Reflection on previous sessions and introduction to the final session

 These messages were sent by email to participants in preparation for the final session.

Appreciating that aspects of session 2 may have left you somewhat disorientated, [ ] wanted to deconstruct the session, breaking down the choreography in a way which enables you to appreciate the steps.

In the first place, the session was in two parts; much of this experimental and aimed at meeting multiple outcomes; it was an attempt to “expose” but not “impose” and cannot be separated from the first session. Whilst the first session was to facilitate an appreciation of theorists – through opening up relational maps – this session was an attempt to test cognitive mapping by throwing various theorists out there whilst pushing the boundaries, and thresholds, of learning. [think Atlas-Moorer, 1994]

Again, it was expected that you would not remember much of what was said, but it does not mean that all was lost as the mere fact that you could hear some of these names was enough. Learning theory suggests, for example, that in order for us to (actively) remember something, we need to hear it THREE times (ie “weapons of mass destruction”.) and so, if you felt lost [drowning] for the first hour [flood], it was to be expected. Having planted the seeds, let’s water the soil.

The second part of the workspace was about transitioning from (a) the lecture model to, the (b) workshop model – the latter was thoroughly worked through in the first module workspace. Whereas the (a) model seems to emphasise (observation), the (b) model appears to emphasise (participation), and with that, superior engagement. It is through the latter model we can go further in attempting to unshackle the chains of schooling

By now, we should be at, or moving towards, the third phase of knowledge-becoming, in accordance with the four-stage theory; this theory advances that we become competent by passing through these phases:

Conscious competence

Workshop 3 of this module seeks to murder the “teacher” so that the “facilitator” can be granted space to express/be. It will now call-upon these demons implanted in you (Bateson, Postman, Woodson, Matthews, Schmidt, Carmichael, Gatto, Dabrowski, Korzyski, Giard, Wilson, Vaughan, Eisenstein, Dubois, Ani and Carle.) Naturally, even after this third session, you will not be champions of these random people. It is only for you to have an insight and starting point for ETW. Ahead of this third workspace, we remind you of, and encourage you to undertake the following assignments:

1. Read the introduction of Huey Newton’s PHD
2. Read a review of Linda Smith’s book on Decolonising Methodologies
3. Read sections 44-48 of Dubois’  “My Evolving Program for Negro Freedom”
4. Watch The “Not Out of Africa” debate ft Henrik Clarke
5. Listen to selected chapters from The Ascent of Humanity, Charles Eisenstein

 You are also invited to reflect upon any of the prior assignments you may have completed in your own space, as there will be a brief exchange on the nature and purpose of these tasks:

1. Listen to Guy Giard’s “Interaction Theories” Workshop & create a cognitive map for it
2. Enquire as to the specifics of your birth
3. Check out this prank 1:30-3:30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZjlDtUWVOI
4. Read as much of this piece on Pedagogy (LINK: http://infed.org/mobi/what-is-pedagogy/)
5. learn or read up on how score A Boxing Match
6. Listen to selected chapters from “For Giving” Genevieve Vaughan

1. Read chapter IV of “Towards the Destruction of schooling”2 Record a racist joke ready to bring and share with the group
2. Listen to selected chapters from Disciplined Minds, Jeff Schmidt,
3. Check out this token Link: www.edocere.org/articles/marva_collins.htm
4. Bring in a poster or promotional material showcasing ‘anti-blackness’

 Later in the week, you will also receive a further email summarising – or at least outlining – the argument from workspace 2 (module 1), however, for now, that’s all folks.

‘guidance

Gὂṩ

Second email:

Gwiz, here again to revisit the second workspace of module 1 and attempt at first outlining and then summarising the main/entire argument from the session, aware that it may have been more convoluted than needed

 We are told the world is yours but it is not ours until we take it

Barriers keep us from being a part of the world and belonging

We are, instead, trapped in a “ghetto” (impoverishment), a “hood” (blindness) and streets (misguidance) [there is a note about these towards the end of this]

Whether France or America, there are few opportunities to get out [escape violence] so some of us chase paper whether money or report cards, desiring to get a good job

Rather than challenging the “drowning”, our main desire is to get afloat or up-the-ladder

Imagine if instead of desiring a good job, we went looking to create them

Imagine if rather than insist that we have papers to move, we say the dominators need papers to behave i.e. we have always known that we were people, but the traducers did not know this

The traducers/oppressors/zookeepers are committed to holding us hostage/captive/trapped

The Dialectics of liberation asked how we can escape and challenge this rule

Many have asked these question about the nature of this bondage and/or domination, and these theorists have even hypothesised: this includes people such as Bateson, Carmichael, Laing, Marcuse, Cooper, Goodman, Szasz, Fanon, Biko, Wilson, McLuhan, Postman, Huxley, Menninger, Sapir-Whorf

Schooling cannot be limited to the stage before the academy but it is the academy

Schooling is much more than four-walls, it is open air, it is colonised space, it is regulated patterns

Schooling is just as easily defined by its absence as it is by its presence

Many thinkers have similar interrogated the concept of schooling – whether media, the “streets” or other “communication” (reality) which resign us to this state of being

Critics of “school” have included Woodson, Holt, Matthews, Illich, Freire, Schmidt, Porter, Collins, Gatto, Ani, Carle, Iserbyt, Hooks, Farben, Loewen, Webb, Kozol, Dabrowski, Korzyski, Gatto

Gatto looked at the creation of that we sought to escape from (tracing school to Prussia)

Prussian schooling sought to create three castes of thinkers whilst creating a mass-culture

Gatto sees that the creation of mass culture sought to destroy independent thought but instead create a nation of consumers who would uphold and perpetuate the status quo rather than challenge it. He also saw that people who think freely are seen as problematic as they threaten the rulers

Rulers create structures that ensure our expression is crushed and instead seek to transform (degrade) us into useless people who can little other than serve the economic rule

Freire challenged the deposits made in the mind of students

Older thinkers challenged the modes of colonial thought that alienated the academy (thinking space) from the ordinary (doing space.)

Colonial rule must fragment people so as to disorientate and thus render them ineffective and dysfunctional. It must also impose a dominant narrative that confuses reality

Concepts like the Maafa challenge the dominant narrative and its imprisoning conceptual framework

Woodson spoke to the need to be ahead and to look at protecting selves from schooling

Woodson said that at every stage, the schooling machine degrades and lynches the student

Newton was lynched during his schooling and shared ideas with Illich – the need to deschool

Decolonising thinkers ought to look at the need to decolonise the language and textbooks (Coard)

Like Timbers, this pattern persists, the need to understand white terror domination

Newton also saw the police in Oakland as a colonial force akin to the soldiers occupying Algeria

Newtons ideas of internal colonisation (America) was shared by Richard Allen

It follows then that not only is space colonised but so too is thought

In 1995 Tanquil Jones challenged the idea of there being a distinction between action and analysis

Domination [rule] had created this artificial/inauthentic division in the same way it created nations,, and in the same ways it would merge and liquidate these nations at will, when it saw fit

Ngugi and Chinweizu talked to the need for decolonising thought and thus, get ahead

In an effort to secure its rule, the colonial/machine wants to control us from cradle to career and have us oblivious to our lives; it must have us out of our minds

School is both a factory to produce consumers and a prison to train the incarcerated

It uses school to programme us into nonconsciousness and empty the contents of our minds

Learning this literature means that we internalise the masters consciousness

In accepting their ideas, we acquiesce and consent to their exploitation and the daily misery

Huxley and Russell, along with Wells and Santayana, had master maps

Prussia as the master nation; [David Riviera] then England using the game plan (Toqueville)

Administration and bureaucracies are examples of this new machine that is covering the globe

These protocols, policies and procedures reflects the mechanisation of human consciousness

Few people can escape the effect of these shaping processes (Wilson)

In fact, even if one was to become a president, he would be yet another “possessed”

There was a choice between two cultures are we came to be ruled by a demon

Who Needs the Negro, Sidney Willhelm, (1970) looked at the rise of automation within a capitalist economic system, with these productive processes meaning the workspace would not need the Negro

Zbigniew  Brezinki’s “Between Two Ages” (1970) highlighted the subtle transition between the old order, pre-1945, and then the post-industrial, modern global mass society. [for further discussion, cf Afrikan-Centred Consciousness Versus the New World Order: Garveyism in the Age of Globalism (1999), Frank Furedi: The Silent War: Imperialism and the Changing Perception of Race (1999) and Jon Brown Child’s “Toward Trans-Communality, the Highest Stage of Multiculturalism: Notes on the Future of African-Americans” (1993).]

This new “mass” age has been epitomised by conformity and artificial reproduction, whilst sacrificing the critical and reflective individual to these alienating processes.

Schooling used to be used to facilitate this process but since the 1960s television has become the principle means of schooling the next set of “consumer-zens” to reproduce this order

Schooling has alienated people from themselves and motivated them to forget who they are

It has done this under a misleading pretence of credibility when in fact it has been a colonial tool

Schooling was used to rationalise the racist domination [discipline] of “psychiatry” and yet, the conventional psychiatry discourse has not always been the primary model for rationalising communication, behaviour and language … session three looks at “other” models and peoples [traditions]

Footnote

I don’t live in a ghetto; I live in a circus, the spectacle, the mass, the mess, the occupation, the zoo

 So far, the following theorists have been used in this module:

Hoyles, Seabrook, Wilderson, Curry, Renegade, Fuller, Pieterse, Russell, Watt, Fromm,  Bateson, Carmeichal, Laing, Marcuse, Goodman, Szasz, Fanon, Biko, Wilson, Postman, Huxley, Woodson, Holt, Matthews, Illich, Schmidt, Gatto, Ani, Carle, Loewen, Webb, Dabrowski, Korzyski, Adorno, Gordon, Baldwin, Clarke, Giard.

Of these people, master [overview] narratives [pictures] are presented by Masters: Giard, Postman and Matthews

Appendix

In terms of making sense out of the transition from the formal colonial rule and the modern RULE, these dates/notes – to be explained in the session – might help:

 […] 1400 Spain Left / Portugal Right 1450’s Europe’s Expansion 1500 Europe’s Domination

1492 Net Cast 1555- Crushing Uprising 1612 Instituting Systems 1700 – Legislating Evils

1800 Colonial (Body) 1900 Empire – 1945 Imperial (Body) 1945- 1960 Insurgency / Science (Wiggle)

1400s SEA 1800 LAND 2000 AIR 2020 SPACE n empire, forever [speak freely] less than 1%

Swelling – Cuts – Breaks [Ribs, Nose, Eye Socket], – Bleeding Lip – Knock out [groggy, arm length]

1960 onward – Global / Uprising / Technological Occupation / Military Expansion

1960’s, the elite, the rulers, the oligarchs, the aristocracy are thinking through and finalising

1915 The League of Nations / The Club of Rome

1945 The World State / The Total Empire

2015 The New Order / Total Technology (Supreme Science)

1960 Schooling Societies (Mass Culture and Consumption) (Crushing Discontent)

2000 Disciplined Minds, 2004 Towards Destruction, The White is Professional

1492 The Old World / The New World

1962 Between Two Ages / The Choice Between Two Cultures [Woodson’s leaders]

1960’s The Corporate [Fascist] Mass / The Death of Self / The Obliteration of Being

1960s Legal Medicine / Protest Psychosis [Algeria War] [Enslaved Bakala]

1970s The Too Much Information Age [1970s Erica Carle]