Fight the Power

I saw the above headlines and articles on Drudge about a day ago, but I hadn't posted yet because I'd been mulling over exactly what I thought. The interview (the second article) contains a couple fascinating responses:

How have you tried to create a different sort of schooling experience at La Academia Semillas del Pueblo?

Like anywhere in Los Angeles there’s a lot of bridges to cross and we feel that through teaching our children and giving them a good foundation of culture they will be able to understand other people’s cultures and other people’s points of view much better. One of the ways we do that is teaching them several languages. That has to be the most important element of our education. It’s not only learning reading, writing, and English, but being able to analyze the world in several languages.

Finally, what do you see as the legacy of the Brown decision?

If Brown was just about letting Black people into a White school, well we don’t care about that anymore. We don’t necessarily want to go to White schools. What we want to do is teach ourselves, teach our children the way we have of teaching. We don’t want to drink from a White water fountain, we have our own wells and our natural reservoirs and our way of collecting rain in our aqueducts. We don’t need a White water fountain. So the whole issue of segregation and the whole issue of the Civil Rights Movement is all within the box of White culture and White supremacy. We should not still be fighting for what they have. We are not interested in what they have because we have so much more and because the world is so much larger. And ultimately the White way, the American way, the neo liberal, capitalist way of life will eventually lead to our own destruction. And so it isn’t about an argument of joining neo liberalism, it’s about us being able, as human beings, to surpass the barrier.

I find it interesting that he keys on language as one of the building blocks of a balanced, interconnected model of the world and human society. I remember a high school teacher of mine who once mentioned that the test of whether or not you're fluent in a language is when you can think and dream in that language, as if the language in which you express yourself has an effect on the very thoughts you're thinking and how you think them; sort of a Marshall McLuhan ("The medium is the message," for those who might not be familiar with relatively obscure Canadian media studies professors - though that reminds me, I myself should probably read his stuff sometime) brain effect. One wonders if this might be another reason for the increased levels of international co-operation among Europeans compared to Americans.

As for the second question and answer - wow. Obviously most people (Americans) will read that and think he's a crazy, pinko Commie. And maybe he is; certainly the other articles - in particular the first one - paint a far less flattering portrait of him. But (setting aside the conspiracy theory-ish question of whether those articles can be explained by a media or reporter bias against an unconventional school and system) really - isn't he right? Success as a general concept in the world has always been qualified, whether people have been aware of it or not; it is success according to the dominant group in society. Since America came to dominate the world (read: since they dropped the bomb and remade Japan/West Germany as close to their image as they could), the entire world has been dominated by the white male paradigm of success. And it is now, 2 generations later, as the cracks in the system continue to grow, that countries and people are beginning to stop, beginning to critically examine the costs of that system and whether or not they are acceptable, if the system they've been emulating for so long is really worth copying; check out this story about recent proposed changes to Japan's education system.

What is important here is not the "separatist education" of the school (though I suppose the debate on whether or not they deserve government funding is a valid one, and they probably shouldn't due to the exclusionary nature of the school, but maybe there aren't any white/black/asian students because they don't even apply to the school in the first place); rather, it is the greater questions raised by the principal. What is success, and how will we define it in the years to come? Will we continue down the path we have been walking for decades? Or can we find another way, a better way? Does that way even exist? I don't know. What I do know is that, like far better men and women than I have said before, change will not come easy and it will not come quickly. "Be the change that you want to see in the world," said Ghandi - comments echoed by the principal in the interview - and so it must be.

The world needs more idealists.