Is anybody talking about the idea of "Guerrilla Education"?

[Ken Burch]

If the present trends continue, there may be either massive closings of or shrinkage of universities, there will be continued increases in tuition, and those universities that survive will be increasingly forced to go to the "white collar trade school" model, with few if any courses emphasizing critical thinking or historical honesty.

If this is going to happen, the Left may need to take education into its own hands and use "guerrilla" methods to spread the information that people will need to learn in order to understand what's happening in this country and how to protect themselves and organize resistance to the continued corporate/military takeover of life.

I haven't spent much time in the Education group, so if there are threads where the notion of alternate means of getting education out to the people are being discussed, please post links to them.

If not, perhaps this could be a thread in which that conversation happens.

[LWolf]

1. I haven't seen them discussed,

nor thought about it much myself. What did you have in mind?

[Ken Burch]

2. There are various possibilities

1)the revival of the old "Hobo University&quot in the late 19th and early 20th Century, hobos who had had education in various subjects-and there were a lot of them-taught classes in what they had learned in the hobo camps). This could be set up among the homeless, or among the unemployed, and would help create a sense of connection between them, as well as raising the general level of knowledge among them overall.

2)Using You Tube or other online media to teach free courses in various subjects...especially subjects like American and world history...this would involve creating ways to make the courses visually interesting and would require people with some knowledge of video production to do properly, but it's achievable.

3)Organizing "Classapaloozas&quot traveling music-and-education shows that worked like a combination of Lalapalooza and the old Chataqua circuit). Having learning tied to culture and, at times spectacle would help draw people in to learn.

these are a few thoughts I've had on the subject.

[HiPointDem]

3. this is kind of like the old idea of workers' schools -- self-education including political.

i can't remember the official name, though -- but there used to actually be institutions like this.

in australia and elsewhere too. i was readying about them not so long ago, but i can't remember the name. there was something similar that the unions did as well, but this other was more interesting because it was kind of self-organized and cooperative -- people paid a small sum to belong to this thing, which maintained a building, supply of tools which you could train with, education materials, etc. they were kind of working-class centers of activity for a while.

i think the infoshops were an attempt to do something similar -- rent a space, fill it with literature, offer public programs, etc.

the unions used to do worker education among their members but don't seem to have done that for eons.

[Ken Burch]

4. Well, unions stopped because they started getting scared of the rank-and-file learning too much.

Workers with information are likely to be more demanding and more radical, and very few union leaders want that...most of them are still, unfortunately, in the George Meany "pork chopper" mode of union strategy and purpose.

But yes, I am drawing from those ideas...also from the anarchist notion(not that I'm necessarily an anarchist, but they did have good tactical ideas on some things and an interesting analysis)of mutual assistance.

It may be that, for the time being, helping each other will be the only help we get.

[HiPointDem]

5. I would like to see that culture recreated. In this political climate, though, it almost seems

like a dangerous thing, to open up such a storefront operation publicly -- presuming you could gather the support.

I almost feel like modeling the early christians might work better.

It's weird to feel that for the first time in my life.

and also, with technology being what it is, i can even project myself into a time when labor history is nearly completely lost, because there's no material 'book', just digital bits that can be vaporized. and generational transmission vaporized as well.