My suggestions about subversive teaching were meant to be taken with a
twist of irony, and to make the point about why the state takes the control
of education, especially curriculum, so seriously, when otherwise they seem
not to really care at all whether kids get educated or not.
Politically, people on the scene are always the best judges of tactics, but
the 'teach-in' can be very valuable, and it is not clear that one should
concede to the government that the only things that can go on in the
people's schools are what the state authorizes. Academic freedom is a very
fundamental freedom and one shared, traditionally, between Lehrfreiheit for
teachers and Lernfreiheit for students.
As to the morality of slanted ideological indoctrination of younger
citizens, it seems to me that that is just what many of us think the
existing curriculum largely does. History and social studies are especially
slanted, but issues of eurocentrism, phallocentrism, etc. are pretty
pervasive even in the math and science curricula.
I would not be as concerned as you are about protecting students from
indoctrination. Deep ideologies in a culture are effectively transmitted
with or without schools, and even against the best intentioned curricula
(e.g. gender attitudes). There is still a lot of room for manoever and
resistance, and I think we underestimate the extent to which students are
skeptical and resistant, transform and appropriate, and generally have a
good laugh at (or gag over) over what the curriculum takes seriously. I
have not seen many _tabulae rasae_ [blank slates] lately. :)
Of course, I also did not consider any of my own specific curricular
suggestions to be ideological slanted; I was just asking for a curriculum
that included some of the unpopular or unpleasant 'truths' about our
societies. I was really asking for a curriculum that suspended official
censorship. I suppose it is my own political bias, but I generally believe
that more ecumenical curricula are inherently subversive of established
political orders, and that the primary way in which the curriculum
perpetuates the interests of ruling elites is not so much by telling
outright lies as by leaving out (and so illegitimating) all the
alternatives and counter-examples to canonical viewpoints.
I don't think students need to be protected from diversity, only from
viewpoints that seek a monological authority (whether establishment or
oppositional).
JAY.
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JAY L. LEMKE
CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
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