2005-01-10 - 10:43 p.m.
i am so in love with paulo freire and ira shore right now-
take this idea: when students score poorly on tests, it is a form of protest- it is a statement against the education system-
the dead prez pimpin the system video is similar, it is about credit card fraud, carjacking, stealing from work as a minimum wage slave, robbing companies (by stealing from a pizza deliveryman) and "exploiting" the welfare system as a form of protest against existing conditions and the officially condoned methods of living within the existing system given your position in the social hierarchy-
for the bourgeois activist, civil liberties is prominent becaues symbolic spectacle is often their primary form of protest- for those who are most oppressed, they don't just run into legal problems at symbolic protests, they run into legal problems in their everyday protests, such as robbery, stealing from the cash register, or welfare "fraud"
when a student refuses to pay attention in a class, they don't consciously think "i protest the education system." but they do think "this class doesn't reflect my reality, isn't interesting, isn't fun, the teacher sucks, etc. etc."
law school socratic method is an intensification of the transferance-model of education- the emphasis is to make you think exactly as they think, which is how the ruling elite thinks, the way the power structure thinks-
the biggest difference is that oppressed youth are being taught to think differently because they are being tracked/trained into different roles in society- law school pedagogy trains you to think like the elite, not to think like a mid-level manager or wage slave
of course, much of the ideological education is very similar (like the most virulent of them, the myth that we live in a meritocracy, but there is a more emphasis on mental labor for elites (and thus vocational education for the majority of the people)- what's really different includes things like how you should relate to people with different social positions (professor-student or student-guythatpoursyourdrinksatthelawfirmreception or the type of material you learn (learning ways you can exercise control of over people's lives)- how does the ruling system do this type of controlling work? by putting the power in the legislature, or better yet, the executive office, a way to reliably control the education system- they cannot control the grassroots, where movements for desegregation or open admissions or ethnic studies came from (the 1-year student strike that gave birth to ethnic studies represented enough of a threat to the power structure to warrant the national guard coming to campus to quell the rebellion)
[on the note of mental labor vs. physical labor and its imbrication with socio-economic hierarchy- on michael moore's show "the awful truth," he did a brilliant segment where normal people on the street were quizzed against rich people in manhattan- one of the funniest bits was when a rich person was asked "what do you do when your toilet doesn't work?" he quickly answered, "go to my second toilet"]
the closer a discipline is to the power structure, the more reactionary it is
the reason law students are so accepting of this is because for most of them, this future role is exactly what they want- the reason it's harder to organize law school students is because there are much fewer people who aren't committed to desiring this future role and the luxuries that accompany it esp. the psychological wages
but if this is true, why do so many progressive api networks begin at elite schools? partly because they have more resources, partly because these are still ambitious students who have much greater ideas of what is possible due to the privilege of being at an elite school- but more importantly, observe how these conferences/networks have evolved- they are now primarily emphasizing identity (a class-neutral and perennial issue for all people of color) and professional development- the preprofessional aspect and community/labor/anti-imperialist organizing aspect of API student conferences are in direct contradiction- the fact that these contradictory aspects can coexist evidence a lack of political organization on the asian american student left, or a lack of interest by the asian american left on the student movement, or the lack of an asian american movement, or a lack of any left movement
ira shore uses an example: status-quo thinking vs. critical thinking- the dominant ideology says illegal immigrants take jobs creating unemployment- critical ideology says the state creates unemployment, so people are willing to work for less, so labor costs are lower, so capitatlist profits are higher- because those who run the state and those who own capital are one and the same-
a friend of mine asked me today whether this was a statement of causation- it is not, but it is a concrete process (he suggested the term "trend")- and a social system is nothing more than an infinity of these very processes, some more prominent othan others, many of which can be grouped coherently together (patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, imperialism; or white supremacist imperialism, or white supremacist capitalist imperialist patriarchy)
the reactionary system in any country can sometimes be dealt a death-blow, which dominates the left's thinking in its search for answers- does a death-blow against reactionary forces in a nation-state arrive under certain conditions? how decisive is agency?
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i'm starting to feel more optimistic about the nlg chapter because i'm seeing hints of transformation in a few people around me-
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i think i want to get an education degree co-current with my jd, if that's possible- teaching high school or community college sounds really good right now- i need to look into this
