up on a supply room shelf within a few years. The waste is staggering, but it is good for business. Even worse, it seems to me, is the way the role of teachers has been conveniently preempted. Teachers no longer have very much to do in terms of preparation. Everything is.done for them except for the continual requirement to keep records, monitor student "growth," and keep their classroom in order. The publishing companies tell them what to say, when to say it, and have the ditto masters ready to go when the talking is over. This is not to condemn teachers, who find themselves out of control anyway. My concern is that teachers have, to put it bluntly, been taken. They are daily used by the publishing companies and their representatives, by state boards of education, by school boards. And it has happened so slowly (and with such skill) that in many cases the teachers seem scarcely aware of the damage being done them and their students. But ... 99 percent of the kids in the country are in public schools. They will move through this system, and out into the world. They will take jobs, buy or rent shelter, accumulate possessions. They will do this by basing their actions on a system of values. Those values will be shaped in large part by the time spent in schools. And though there is much to criticize the schools for, the kids are in those classrooms. It is there that kids need to be touched and loved, where kids should have choices and involvements, where their life can • take on a sense of reality, where there can be real encounter and honest interaction. It is out of this kind of openness and honesty that values sensitive to humans and community and the ecosystem arise. In short, we need to develop learning environments that allow children to gain the tools necessary to understand processes that support life. We need to develop environments that engender those values which are necessary for a harmonious and supportive relationship with those processes. What are those values? Tom outlined many of them in "Sharing Smaller Pies:" stewardship permanence austerity not progress not profit not affluence November 1978 RAIN Page 13 responsibilities not rights people not professions betterment not biggerment enoughness not moreness localization not centralization equitization not urbanization work not leisure independence not interdependence To this list, I should add: doing not education My _qrncern, you see, is that the values associated with a. t. are not getting down to the kids. I'm not certain that I know the best way of including them. The reality, however, is that the information and the models are around, and have been for a long time. But we need to begin the process of exploring what we .can do to ensure that those values we believe in become part of the lives of children. There is too much of the mentality of Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars, of Baretta •and Starsky & Hutch, of Mattel Toys (to barely start the list) floating around for us to sit back and assume that kids or schools or the culture in general is going to change of its own accord. What do we do, and how do the kids fit into the matrix? It needs to be discussed. Let us know your thoughts. California AB 2391 would 'prohibit corporate logos from appearing in school textbooks. (Recently the State Board of Eduction adopted a math textbook for use in grades 3-6 where McDonald's, Dairy Queen, Tootsie Rolls, Cracker Jacks and 54 others are illustrated!) For more information contact the author of the bill: Assemblywoman Leona Egeland, State Capitol, Sacramento, CA 95814. (From Ways and Means) -LS Fred, a long time friend of Rain, is currently teachi11g ill an alternative school jimded by the Oregon Public School System. -PC GOODTHINGS he finally surrendered in 1886. The second is about a Sioux woman as she makes the transition from her girlhood hunting buffalo to her old age on a I'm a Stranger Here Myself, John Seymour, 1978, 140 pp., $9.95 from: Faber & Faber 101 S. Broadway Salem, NY 03079 Watch for Me on the Mountain, Forrest Carter, 1978, $9.95 from: Delacourt Press 1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza New York, NY 10017 Walks Far Woman, Colin Stuart, 1976, $8.95 from: Dial Press, 1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza New York, NY 10017 It's hard to know how to review these books. Both are very moving fictional accounts of Native Americans coping with the end of their culture as they have known it. I have no idea of their authenticity, but they ring true. The first is the story of Geronimo-famed Apache who fought last ditch guerilla warfare against both the Mexicans and the Americans in the Southwest until farm in the Northern Plains in the 1940s. Both arc spiritual books:-the chara<::ters themselves receive a lot of special guidance (Walks Far from a grinning cqyote), while the lives they lead arc_ck_arly spiriiually in tune with the world around them_. Both are agonizing books-the destruction of the native cultures and.each of their families by the coming of th.e whi~c people is slowly and painfully detailed~Yet in neither book are the whites all bad, nor the Indians all good. In fact, what shines through is the similar humanity of all people-their common struggles (and sometimes treachery) in response to change that is out of anyone's individual control. At their most mundane level the books arc very plausible accounts of the lives and cultures of .a famous warrior and a very strong (almost feminist) and delightful woman. I highly recommend them both. -LdcM It's hard to recommend a book that's so small and so light and so expensive, but this one is a real gem. Maybe your library can get it. John Seymour is a long-time farmer/writer in Britain whose other works include a couple of excellent how-to books on the subject (sec Guide to SelfS'ujjicie11cy, Rainbuok, p. 172). This one is a delightful, rambling account of his farm in Wales. I liked it best when he was describing the neighbors-hclpingneighbors understandings. Colorful stories mixed in with some excellent thinking on schooling (or lack of a need for it), cooperation, and city people making silly laws for country people. If you'd like a feeling for the values and benefits of old time/new time country living, here's a nice introduction. - LdeM
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz