1. SO'me outside coercion is necessary to get students into a subject deep euougb f or their own natural curiosity to be kindled to the point where they will become autollomous learners . . . 2. A l1ything tbat can get stude/itS to work witb one another will demystify authority , for tbey will learn by e....perience that tbey can learn [rom otle al/olber, [btlt all wisdom does not flow from the top down. .. . The traditional method of getting students together proved of little value in my context so I developed thc following su bsti tu tes: Collective E;l:aminuti07IS. Tests can bc extremely effective methods in getting students together, especially when they know that someone else's success will not mean their failure. Guerilla Theater. Another method of increasing student involvement and demystifying authority is the use of guerilla theater. Six weeks into each semester 1give a little talk abou t the usc of theater to carry political messages and ask for volunteers to work up some plays and put them on for all the economics and some allied social scienc\.·s c1asscs at the college. . .. Work Sensitivity Sessions. Work sensitivity sessions arc nothing other than spontaneous sensitivity sessions occurring whenever there is a natural break in the presentation of the academic material. Subject: the everyday business of lifework. The session begins with five or six srudents taking turns relating what they or thd r parents do for a living. At first the sessions moved slowly, but gradually the participants look beyond the monetary rewards, the hours worked, erc., and tart relating things they don't like about their employment. For example, in one session a female student who worked as a grocery clerk becamc infuriated (as dId other members of the group) at her employer's practice of destroying old vegetables and bread with lye to prevent the poverty-srricken senior citizens in the neighborhood from digging rhem out of the trash cans.. .. August/September 1979 RAIN Page 21 I could go on and on with other cases of a similar nature: the ex-career Navy medical specialist who quit because:: he could not stand the work and cnded up doing the same thing for nothing at a local free clinic; the motorcycle repairman who vowed to start his own nonprofit motorcycle repair shop after seeing his boss destroy slightly damaged but usable pans so that customers would have to buy new ones from him at monopoly prices; and so on, ad infinitum. The point is that these groups need very little facilitation, only encouragement. if the right things arc going on in the classroom. The incredible thing is that these people were only dimly aware of the things that bothered them until they heard the experiences of others. Equally incredible is the fact that everybody feels alit-nated in some way; it may take a little longer to get it out of some thall others bu.t it is rherc. The key is to let tbem do the talking; a question or two in the right placl~s is all that is needed to start the process. 3. A change ill social consciousness can best be obtaiued by first appealing to people's nloral sense of wbat is right atld wbat is wrong and by tben sbowillg them that what is the "rigbt" behavior in many cases is also ;11 tbeir own narrl)wly defined economic and social self-interest. ... about three-quarters of the way through the semester, I'd say half of the class are sympathetic to the idea of radical social change. forty percent have moved left to a moderate liberal stance, and the remaining tcn percent are dug in for thc winter. It is time for the coup de gracI:, which is happily supplied by Dennis Meadows' The Limits to Growth and selected readings frum Economic Growth vs. the Env;ronmetlt by Johnson and Hardesty. The message is clear: The things that we've been talking about, nonmaterialism, cooperation, control over the political system, income redistribution, erc., arc not only " right" but arc in their own social self-interest, for they are a necessary co nd ition fo r survival. At thiSjuncture there is linle to do but pick up the pieces by providing a framework for constructive change in the remainder of the semester. This last point is extremely important, for to create cognitive dissonance and then fail to provide a way out can lead to frustration, apathy, and eventually nihilism . ... 000 that have evolved since life fi rst climbed from the sea proffer good advice: develop perennial crops. To this cnd various candidates have been proposed. A close relative of corn, Eastern Gama Grass has many positive attributes. Ais under consideration for perennial production are soybean relatives and members of the millet family. Exciting research on Eastern Gama Grass is taking place at the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas. Their studies demonstratc this perennial to posses many excellent qualities: bigh protein content, resistance to insects and disease, and a multitude of genotypes which arc easily propagated. A major problem is the low productivity of only one bushel per acre, as compared CO around eighty for corn, but the great number of genotypes should allow enough variety for a massive breeding program to overcome th is. After all, corn only produced about a bushel anti a half per acre in the Tehuaean Valley of Mexico of 7000 BP (before present). Economic pressures coupled with technological advances have enticed west(~rn culture to skimp on its ecological bills. How much longer these deficits will be allowed to stack up before the Collector omes is unsure, but we'd best begin paying before Ms. Nature forecloses. Economic incentives to cheat must be rem(lv~d with due haste, and developmcnt of such alternative strategies as perennial farming should be cncoUTaged. - TM The Land Report, "Soil Loss and the Search for a Permanent Agriculture," Wes Jackson, Feb. '78, and "Eastern G"ama Grass: Grain Crop for the Future?" Wes Jackson and Martin Bender, Fall '78, $3/3 issues/yr. from : The Land Institute Rt.3 Salina, KS 67401 This pcriodical is published by The Land Institute of Salina, Kansas, a non-profit organization. Their research rides on the "cutting edge" of current agricultural problem identification and solution. This is an invaluable publication for those intcrested in concepts from solar energy to ecology, and how t hcse ideas can steer the farmer to an environmentally sound future. Both Lester Brown in his article "The State of the Soil" and Wes Jackson in "Toward Sustainability" explore issues and answers to the current agricultural dilemma. These appear in the Nov.lDec '78 edition of the FOE publication N ot Man Apart ($10 low income, $20 reg. per yr.), FOE, 124 Spear St., San Francisco, CA 94105. -TM
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