Last year I gave two one-hour talks on “appropriate technology” to some entering WFU students. They went pretty badly, because I treated them as lectures, and I was pretty sure I didn’t want to talk again.
Now, though, because of Derrick Jensen, I’m thinking if I get the chance next year I could give a talk along the lines of “why do you want to go to college?”
I just read Derrick Jensen’s Walking On Water, an indictment of Western Civilization’s educational system as a tool to create slaves for capitalism. The book’s principle vehicle is the story of Derrick teaching creative writing to university students and to prisoners. Through these stories Derrick analyzes how schools create commodities rather than creative, realized people, how classrooms and grades teach subservience to “higher authority” above self-reliance, and most interestingly for me Derrick analyzes whether he himself should be a teacher within the educational system and what students learn from his classes.
In light of Derrick’s stance as an anarcho-primitivist, it is awesome that I just blogged about his book.
update: The Memory Hole: The Educational System Was Designed to Keep Us Uneducated and Docile.
Mom and I flew to DFW (Dallas/Fort Worth) Saturday to help grandmother pack up the four-bedroom house she’s lived in for most of her life so she can move to Winston-Salem. We all began driving back in her car today.
If you think of grandmother’s possessions as ten lots, one lot went to grandmother’s church, two to the Salvation Army, three to the trash, one for mom and me, and three for grandmother. I saved a commemorative turtle from 1898 and a leather folder from a Building Inspector convention in the 1920s. I threw away an official copy of the Dallas Fire Marshall code from 1911, a half-dozen WWII-era do-it-yourself photography books, and every tool and item in the garage.
We hired A-1 Freeman, a moving company affiliated with North American Van Lines, to box and haul what’s coming to Winston.
I recommend the company with the concern that you must call to confirm your work will be done. The packers did not come yesterday until we called: I think our representative forgot about us. I called this morning and was told “your driver hasn’t come in yet [pause while rep asks around] oh wait yeah he’s coming over now.”
The staff that came to the house has been very friendly and extremely efficient. We may have everything unloaded as soon as this Sunday!