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Show ! Q Students are niggers unexplainable thickwitted and subject to frequent spells of laziness. They misread simple questions. They spend their nights mechanically outlining history chapters while meticulously failing to comprehend 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 all 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 a 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 Judgement, 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 are college professors. Outside the classroom and taken as a group, their most striking the teacher 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 her. Back in kindergarten, you found out that teachers only love children who stand in nice straight lines. And that's where it's been ever since. . . . some teachers insist that they encourage dissent but they're almost always jiving and. every student knows . . . 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 what he wants to hear or he'll fail your ass out of the course. . . . when a teacher says "jump," students jump . . . When a teacher says -jump scuaents 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 paper bag with a hole in the top to see through. Students stick their 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 stupor and then screams at them in rage when they fall asleep. In1i dE.i lif By Gerald Farber lies;; Note: Mr. Farber's column, written ftl'f r the Daily Bruin Spectra, has been i Ited in several student newspapers y 1 the country. Some of it may be Applicable to this university.) lam; 3 students are niggers. When you get that straight our schools begin to make sense. !f ,t,s m0re important? though, to Understand why they're niggers. If we mai, fonow that question seriously enough, it fw& lead us past the zone of academic ' llshit, where dedicated teachers pass their knowledge on to a new generation, and into the nitty-gritty of human needs ) and hang-ups. And from there, we can go 'on to consider whether it might ever be ,j possible for students to come up from : slavery. First, let's see what is happening now. 'em Let's look at the role students play in what we like to call education, ullij At Cal State L.A., where I teach, the students have separate and unequal dining T facilities. If I take them into the faculty l)p; dining-room, my colleagues get d P uncomfortable, as though there were a bad 5f0P smell. If I eat in the student cafeteria, I te become known as' the .educational )0K' 0K; equivalent of a nigger lover. In at least one "'' building, there are even rest rooms which ttr 0IE! students may not use. At Cal State, also, '"''' there is an unwritten law barring teata -,m student-faculty love-making. Fortunately, ; this anti-miscegenation law, like it ot Southern counterpart, is not 100 per cent effective. characteristic is timidity. Just look at their working conditions. 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 on their pitiful economic status. In California state colleges, the faculties are screwed regularly by the governor and Legislature and yet they still won't offer any solid resistance. They lie flat on their stomachs with their pants down, mumbling catch phrases like "professional dignity" and "meaningful dialogue." . . . students don't ask that orders make sense. They give up expecting things to make sense long before they leave elementary school ... Professors were 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 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!" 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 i 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 ;i training itself forces a split between thought and action. It might also be that .' the tenured security of a teaching job la attracts timid persons and, furthermore, f that teaching, like police vork, pulls in (Continued to Paye 7) v a What school amounts to, then, for white and black 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 ant? resistent underneath. As do black slaves, students vary in thea awareness of what's going on. Some rer agnize their own put-on for what it is ans e-?8n let their rebellion break through ia a3ae surface now and then. -':?-including most of the "good sJsvBts" hare been more deeply jmyirashed. TL; swallow the. bullshit ' wM greedy moytfis. they're pathetically $Hiz ? o be pui-tf' around. They're like few old grey-bed house niggers you find in South who don't see , - all the fuss is about because Mr. vhssfie "treats us real good." . . . teaching, like police work, pulls in persons who are unsure of themselves and need weapons and the other external trappings of authority ... College entrance requirements tend to favor the Toms and screen out the rebels. Not entirely, of course. Some students at Cal State L.A. are expert con artists who know perfectly well what's happening. They want the degree or the II-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 in passive rather than active aggression. They're Just last week, during the first meeting of a class, one girl got up after about 10 minutes 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. The class, incidentally, consisted mostly of high school teachers. Even more discouraging than this Auschwitz approach to education is the fact that students take it. They haven't gone through 12 years of public school for nothing. They've learned one thing and perhaps only one thing during those 12 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. what school amounts to, then, for white and black alike, is a 12-year course in how to be slaves . . . Students don't ask that orders make sense. They give up expecting things to make sense long before they leave elementary school. Things are true because r ...for one thing, damn little education takes place in W schools ... ait ij Students at Cal State sre politically J; disenfranchised. They are in an academic Lowndes County. Most of them can vote lt,in national elections their average age is ! ct;26 but they have no voice in the ons which affect their academic lives. PitThe students are, it is true, allowed to 5,ir have a W government of their own. It is a ej government run for the most part by Ulcle Toms and concerned principally f with The faculty and administrators -decide what courses will be offerred; the ' Indents get to choose their own necoming queen. Occasionally, when lent leadeR get uppity and rebellious, ic ey're either ignored, put off with trivial concessions, or maneuvered expertly out Hy f position. pW;! A student at Cal State is expected to , f w his place. He calls a faculty member Stff tt" or "Doctor" or "Professor"-and he tif and shuffles some as he stands icIs. 0uts'de the professor's office waiting for jas Permission to enter. The faculty tell him V En'! UrSeS t0 take (in my teP1' P n? Bh, even electives have to be approved iti', ualif - Students are niggers (Continued from Page 3) pulls in persons who are unsure of themselves and need weapons and the other external trappings of authority. 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 attendants may intimidate you; your wife may dominate 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 rigid like a cop's gun, but in the long run it's more powerful. At your personal whim-any time you choose you can keep 35 students .. f ninhrc anrl have t.hp their ridicule and scorn? Respect for Authority. That's what. It's the policeman's gun again. The . . . they spend their nights mechanically outlining history chapters while meticlously failing to comprehend a word . . . 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 psychological terms. Work them out, it's not hard. But in the meantime, what we've got on our fold. And they do. Rebel students and renegade faculty members get smothered or shot down with devastating accuracy. In high school, it's usually the student who gets it; in college, it's more often the teacher. Others get tired of fighting and voluntarily leave the system. This may be a mistake though. Dropping out of college, for a rebel, is a little like going North, for a Negro. You can't really get away from it so you might as well stay and raise hell. . . . faculty and administrators decide what courses will be offered; the students get to choose their own homecoming queen . . . How do you raise hell? That's a cards. They could make coloring books out of the catalogues and they could put the grading system in a museum. They could raze one set of walls and let life come blowing into the classroom. They could raze another set of walls and let education flow out and flood the streets. They could turn the classroom into where it's at a "field of action" as Peter Martin describes it. And, believe it or not, they could study eagerly and learn prodigiously for the best of all possible reasons their own reasons. They could. Theoretically. They have the power. But only in a very few places, like Berkley, have they even begun to think about using it. hands is a whole lot of niggers. And what makes this particularly grim is that the student has less chance than the black man of getting out of his bag. Because the student doesn't even know he's in it. That, more or less, is what's happening in higher education. And the results are staggering. For one thing, damn little education takes place in the schools. How could it? You can't educate slaves; you can only train them. Or, to use an even uglier word, you can only program them. Educational oppression is trickier to fight than racial oppression. If you're a black rebel, they can't exile you; they either have to intimidate you or kill you. But in high school or college, they can just bounce you out of the whole other article. But just for a start, why not stay with the analogy? What have black people done? They have, first of all, faced the fact of their slavery. They've stopped kidding themselves about an eventual reward in that Great Watermelon Patch in the sky. They've organized; they've decided to get freedom now, and they've started taking it. Students, like black people, have immense unused power. They could, theoretically, insist on participating in their own education. They could make academic freedom bilateral. They could teach their teachers to thrive on love and admiration, rather than fear and respect, and to lay down their weapons. Students could discover .community. And they could learn to dance by dancing on the IBM i Up lui '"6""" pleasure of seeing them walk into the classroom pasty-faced and red-eyed earring a sheaf of typewritten pages, with title page, MLA footnotes and margins set at 15 and 91. . . . general timidity which causes teachers to make niggers of their students usually includes a more specific fear fear of the students themselves . . . The general timidity which causes teachers to make niggers of their students usually includes a mroe specific fear fear of the students themselves. After all, students 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 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 parade a slender learning. i : |