Unbelievably, I just picked this up this gem off of my daily excursion into right wing slime on the Drudge report. In typical Drudge fashion it was linked with the headline “L.A. PUBLIC SCHOOL PRINCIPAL PROMOTES SEPARATIST EDUCATION… “, the scare line “The White way, the American way, the neo liberal, capitalist way of life will eventually lead to our own destruction… ” and a report of a traffic accident/possible mugging outside the school (Which is of course in a rough neighborhood because that’s the way the system has set things up for its permanent underclasses from time immemorial.) that is linked under the TOTALLY misleading headline “REPORTER ASSAULTED AT SCHOOL AFTER INTERVIEW…:”
Nice.
What a scuzzball Matt Drudge is.
BUT…here is the article.
And here is the principal.
I wish MY high school principal had looked like that. It would have taken twenty years off of my journey.
Strong.
No wonder they’re scared of Chavez and Morales in South America. No wonder they want to close the borders.
It’s not about jobs…it’s about the TRUTH!!!
The same movement represented by Chavez and Morales lives in Central LA.
And everywhere else that this South/Central/Caribbean American culture thrives here in Northern America.
La Raza
VAYA!!!
I am going to reprint the entire article, because I think it is VERY important.
As Jimmy Breslin so wisely pointed out many years ago, “All politics is local”.
Yup.
Read on.
by Maribel Santiago
Marcos Aguilar is the founder and principal of La Academia Semillas del Pueblo, a charter school in El Sereno. Maribel Santiago, a UCLA undergraduate, interviewed him for TCLA.
TCLA: Where did you grow up and go to school?
MA: I was born in Mexicali, Baja California Norte in Mexico and I attended schools on the border in Calexico, a farm worker community. There was the Mexican town and the White town was like 10 miles away and another one 20 miles away. We grew up with the knowledge that in Arizona, in Yuma, Arizona, everything was Black and White. The dogs and Mexicans drank from one spot and the White people drank from the other one. I think growing up amongst Mexicans, you get values and manners at home. One of my grandmothers raised me and taught me those values.
TCLA: Did the educators at your school demonstrate that they valued your language and culture?
MA: No, they demonstrated that they did not. They demonstrated at times apathy and at times hostility towards the languages spoken that are non-English. I never witnessed an act of respect to the students’ culture.
TCLA: Have the educators you have observed here in Los Angeles acted in a more culturally responsive way?
MA: Sure, some teachers do, the majority don’t. The majority of teachers consider their position a 9-5 job which they execute as quickly as possible, and for which they expect a high level of compensation. We basically have a situation where outsiders are teaching a community’s children, with no regard to the community itself, with no regard for the ultimate outcome of their actions with the children, with no regard for anything past that one year that they are with them. Teachers step into this role fully expecting a three-month vacation or expecting tons of extra pay when they are off. They fully expect to be separate from the students so they want to commute to get to the inner city.
TCLA: How do you explain these relationships?
MA: Communities as a whole just don’t control education. The system creates this political economy–a role for teachers that alienates them from the children that they are working with. Public education really is a space for the education of workers for private industries. The role of teachers is simply to perpetuate what those values are in the workplace.
TCLA: How have you tried to create a different sort of schooling experience at La Academia Semillas del Pueblo?
MA: 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.
TCLA: How does learning different languages impact your students?
MA: By learning Nahuatl, they will be able to understand their relationship with nature (because language is based on our human relationship with nature) and be able to understand themselves as part of something larger, not as an isolated individual. They will be able to understand our own ancestral culture and our customs and traditions that are so imbued in the language. The importance of Nahutal is also academic because Nahuatl is based on a Math system, which we are also practicing. We teach our children how to operate a base 20 mathematical system and how to understand the relationship between the founders and their bodies, what the effects of astronomical forces and natural forces on the human body and the human psyche, our way of thinking and our way of expressing ourselves. And so the language is much more than just being able to communicate. When we teach Nahuatl, the children are gaining a sense of identity that is so deep, it goes beyond whether or not they can learn a certain number of vocabulary words in Nahuatl. It’s really about them understanding themselves as human beings. Everything we do here is about relationships.
TCLA: Do you view La Academia Semillas del Pueblo as a response to the problems in our school system?
MA: No. It’s not a response because there is no way we can replace it. It’s an alternative for 150 families out of how many–a million? That’s not much of an alternative. It’s an alternative for a few people in the community. We consider this a resistance, a starting point, like a fire in a continuous struggle for our cultural life, for our community and we hope it can influence future struggle. We hope that it can organize present struggle and that as we organize ourselves and our educational and cultural autonomy, we have the time to establish a foundation with which to continue working and impact the larger system. This is the work of a parallel institution, a very liberal one, whose autonomy is very delicate. It is very easy to disorganize and destroy.
TCLA: What do you recommend to students and parents who are frustrated with schooling and want to create change?
MA: If we want anything we have to organize ourselves. We should organize with other people who share that frustration and see what we can do to solve the problem. The people have to change from an attitude of asking for things to a practice of organizing things for ourselves. We have to get away from the welfare mentality and the welfare society and more and more develop self-reliance and resolve our problems by organizing our own resources.
TCLA: Finally, what do you see as the legacy of the Brown decision?
MA: 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.
Nahuatal.
Aztec.
Moctezuma’s revenge lives next door now.
Scared yet, Mr. Jones?
You ought to be.
A spiritually based truth is comin’ ta GETCHA!!!’ Y’got yer Muslims on one side, yer native Americans on the other.
“I TOL’ you, Isaac. We shoulda pushed right over the border during the 1800s an’ killed ALL them motherfuckers while we still had the chance!!!”
Yup.
You blew it, Mr. Jones.
And this…
“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.”
Malcolm X redux, only embedded in a culture that is NOT fatally disconnected from its homeland and has the added security of having a native tongue that is fairly well resistant to the viral trance state-inducing media of this rotted culture.
All’s I can say is…
VAYA!!!
La Raza viene.
I hope it’s not too late.
Later…
AG
P.S. “I think growing up amongst Mexicans, you get values and manners at home. One of my grandmothers raised me and taught me those values.”
Where has this attitude gone in America? Someone recently asked me why I had not taken more effective steps to promote myself as a musician, and my answer was similar to what was said above. I was raised to DO, not to self-promote. I learned that and many other things from my two generations previous ancestors. At their knee. And if necessary, OVER their knee.
We have lost OUR “raza“.
Our various cultural birthrights.
We have sold them for some cheap jewelry to invaders from across…across the stars maybe. They are coming from SOMEWHERE else, for damned sure, because the Americans who raised me would not have bent over for the kind of ass-fucking we are getting now, for SURE!!!
Let us pray.
I mean it
That is not a tag line.
Let us pray.
Let us rediscover OUR spiritual birthplaces.
Because babies…we are getting our ASSES kicked by people who DO pray.
Believe it.
We don’ NEED no stinking tips!!!
But we DO need to realize where the REAL “liberal”, “progressive” culture lives here in the United States of America. We need to ally ourselves with it it, too.
It does NOT just live in the middle class white Democratic living rooms and studies of Blogovia, nor in the hallowed halls of academe either.
All the DNC farfle about “getting a majority” is just empty talk unless we include the currently healthiest minority of all the minorities that live in this country.
Remember…closed OR open borders, they’re not going to be a minority for too much longer.
Count on it.
Recommend this diary up, please, and let’s talk.
Later…
AG
I would add to the above analysis that an additional function of the education system is to pass along the cultural myths. One of the primary ones is that anyone can make it in the U.S. if they get an education and work hard.
The public school system is part of but also a reflection of the confusion in the society of what we believe life is all about. What is a successful life? What does it mean to make it in the U.S.? Many kids (and adults) will define this making it as being “rich” and “famous.” Where have they learned this? You know – corporate media and marketing.
In the above quote I would refine the “White way” to the “corporate way” which is different. The corporate way is all about the bottom line, measured in quarterly units – owning and controlling not only the fountain, but also the water.
I do not know what Mr. Aguilar means by “neo liberalism.” Nor do I understand what he means by “surpass the barrier.”
Is there a difference between the La Academia Semillas del Pueblo and the growing number of fundamentalist Christian schools? It seems to me both are a response to the dominate corporate-based culture.
Thanks for the diary AG.
the corporate capitalist way of life will outlive the american way of life.
change the corporation and you will change the world.
incorporate now!
In the diary,The Woes of the Atrocity Apologist by DuctapeFatwa, XicanoPwr contributed information and links to the Milgram experiment, link.
Milgram devised the experiment to answer the question “Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?” (Milgram, 1974)
From “The Perils of Obedience” Duty Without Conflict:
(my highlights)
Reading about this analysis of the experiment, I found myself thinking how aptly it describes the corporate world. Changing corporations – seems the first step is seeing them as needing to be changed.
studies done in 1974 to prove theories of the holocaust circa 1945 have little relevance to todays corporate environment or the future of the corporation.
Change the corporation. Many tools exist now that did not exist then.
Unfortunately, it is the human perception that changes slowest of all. Progressives much included.
What do you see as tools that exist now that did not exist then?
all the information technology mainly. Corporations built around information cannot succeed in the fragmented hierarchal system described in the study.
A growing number of businesses rely on well rounded, knowledgeable people who learn to absorb and process information in such a way that people are willing to pay compensation to obtain.
Most of these companies are small. Many simply have discovered a better, cheaper way to do the same old thing the big bureaucratic corporation used to do–better and cheaper because more knowleadgeable people with better information can provide the service more cheaply.
Thats not to say every corporation will become this way, at least not in our lifetime–besides, I suspect the majority of humanity prefers the safety and repetition of corporate droneship
Yup. Horatio Alger is alive and well. It’s way past time to slay that particular sacred cow. While we’re at it, there are a few other sacred cows that make up the educational system – American exceptionalism and its requisite baggage comes readily to my mind.
It is kind of fun when my son mentions something he learned in social studies regarding US history, and I can go – well, there’s much more to the story…
One of the most detrimental aspects of the “get a good education” occurs, imo, in the very early grades when young children struggle with school tasks. Often, even with the best intentions, the “problem” is thought to be the child’s – consider all the labels: ADD, ADHD, “slow learner,” “learning disabled,” “immature,” etc.
The focus of remediation is almost always directed at the student, again, with the very best intention of helping the student at least survive school, if not thrive. Analyzing and changing and adapting the system takes time and money. And this administration gives us No Child Left Behind with its continual testing and punitive measures, reducing funding.
What the struggling student learns is, there is “something wrong” with them – they are some how “inadequate.” Once someone accepts that kind of self-definition they can keep “proving” it. How long can someone tolerate failure?
What do they do with their anger and frustration? Drop out? Numb it with drugs? Fight among themselves? Ease the pain by finding love (sex) and having babies?
Imo, the myths provide the foundation for a kind of social control – all begun with 5 and 6 year old “failures.”
Thanks, Arthur. My sister and I have been discussing who has the real power in the US today. Principals, teachers, and the fighting librarians in Connecticut: they have more real and actual power than the apparent “powers that be” in the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security. The power of one citizen is at its zenith in our form of government, when that government is at the peak of corruption and consolidation of power in the Executive Branch. The Founders understood this.
The Defense Department is STILL funding obsolete weapons in the obsolete Cold War on Russia.
Congresswoman Barbara Lee, on the Common Sense Budget Act:
“It has been fifteen years since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yet, I find it mind-boggling and inexcusable that in the last decade and a half, the Pentagon has continued to waste tens of billions of dollars buying outdated, Cold War-era weaponry for a national security threat that no longer exists.
It’s only last week that GWB offered a NEW definition for the War on Terror to West Point cadets:
“We’re still in the early stages of this struggle for freedom and, like those first years of the Cold War, we’ve seen setbacks and challenges and days that have tested America’s resolve yet we’ve also seen days of victory and hope,” Bush said.
“The war began on my watch but it’s going to end on your watch,” Bush told the cadets……
“WE HAVE MADE CLEAR THAT THE WAR ON TERROR IS AN IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE BETWEEN TYRANNY AND FREEDOM,”Bush said. “Our strategy to protect America is based on a clear premise: the security of our nation depends on the advance of liberty in other nations.
“We learned an important lesson. Decades of excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe.”
This current US government is out of control which is why they are imposing even more expanding controls on the people at a pace that’s dizzying since the NYT published (after a year gag order imposed by the White House) the article about domestic warrantless spying. Investigations creep slowly, and are beaten back by stonewalling, and a claim of “state secrets,” while the assault on democracy at home advances, getting bolder all the time. Last week the Supreme Court ruled it is unlawful for any federal employee to report misconduct by federal agencies. “Critics predicted the impact would be sweeping, from silencing police officers who fear retribution for reporting department corruption, to subduing federal employees who want to reveal problems with government hurricane preparedness or terrorist-related security. Supporters said that it will protect governments from lawsuits filed by disgruntled workers pretending to be legitimate whistleblowers.” The result of the decision is that a whistleblower would do better to write a letter to the editor than to make an official complaint of misconduct in government. Wow.
The Bush admin. has out Nixoned Nixon, and the NSA/FBI/DHS/Patriot Act has outdone the Cold War/McCarthy era.
The power of one citizen is at its zenith in our form of government, when that government is at the peak of corruption and consolidation of power in the Executive Branch. The Founders understood this.
It goes without saying that to subvert the Constitution qualifies as Treason, High Crimes, and Misdemeanors.
They are everywhere, suskind.
Everywhere.
I posted this same diary on My Left Wing and it developed into a VERY large and interesting thread. It might be worth going over there to read it. But in answer to your comment I am going to post one of MY comments from that thread. It is right in the same ballpark as this one of yours.
Someone apologized for leaving some thoughts untied together in a post. She used the word sloppy.
And I answered.
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It’s not sloppy, Rachel. It’s just real.
“Real” is NEVER neat.
Only corporate is neat.
And the reality is that this system is thoroughly broken.
Up and down the system.
It’s broken.
The wrong people are in charge, and HAVE been in charge for way too long.
Certainly in an ideal system schools would not have to deal with race at all. Only achievement. But as my ol’ grandpappy used to say, “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”
And the “reality” of the situation…the one that is referenced by the man quoted in my diary, by mloc, and by an increasingly large number of other people…is that those who care for their closest brothers and sisters do not any longer have the luxury of a leisurely debate about the pros and cons of segregated schools. They have to do something, and they have to do it NOW. Because what is happening in our public school system to minority children is nothing short of criminal. So they have gone about their business in the most available, practical, pragmatic way that they can. And it appears to be working for those who are involved in it.
I’ll tell you something else. I think that white working, middle and upper middle class parents…the ones who are not already sending their children to private schools…ought to be doing the same damned thing. Because although the outward evidence is not nearly as damning…money can hide LOTS of sins…the fact of the matter is that THOSE schools are no longer working very well either. I had to pull my son out of a middle-class/upper middle class high school in the suburbs on NYC…a suburb to which I reluctantly moved from my beloved NYC because the public schools in the city were so badly broken and I mistakenly bought into the notion that the highly rated and recommended public schools in this suburb would be better…I had to pull him out and send him to an experimental “free” school for his last two years because he was getting violently frustrated by the incompetence that surrounded him in the suburban school. (I am being quite literal here. Violently.) And he was not alone. Saved his ass, that move. Now he’s headed for a doctorate in something real…biology/animal behavior/ecological studies. Had he stayed in that school…I do not want to even CONSIDER what has happened to any number of his running buddies in the ensuing several years.
The despair that young people feel when squashed into a rigid and ultimately false socio-educational scheme is the same, rich or poor or anywhere in the middle. And it is up to the parents…the caring, aware ones, anyway…to get them the hell OUT of those situations before their natural youthful energies and aspirations are forever ruined by the BushCo-ness of it all.
The CORPORATENESS of it all.
Teachers who are themselves largely products of what a good friend of mine refers to as the military/academic/industrial complex…teachers who have settled for second best because theyt couldn’t cut it in the dog-eat-dog competitve world of BIG BushCo…settle into this “20 or 30 years and out with a pension” system and just automatic along down the public school highway on cruise control. Not ALL the teachers. Just enough of them to have reached a negative critical mass, enough so that many formerly well functioning schools…and I knew a number of people who had lived in this suburb and gone to these schools who supported me in this idea…have literally stalled.
Sure, the kids are still getting accepted to the big time universities. Those universities are caught in the same system. They need raw material and if the raw material isn’t of the same quality as it used to be, well…hell…it’s a business, right? Gotta open the store every day whether the tomatoes are ripe and tasty or feel like minature red bowling balls.
So the system just chugs on along, just like the electoral system and the business system and the military system. Only the content is gone. There is no more honor in it.
There’s no there, there.
It is BROKEN.
And that’s why we are ALL here.
One way or another.
That is what the blogs are ABOUT.
This system has gotten too big, and the only way left for most of us is to drop the hell OUT of the system just as far as we can go and still survive, and then do whatever we must to maintain some sense of honor.
Of content.
Of culture.
Do not like what the schools are doing to your son?
Your family?
Your raza?
Had it with trying to REFORM a system that is so big and so rich that it does not even respond to complaints?
Drop the fuck out and DO something.
Or…
Do not like what the unresponsive two party system is doing to your children?
Your family?
Your culture?
Your nation?
NEWPARTY ’08!!!
Drop the fuck out and DO something.
Or…
Do not like what the unresponsive media system is doing to your society?
Your family?
Your culture?
Your nation?
MEDIASTRIKE!!!
Drop the fuck out and DO something.
Take your action OUT OF THEIR HANDS.
Just like Bin Laden says.
STARVE ’em out.
While still maintaining some sort of survival system, of course.
Which means allying yourself with others who have the same idea, no matter how it is expressed.
Which is EXACTLY what Marcos Aguilar and mloc are saying.
This is NOT “racist”.
It’s just business.
Frame it as racism and you lose the point.
In fact…you just lose, period.
It’s survivalist.
Whether you say “Vaya!!!”, “Right the fuck on!!!” or “I am REALLY getting fed up with you people!!!”
DO something.
Take the action out of their hands.
NOT because thay are white.
Vernon Jordan and Condoleeza Rice aren’t white.
Neither is Alberto Gonalez.
Just because they are incompetent, dishonorable, stupid, petty little people in GREAT big places.
Take the action out of their hands and watch their big, artificially inflated balloon slowly sink back to earth. Where “We, the people” can cut it up and make something useful out of it.
Like maybe rubber bands or a new handbag for Grandma.
Signing off from beautiful Holland and headed back to nitty gritty NYC, I remain…
AG
Later.
Talk to ya on the flip.