchin, Murray.  Post-Scarcity Anarchism  Morris,

Brian. Bakunin: the philosophy of freedom  Marshal, Peter.

Demanding the Impossible : A History of Anarchism.  Kropotkin,

Peter. The Conquest of Bread.



FREEDOM IS FREE



by J.V. Kiss-An



The word freedom can't explain fully what it stands for. freedom

is an inherent property and not a temporary state of being. 

Freedom can't be partial. Freedom is the essential component for

a healthy and peaceful society Freedom provides the energy for

the physical and mental body to properly function Freedom is not

a commodity to fight over or trade.  Freedom belongs to

everybody: It is not a privilege Freedom leads one to wisdom. 

Wisdom is not an intellectual property to be copyrighted or

patented. Freedom is not a compensation or reward for a trick

performed. Because of its abstract nature, freedom has

manifested itself in different forms.  Anarchy is probably the

purest form so far. Freedom stays a dead word under capitalist

ideology. If you are activated by the spirit of freedom it only

shows you are a normal human being This quality needs nurturing

and will produce positive thinking in a world full of

negativity. Remove the price tag put on freedom by the greedy

who have sought to own the priceless It does not take a genius

to figure out that we live in a sick society where food, water

and air have price tags put on them. It's time we learned the

art of giving, an easy way to achieve freedom.



Anarchy



by Darrell Lake



Anarchy is aiming to destroy corporate capitalism. There are no

other political motivations to follow, just individuals leading

by example; to inspire people to practice anarchy themselves.



Anarchy in the sense of defining one's own politics. Defining

one's own lifestyle with a social consciousness. Fighting

capitalism by escaping it and building alternatives.



By following the examples of other individuals this anarchy will

not be promoting chaos or trying to exterminate all rational

thought. Instead it attempts further environmental awareness on

several different levels by making the individual more

intelligent and independent of the flaws of the society they

live in.



We're not looking at big and wasteful political awareness

campaigns advertising in the same corporate backed mediums it

wishes to destroy. Anarchy has to be kept on an individual,

community level, promoting amateurism rather than

professionalism. This is the only way to take power from the

specialist corporate model.



To be an amateur means there are no systematic campaigns.

Anarchy comes from the methods and practices offered by all

individuals.



There is chaos in the wide array of differences that will

emerge, but these differences are united in a common struggle. A

struggle for freedom, with capitalism as a major obstacle.



Anarchy is a human expression for freedom. It's time we all

start expressing ourselves with a bit more volume.



Ed Note: Darrell Lake is the author of the infamous biography of

Mr. Fuck You Man. It is available through The Anarchy

Organization.

____________________________________________________________

Get with the program. Contact TAO today.

____________________________________________________________

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         /-/\-\      The Anarchy Organization      |

        / /  \ \     Free Minds For Free Lives   ( | )

     --|-/----\-\--  yakimov@ecf.utoronto.ca      \|/

       \/      \/    jterpstra@trentu.ca         `_^_'





