The Ojai Post

Evan, I'd certainly be supportive of this!

A very interesting article about youth/gang violence in small towns and rural areas:

http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/envrnmnt/drugfree/v1takata.htm

Best,
Leigh

so, Leigh and i are the only two interested in this? REALLY?
that's 3-grand apiece, which is pretty steep...

yes, schools ...

(and television ... and the automobile ... our consumerism and separation from nature and culture ...)

this is the ignorance, which is abuse, which is violence, which we squeeze, force, inject and hammer into our victim children.

I assume it has not changed since I attended Ojai Elementary in the 1960s, and Matilija Junior High, and Nordhoff High School in the '70s ...

public schools are prisons ... and the abuse and torture our children are subject tp enrolls them in the ritual and lifestyle, and emotional and mental state, of the military and the assemblyline, the office cubical and the laboratory 'tank'.

the purpose of the public schools is to dumb-down our children, so they cannot interact with and learn about the real world ... of culture, of consciousness ... of community and garden and forest ... of society and spirit.

that they cannot become whole and healthy, self-determined decision-makers and sources of artistry and wonder.

and look at the abuse they are enrolled in every day, like the P.E., 'physical education'? when does it enable the body and mind when it is NOT designed from and for the individual?

how many of our adults in our 'audience' line up every day and pay to be pushed into doing military exercises and corporate sports? each and EVERY one of us has a DIFFERENT yoga, chi gong, tai chi, meditation, bicycling, hiking, walking, breathing, pilates, gardening, swimming, etc. regime that engages our one or two or three or four hours of daily building up to connectivity, understanding, happiness, health and power.

EVERY child is different, as is every adult ...

and if we place our children on the conveyor-belt of industry clone-stamping violence there can only be one result, sick clone-violent children out the end of the refuse dump which they call 'the showroom floor', aka graduation to servitude.

our children are not unconscious garbage to be molded into plastic techno-world ornaments, or rubber-maid serving robots.

we/they are the deities, the singing rainbow devas of immortal life, consciousness and community with infinite power and knowledge to build the global bridge of goodness ... which is our divine collective reason and purpose.

let us sing this our golden childhood,

and together grow in that song ...

I was thinking and thinking about what Millenium wrote, while I was mindfully vaccuuming, being careful not to suck up any spiders.

I was remembering eternity trapped in the classrooms at Nordhoff, staring out the window at the mountains and the blue sky, longing to be free... the winter of 1967 I discovered I had enough credits to graduate early and lickety split I jumped on the greyhound bus and landed in the Haight Ashbury.

School did not prepare me for Life.

A few years later I discovered Ivan Illich and devoured his books.
He wrote,

"Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance.

Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby "schooled" to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new.

His imagination is "schooled" to accept service in place of value.

Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work.

Health, learning, dignity, independence, and creative endeavour are defined as little more than the performance of the institutions which claim to serve these ends, and their improvement is made to depend on allocating more resources to the management of hospitals, schools, and other agencies in question."

--Ivan Illich, "Deschooling Society"

http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-illic.htm

Anyone who has been to an English public school will always feel comparatively at home in prison.

every time i come on the ojai post, i find someone trashing the public school system. i'm not a defender for this institution, but i went through the public school system and sent my child to that system as well.

the difference is i didn't expect the school system to do my job as a parent. i taught my daughter to question authority, to think for herself, to find her own answers to questions unanswered by the school curriculum, and to stand up to bully teachers.

my daughter was sometimes bored, but she was also greatly affected by a large number of wonderful teachers and experiences that have contributed to the person she is today.

please stop putting down the schools. if you're unhappy, do something about it. i volunteered in my daughter's classroom every week from 1st grade to her senior year at NHS. the only time i was not welcomed to do that (her choice, not the schools) was her time at MJH, and i was forced to contribute by participating in the PTA. even that was a very positive experience for me as a parent, and i hope i contributed value to the public school community.

you don't have to be a parent to get involved. there are so many ways you can help the schools and, more importantly, the kids in your community.

be the change you want to see!

oh, and evan, yes, i would be willing to help out with the above program, too!