Samizdat #2

Interview with a teacher

So, how do you feel about working for Inequality Schools International?

Well, the name really says it all. No matter what sort of propaganda the school may make about making kids good or smart, the bottom line is that they are helping privileged kids continue to enjoy the advantages of privilege. I mean un-earned privileges. These kids are getting the tools which guarantee that they will enjoy their superior status in the future.

(Wait a minute! Are you a communist?)
No, but I don’t believe in capitalism either. Look, the problem is that a parent works hard and saves money. He gives it to his kids. The kids grow up with advantages that other kids don’t have. You multiply that and you get increasing wealth inequality.
(Editor's Note: This is a very sketchy argument, but it could be made more exact. See Robin Hahnel, The ABC's of Political Economy, Pluto Press, Chapter Three.)

(But that’s not the school’s fault.)
No, it’s not the school’s fault. But there are some facts here you can’t ignore. Let me put it like this. I could see what sort of place this really is the first month I worked here. We had a special meeting for IB students. There were maybe eight adults sitting around the table, teachers, the school’s director, and I don’t know who else. And we were all discussing, one-by-one, how each student was doing. We were micro-managing their performance. And these kids were not especially talented or clever. But here they were getting so much attention. And about the same time I remember reading a story in the local newspapers about Roma kids in the east of the country who don’t have running water or even shoes. That sort of drastic wealth inequality is immoral. Here we were paying obsessive, even superstitious detail to these kids, and other kids, probably no less intelligent or deserving, had no shoes and no running water. I say it's superstitious because I doubt whether such excessive attention really accomplishes anything; for example, it means the kids have little chance to develop independently. But the main point is that we have fantastic wealth inequality, inequality of resources, for no good reason. Is the school doing anything to%2

anti-Capitalist Samizdat: Luke Swamp's Tender Mercies

IS LUKE STILLWATER GUILTY OF PROFESSIONAL MISCONDUCT?
Should teachers be comparing themselves to fish sellers?
·
· “In the event an employee of Inequality Schools is guilty of misconduct….”

All human beings deserve respect—including fish-sellers. But fish-sellers (and arms dealers) are importantly different from teachers.
Unlike your local grocery store clerk or your favorite fruit vendor, teachers have undergone professional training. A teacher has devoted years to acquire the needed knowledge and skills. A teacher is a professional in a way that a fish seller cannot be.
A teacher has responsibilities that fish-sellers don’t have. S/he is responsible for young people at various stages of development. Knowledge of fish can be scientific and hard-won, but the usual fish-seller doesn’t possess such knowledge.
Nor are students customers. Customers want something specific from their fish-seller. Customer and seller are both adults. The relationship is scarcely like a teacher’s relationship with a student.

It is a dangerous over-simplification to suggest that the demands faced by a teacher are like those of a fish-seller. It is seriously over-simplified to suggest that a teacher’s mental attitude can be reduced to cheerful silliness. It is outrageous and demeaning to propagate this fishy philosophy with childish slogans.
It is a dangerous over-simplification to suggest that mindless silliness is a classroom strategy.
You can’t sum up what’s needed throughout the day with the clichéd phrase ‘a positive attitude’.
(in any case, the tendency to do so betrays a sort of naïve cultural insularity, a sort of American emotional imperialism)
In the course of the day teachers may need to put on various emotional faces; sometimes even a frown may be required.
Moreover, Stillwater condescends to teachers and disrespects them by talking down to them as if they were children who needed help.
He disrespects us when he asks us to mindlessly parrot out loud his childish slogans—as if he were a cheerleader at some sporting event.

These policies have been consistent, beginning with a “fish” video and continuing with Hitleresque repetition of silly childish slogans. (“Hitleresque” because the fascist leader once explained that people could only understand a few simple ideas, which had to be constantly repeated.)
Stillwater’s fishy policies rob teachers of the respect they deserve. He is guilty of professional misconduct.

(This takes nothing away from people who have such physically demanding, back-breaking jobs. Thank god teaching is not like that! How absurd to compare the two!)
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Draft of a letter to the Transportation Security Administration

To: The Transportation Security Administration
TSA-ContactCenter@dhs.gov

You have broken into my luggage without cause. Please recall that one characteristic of a free, democratic society, is non-interference. Free citizens in a free state can move freely. They can go where they want, when they want, without interference.

You have robbed me (and countless others) of this fundamental right.

You say that you have done this for my own good, for reasons of security, to protect me and my family from terrorists.

I do not believe you. I do not believe that you can predict which luggage is "dangerous".

My bag was opened twice. I received one notice from you.

I know that the US government pays professional psychologists, educated scientists, and other intellectuals to provide a patina of respectability for these anti-democratic measures. To all such hired guns, I say, SHAME ON YOU!
How arrogant of you to pretend you know what you do not know.

Shame on all of you.

No, I do not believe a word of what you say.

How sad that our country has descended further into anti-freedom.




ADDITIONAL REMARKS

My lock was broken. Some security agents are able to pick locks. My lock was not sturdy and would have been easy to pick. The fact that you chose to cut it suggests a certain aggressiveness.

You say that you are required by law to inspect luggage. But no law can precisely specify which luggage you should inspect. Moreover,non-democratic countries have laws. Nazi Germany had laws. But the laws you refer to were made in the time of hysteria after the atrocities in New York and Washington DC; they are not the wisest of laws.

Either you act randomly or you use some criterion. (And even if you intend to be random, you must have some method.)

I would like to know your criteria for breaking and entering. In all probability the most you can do is target luggage which appears "unusual" according to some questionable standard.

How can you be sure your standards are fair? How can you be sure you are not the victim of recency effects?

I suspect you won't be able to answer my question, and will not even try to do so.

If you claim your inspections are random, I would like to know how you can be sure. How can you rule out the possibility that you respond to indications of a different social class or social background than your own?

I have a right to know more about how my bag was selected.

Was it because my luggage was locked? Was it because my bag was half empty? Half empty because I was taking a short trip and wouldn't buy new luggage just to have a full, smaller bag. In either of the above cases, you see how absurd your methods are. You cannot avoid the fact that any method you choose inevitably ignores the diversity of human nature. You are guilty of what the psychologist and student of the emotions Ekman called the "Othello error". And you are, in addition, enjoying the arrogance of arbitrary power.

It is also true that our country is experiencing hysteria manipulated by the powers that be. You contribute to the paranoia. The government will call upon this mood if it begins another war of aggression in Iran, just as it did so in the past when it waged an aggressive war in Iraq. You are aiding these crimes--even if you do so in a small way.

Reference
Paul Ekman
Telling Lies
WW Norton 2001

My underwear is clean

The US government has been inspecting my underwear.
More soon.

Brief explanation: My cheap lock was broken by a us gov't official to inspect my luggage during a recent trip to the land of Freedom.