The gamecock. (Columbia, S.C.) 1908-2006, February 18, 1970, Page Page 2, Image 2
-aftai eSr, When you
a~tSlet W", oebels bein
sn, It's more im
butouderstand why
~IggerU. i we follow that
Ius sough, it wiln
UN pt the aone of academic
bulhhit, where dedicated teachers
pass their knowledge on to a new
ge0WAtion, and into the nitty
gritty of human needs and hang
dpe. And from there we can go on
to consider whether it might ever
be possible for students to come up
rom slavery.
First, let's see what's happening
now. Let's look at the role students
play In what we like to call
education.
At Cal State, L. A., where I
teach, the students have separate
and unequal dining facilities. If I
take them into the faculty dining
room, my colleagues get un
comfortable, as though there were
...he smiles and shuffles
the professor's office waiti
The faculty tell him whai
a bad smell. If I eat in the student
cafeteria, I become known as the
educational equivalent of a
niggerlover. In at least one
building, there are even rest rooms
which students may not use. At Cal
State, also, there is an unwritten
law barring student-faculty
lovemaking. Portunately, this anti
miscegenation law, like its
Southern counterpart, is not 100
per cent effective.
Students at Cal State are
politically disenfranchised. They
are in an academic Lowndes
County. Most of them can vote in
national elections - their average
age is about 26 - but they have no
voice in the decisions which affect
their academic lives. The students
are, it is true, allowed to have a toy
government of their own. It is a
government run for the most part
by Uncle Toms and concerned
principally with trivia. The faculty
and administration decide which
courses will be offered; the
students get to choose their own
Homecoming Queen. Occasionally,
when student leaders get upity and
rebellious, they're either ignored,
put off with trivial concessions, or
maneuvered e xpertly out of
position.
A student at Cal State is ex
pected to know his place. He calls a
faculty member 'Sir' or 'Doctor' or
'Professor' - and he smiles and
shuffles some as he stands outside
the professor's office waiting for
per-mission to enter. The faculty
tell him what courses to take (in
my department, English, even
electives have to be approved by a
faculty member); they tell him
what to read, what to write, and
frequently, where to set the
margins on his typewriter. They
tell him what's true and what isn't.
Some teachers insist that they
encourage dissent but they're
almost always jiving and every
student knows it. Tell the man
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t as nigger
ident
what he wants tohear or he'll fail
your ass out of the course,
When a teacher says 'jump',
students jump. I know of one
professor who refused to take up
class time for exams and required
students to show up for tests at 6:30
in the morning. And they did, by
God! Another, at exam time,
provides answer cards to be filled
out - each one enclosed in a 0aper
bag wit a hole cut in the top to see
through. Students stick their
writing hands in the bags while
taking the test. The teacher isn't a
provo; I wish he were. He does it to
prevent cheating. Another
colleague once caught a student
reading during one of his lectures
and threw her book against the
wall. Still another lectures his
students into a stupor and then
screams at them in a rage when
they fall asleep.
Just last week, during the first
meeting of a class, one girl got up
to leave after about ten minutes
some as he stands outside
ng for permission to enter.
courses to take...
had gone by. The teacher rushed
over, grabbed her by the arm,
saying, 'This class is NOT
dismissed'and led her back to her
seat. On the same day another
teacher began by informing his
class that he does not like beards,
mustaches, long hair on boys, or
capri pants on girls, and will not
tolerate any of that in his class.
That class incidentally, consisted
mostly of high school teachers.
Even more discouraging than
this Auschwitz approach to
education is the fact that the
students take it. They haven't gone
through twelve years of public
school for nothing. They've
learned one thing and perhaps only
one thing during those twelve
years. They've forgotten their
algebra. They're hopelessly vague
about chemistry and physics.
They've grown to fear and resent
literature. They write like they've
been lobotomized. But, Jesus, can
they follow orders! Freshmen
come up to me with an essay and
ask if I want it folded and whether
their name should be in the upper
right hand corner. And I want to
cry and kiss them and caress their
poor tortured heads.
Students don't ask that orders
make sense. They give up ex
pecting things to make sense long
before they leave elementary
school. Things are true because the
tea,cher says they're true. At a
very early age we all learn to
accept 'two truths', as did certain
medieval churchmen. Outside of
class, things are true to your
tongue, your fingers, your
stomach, your heart. Inside class,
things are true by reason of
authority. And that's just fine
because you don't care anyway.
Miss Wiedemeyer tells you a noun
is a person, place, or thing. So let it
be. You don't give a rat's ass; she
doesn't give a rat's ass.
The important thing is to please
Wednesday. February I8. 1976
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is expl
her. Back in kindergarten, you.
found out that teachers only love
children who stand in a nice
straight line. And that's where it's
been at ever since. Nothing
changes except to get worse.
School becomes more and more
obviously a prison. Last year I
spoke to a student assembly at
Manual Arts High School and then
couldn't get out of the goddamn
school. I mean there wa- NO WAY
OUT. Locked doors. High fences.
One of the isimates was trying to
make it over a fence when he saw
me coming and froze in panic. For
a moment, I expected sirens, a
rattle of bullets, and him clawing
the fence.
What school amounts to, then,
for white and black kids alike, is a
12-year course in how to be slaves.
What else could explain what I see
in a freshman class? They've got
that slave mentality: obliging and
ingratiating on the surface but
hostile and resistant underneath.
As do black slaves, students vary
in their awareness of what's going
on. Some recognize their own put
on-for what it is and even let their
rebellion break through to the
surface now and then. Others -
including most of the 'good
students' - have been more deeply
brainwashed. They swallow the
bullshit with greedy mouths. They
honest-to-God believe in grades, in
busy work, in General Education
requirements. They're
pathetically eager to be pushed
around. They're like those old
greyheaded house niggers you can
still find in the South who don't see
what all the fuss is about because
Mr. Charlie 'treats us real good.'
College entrance requirements
tend to favor the Toms and screen
out the rebels. Not entirely, to be
sure. Some students at Cal State L.
A. are expert con artists who know
perfectly well what's happening.
They want the degree or the 2-S
and spend their years on the old
plantation alternately laughing
and cursing as they play the game.
If their egos are strong enough,
they cheat a lot. And, of course,
even the Toms are angry down
deep somewhere. But it comes out
For one thing damn litt
the schools. How could it1
you can only train them.
Ventur
Cook
~ exhausi
to clear
the air.
The problem: mini
Internal combustion E
pollution.
The primary goal: re
emissions dramatica
simple, inexpensive bt
The solution?7 Five
and development w4
engineers and techn
have produced a non-4
- control device called
fold reactor. It has
control of auto emissi4
known to date.
Mounted in place o
exhaust manifold, the
lated outer shell witl
Exhaust gases, mixed
are held in the high
of the inner core unti
completely oxidized.
The principle of finis
tion process in the exh
a new one. But what is
tiveness of Du Pont's c
In individual tests of t
emission levels havE
ppm hydrocarbons a
monoxide, compared w
of 180 ppm hydrocarborn
monoxide. And reactors
have further reduced
emissions to 0.26%.
The reactor system
to any gasoline-burr
engine. And soon nv
should develop the IC
needed to make the re
for all new cars.
Innovation-applyin
ected
War
This essay contains stron
that those who are offende4
dnalysis of the student-teacl
ther. We further recommenc
by the student venacular rei
Heritage Dictionary of the
happened to be closest to the
"'The nonstandard or substa
country or locality...the idic
profession." Farber has capi
to translate his essay into an
Warning.
in passive rather than active
aggression. They're unexplainably
thick-witted and subject to
frequent spells of laziness. They
misread simple questions. They
spend their nights mechanically
outlining history chapters while
meticulously failing to com
prehend a word of what's in front
of them.
The saddest cases among both
black slaves and student slaves are
the ones who have so thoroughly
introjected their masters' values
that their anger is turned inward.
At Cal State these are the kids for
whom every low grade is torture,
who stammer and shake when they
speak to a professor, who go
through an emotional crisis every
time they're called upon during
class. You can recognize them
easily at finals time. Their faces
are festooned with- fresh pimples;
their bowels boil audibly across the
room. If there really is a Last
Judgment, then the parents and
teachers who created these wrecks
are going to burn in hell.
So students are niggers. It's time
to find out why, and to do this, we
have to take a long look at Mr.
Charlie.
The teachers I know best are
college professors. Outside the
classroom and taken as a group,
their most striking characteristic
is timidity. They're short on balls.
Just look at their working con
le education takes place in
You can't educate slaves;
nlze the part the
ngine plays In air
duce auto exhaustse
Ily through some
t effective method.
years of research
rk by scientists,
icians at Du Pont
~atalytic emissions
the exhaust man,i
chieved the best
ns by any system
the conventional
reactor is an insu
1 a tubular core.
with injected air,
temperature zone
I they are almost
hing the combus
aust system is not
new Is the effec
evice.
p to 100,000 miles,
been below 30
nd 0.6% carbon
ith 1970 standards
s and 1.0% car bon
now being tested discover the unk
carbon monoxide materials and pl
using research an<
can be adapted the ideas and prc
ing automobile this is tihe ventura
etals research engaged in.
w-cost materials For a variety of
actor economical and a chance toa
fields, talk to yot
g the known to Or send us the coi
to kn
ming
9 language. We recommend
I by a questioning , cutting
ier relationship read no fur
I that those who are offended
id no further. The American
English Language (which
desk) defines vernacular as
ndard everyday speech of a
im of a particular trade or
ured the student vernacular;
ything else would castrate it.
ditions. At a time when even
migrant workers have begun to
fight and win, college professors
are still afraid to make more than
a token effort to improve their
pitiful economic status. In
California state colleges the
faculties are screwed regularly
and vigorously by the Governor
and Legislature and yet they still
won't offer any solid resistance.
For students, as for blac
isn't with Mr. Charlie. It's
to your mind.
They lie flat on their stomachs with
their pants down, mumbling catch
phrases like 'professional dignity'
and 'meaningful dialogue'.
Professors were no different
when I was an undergraduate at
UCLA during the McCarthy era; it
was like a cattle stampede as they
rushed to cop out. And, in more
recent years, I found that my being
arrested in sit-ins brought from my
colleagues not so much approval or
condemnation as open-mouthed
astonishment. 'You could lose your
job!' u
Now, of course, there's -the
Vietnamese war. It gets some
opposition from a few teachers.
Some support it. But a vast
number of professors, who know
perfectly well what's happening,
are copping out again. And in the
high schools, you can forget it.
Stillness reigns.
I'm not sure why teachers are so
chickenshit. It could be that
academic training itself forces a
split between thought and action. It
might also be that the tenured
flown, inventing new Du Pont C
tting them to work, IPes e
I engineering to create Pleeis
>ducts of the future- (]Mca
3 Du Pont people are []Enq('
[J] Accoun
career opportunities, I
dvance through many :Name~'
ir Du Pont Recruiter. UmesI
Degree -
*Address
es for better livinn. L.....
w his
security of a teaching job attracts
timid persons and, furthermore,
that teaching, like police work,
pulls in persons who are unsure of
themselves and need weapons and
the other external trappings of
authority.
At any rate teachers ARE short
on balls. And, as Judy Eisenstein
has eloquently pointed out, the
'classroom offers an artificial and
protected environment in which
they can exercise their will to
power. Your neighbors may drive
a better car; gas station at
tendants may intimidate you; your
wife may dominatp you; the State
Legislature may shit on you; but in
the classroom, by God, students do
what you say - or else. The grade
is a hell of a weapon. It may not
rest on your hip, potent and riqid
like a cop's gun, but in the long run
it's more powerful. At your per
sonal whim - any time you choose
- you can keep 35 students up for
nights and have the pleasure of
seeing them Y;alk into the
classroom pasty-faced and red
eyed carrying a sheaf of
typewritten pages, with title page,
k people, the hardest battle
what Mr. Charlie has done
MLA footnotes and margins set at
15 and 91.
The general timidity which
causes teachers to make niggers of
their students usually includes a
more specific fear - fear of the
students themselves. After all,
students are different, just like
black people. You stand exposed in
front of them, knowing that their
interests, their values, and their
language are different from yours.
To make matters worse, you may
suspect that you yourself are not
the most engaging of persons.
What then can protect you from
their ridicule and scorn? Respect
for Authority. That's what. It's the
policeman's gun again. The white
bwana's pith helmet. So you flaunt
that authority. You wither
whisperers with a murderous
glance. You crush objectors with
erudition and heavy irony. And,
worst of all, you make your own
attainments seem not accessible
but awesomely remote. You
conceal your massive ignorance -
and piarRde a slender learning.
4 --y om783 imnto,D 99
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2mpay oom789, WlmiGration DaE 99
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An Equal Opportunity Employer (M/F)
place
The teacher's fear is mixed withr
an understandable need to be
admired and to feel superior, a
need which also makes him cling to
his 'white supremacy'. Ideally a
teacher should minimize the
distance between himself and his
students. He should encourage
them not to need him - eventually
or even immediately. But this is
rarely the case. Teachers make
themselves high priests of arcane
mysteries. They become masters
of mumbo-jumbo. Even a more or
less conscientious teacher may be
torn between the desire to give and
the desire to hold them in bondage.
There is a kind of castration that
goes on in schools. It begins, before
school years, with parents' first
encroachments on their children's
free unashamed sexuality and
continues right to the day when
they hand you your doctoral
diploma with a bleeding, shrivled
pair of testicles stapled to the
parchment. It's not that sexuality
has no place in the classroom.
You'll find it there but only in
certain perverted and vitiated
forms.
How does sex show up in school?
First of all, there's the sado- 4
masochistic relationship between
te4chers and students.
That's plenty sexual, although
the price of enjoying it is to be
unaware of what's happening. In
walks the student in his Ivy League
equivalent of a motorcycle jacket.
In walks the teacher - a kind of
intellectual rough trade - and
flogs his students with trades,
tests, sarcasm and snotty
superiority until their very brains
are bleeding. In Swinburne's
England, the whipped school boy
frequently grew up to be a
flagellant. With us, the perversion
is intellectual but it's no less
perverse.
So you can add sexual repression
to the list of causes, along with
vanity, fear, and will to power, that
turn the teacher into Mi. Charlie.
You might also want to keep in
mind that he was a nigger once
himself and has never really
gotten over it. And there are more
causes, some of which are better
described in sociological than in
psychological terms. Work them
out, it's not hard. But in the
meantime what we've got on our
hands is a whole lot of niggers. And
(Continued on Pa e
'IiA