Thank you for the thousand congratulations.

Keep up the great work.

Curt

I too absolutely CELEBRATE what you have given your son. A thousand congratulations.

You wrote: “You know, I’ve repressed thinking about school for a few years now - I don’t go into them, I don’t teach at them, I don’t support or try to fix them in any way. Their sinister, pernicious, and pervasive agenda absolutely repels me.”

I’m really sorry for bringing the subject up. I hear what you’re saying though. Looking back on my schooling experience I feel like a lot of my time was stolen from me. I could have been out fishing with my friends instead of learning how to pretend to act interested in subjects that I didn’t give a shit about (Like learning how to balance a checkbook in sixth grade!) And the fifteen years after graduating from high school haven’t been a walk in the park either.

I’m really glad that we are able to give our son the oppurtunity to NOT go to school.

Curt

Haha. Sorry. A mini-rant there. Yes - the system teaches the curriculum, not the information in the textbooks, or the information coming out of the teacher’s mouth (except of course, in so far as the teacher further informs the system, by calling out certain students as “lazy” in front of others, controlling whether or not they can go to the bathroom (control over someone’s ability to relieve themselves! monstrous!), etc.).

You know, I’ve repressed thinking about school for a few years now - I don’t go into them, I don’t teach at them, I don’t support or try to fix them in any way. Their sinister, pernicious, and pervasive agenda absolutely repels me. Probably more folks need to write about this, but for myself the bile rises in my throat so quickly I wouldn’t enjoy writing about it at all.

You wrote: ” In this sense, Julie and I (and most of my colleagues too, such as Scout) have come to terms with the reality that people you hold space for will learn the shape of the space, not your words or content. The medium embodies the message; the system enacts the curriculum. You cannot teach with lecture the ability to have a conversation.”

And this comes back to the point that Jerry Mander made in “In the Absence of the Sacred”: Technology is not neutral, it all has social consequences. The clock in the classroom teaches us about giving our time away to authority figures. The school building walls we sat behind taught us about our relationship to the nonhuman community. The textbooks they handed us taught us about who holds the knowledge of what we NEED to know.

Am I on the right track here?

Take care,

Curt

In this sense, Julie and I (and most of my colleagues too, such as Scout) have come to terms with the reality that people you hold space for will learn the shape of the space, not your words or content. The medium embodies the message; the system enacts the curriculum. You cannot teach with lecture the ability to have a conversation.

[just as a clarification, I do think, according to Julie’s coining of the terms, Derrick purposed to “hold space” (something you do for others, witnessing their story, without affirming or denying the value of what they fill the space with), rather than “make space” (something I understand you do for yourself or your current relationships, making time and room for the expression of your needs/feelings/story).]

Thank you for posting this.

After reading Derrick Jensen’s ” Walking Water”, do you think he was making space for his students at Pelican Bay State Prison? Or does the acts of grading and taking roll call change the defintion of what he was doing?

Take care,

Curt