Saturday, November 26, 2011

/verses/ she


Unaware of her splendor,
and an unrehearsed charm which could slay any man.

Desiring no agenda and those of candor,
an insatiable desire to be a loved woman.

In her presence, many men are deceitful;
silence shrouds others in invisibility.

She wonders why each suitor is but a fool,
each struggling to prove their common individuality.

She embodies the essence of Venus,
and fills Aphrodite with jealousy.

Her angelic innocence and gracefulness,
with an Irish name as music so lovely.

Too timid to approach, my pride to preserve,
for she is more than mere mortal man deserves.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

/poetry/ eclipse

Take me away,
- To a world unknown.

A world with black rainbows,
White, cloudless skies,
Meadows of plastic,
And tears of gold.

A world with transparent hills,
Rivers of tears,
Music of spoken lies,
And blood of spirits.

A world with mercury seas,
Neon lit stars,
Spaces of nothing,
And the sweat of God.
Take me away.
Away....


...from this world I know.
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Monday, September 5, 2011

/quote/ thomas wayne

“Why do we fall? So we can pick ourselves back
up.”
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/poetry/ recurring memories

A child drenched in unbiased showers,
Pursuing unforgiving premonitions,
Displaced amongst adulterated voices,
Tender, delusional memoirs.

Subtle in staking,
Anonymity a mere bliss,
Run my love,
To those lyrical prospects.

A phantom on a horizon of moons,
Relinquished and ridiculed,
Infected by gaunt, broken personas,
Thoughtful, unrequested joys.

Findings of unjustifiable defences,
Delusions of endless morphs,
Sway my dearest,
At peace with thy acoustics

A man within a façade of monsoons,
Winds prolonging doubtful miseries,
Subdued by differentiated beliefs,
Lingered, hostile romances.

Awakened from eternity,
Tracing a life line,
Alone my darling,
Welcome those recurring memories.
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Wednesday, August 10, 2011

/on educational system/ two


The chapter entitled “Mascot” in The Autobiography of Malcolm X is an illuminating, yet disheartening look at the state of education in the 1930’s. Malcolm reflects upon his schooling experience and the attitudes of peers and authority figures accompanying it. At a time where racial segregation was rampant in the South, and the North simply disguised their racism in a paternalistic manner, Malcolm’s account is a fantastic primary source with the potential to enlighten the reader in regards to the honest condition of American schools during that time. The dominant ideology shines through repeatedly throughout the chapter. Malcolm recalls how he enjoyed history, except for the fact that his history teacher “was a great one for ‘nigger’ jokes”*. He speaks of his quality schoolwork, his excellent grades, his involvement in extracurricular activities, and his relative intellectual capabilities in comparison with his peers; still, his very humanity is denigrated by his English teacher when he professes his desire to become a lawyer and Mr. Ostrowski explains “that’s no realistic goal for a nigger,” suggesting carpentry instead*. Thus, he implies that this young black child, with one of the best grades in the class, is still somehow inferior and unable to perform at the level of his white counterpart. This obvious insult, one meant not as an invective solely towards Malcolm whom Mr. Ostrowski was actually fond of, provides a paragon exemplifying how racism and conceptions of racial inferiority, reflections of the dominant ideology, so deeply penetrated society.

The examples above of overt, personal prejudices are no longer commonly accepted in mainstream society. Struggle throughout American history but erupting in the 1960’s against the prodigious racial inequality in the United States helped shape and transform many Americans' views on racial inferiority. Today, personal ideas of race and race relations have liberalized considerably; this is undoubtedly evidenced by the fact that Americans elected the first black president, who won more white votes than any democratic nominee since Jimmy Carter. At the same time, material conditions for historically marginalized groups, such as blacks, have been on the decline for the past thirty years. Thus, the liberal conception of racism, which they postulate exists because of personal prejudice by backward whites, proves unable to explain this phenomenon. One must instead look critically at the societal institutions, and the dominant ideology which supports them; these institutions have the ability to simultaneously liberalize personal conceptions of race and, conversely, increase the hardship, oppression, and segregation which many black communities face on a day to day basis.

One small component of this dominant ideology, which Malcolm so thoroughly depicts but does not label, is selective omission. This tool, omnipresent throughout the educational system, is used vigorously by academia, textbooks publishers, and public officials to sterilize the resistance of the oppressed against the system which oppresses them. Indeed, it is a paralyzing technique intended to pacify and placate students. Selective omission is a percussive blow to the truth that continues to exert immense force, even today, in hopes of subjugating the masses and excluding them from any sort of participatory democracy. This process, by which those who wish to maintain the status quo and prevent any fundamental change, carefully allows for the absence of regular people in the decision making process. It appears that this aspect of the dominant ideology acts to help ease tension which could potentially arise from the contradictions of a society which prepares students for a “nonparticipatory experience in the workplace” while simultaneously inculcating them “with the prevailing political rhetoric that U.S. society is democratic”~.

In Malcolm’s case, the selective omission he cites is in regards to black history in his textbook. He explains:

It was exactly one paragraph long. Mr. Williams laughed through it practically in a single breath, reading aloud how the Negroes had been slaves and then were freed, and how they were usually lazy and dumb and shiftless. He added, I remember, an anthropological footnote of his own, telling us between laughs how Negroes’ feet were “so big that when they walk, they don’t leave tracks, they leave a hole in the ground”*.

Due to the gains made through collective struggle and organized resistance on the parts of historically marginalized groups, this blatant example would not stand today. However, it is quite easy to draw parallels between Malcolm’s textbook and modern textbooks; both make vigorous use of tactical selective omission. In Malcolm’s case, the omissions are obvious; the brutality and dehumanization of the institution of slavery, the history of abolitionism, the organizational and independent forms of resistance, the struggle for racial equality, or, in other words, the self-activity of regular people, are all ignored. Most important, however, is the fact that his textbook presents the issue as if it simply resolved itself, mentioning that “slaves were freed.” The implication, of course, is that this was due to the benevolence of those who control society and not because of the prolific struggle against the pernicious institution. Indeed, it removed the role of common people as an agency for change. Selective omission, used in this manner, hopes to conceal the fact that often times working within the framework of the established system is futile; it hopes to derail the idea that the oppressed must organize and fight back in the process of human liberation.

Examples in modern textbooks are innumerable. One study of social studies texts “reveals that positive social changes in civil rights, the resolution of the Vietnam war, labor unions, and the women’s movement are presented as triumphs of the legal system”~. This sort of selective omission is vital to the functioning of the social system as it is currently structured; educational institutions, as they now stand, are meant to perpetuate that stability. The reason for this is simple; those who wish to maintain their wealth and power surely want the masses who labor below them to remain in their place. Serious challenges to the system are excluded or, as is the case of the rather popular Socialist Party, “most often portrayed negatively, as an insignificant movement on the part of an irresponsible few”~. This pays no regard to the fact that Eugene Debs, presidential candidate for the Socialist Party, at one point won 6% of the popular vote while imprisoned for speaking out against World War I. Selective omission is a vital tool in the ruling class’s arsenal and they are more than willing to use it in order to secure the dominant ideology.

This tool is just one of their weapons. Historically, the ruling class has shown that it will stop at nothing to preserve it’s stranglehold on power. As educators, it is our job to do our part in the struggle for human liberation. Taking back history from the rich and powerful and emphasizing the role that regular people play in the making of history are fundamental in that quest for liberation. Explaining how, instead of working within the system, the largest gains have been made when struggling against the system, is one step to empowering not only the students we teach and the communities they live in, but ourselves as well. It is our job, in dialogue with our students and the community, to smash through purported truths and reclaim the educational system which we, and the students, sustain with our labor and creativity.

This can be difficult when functioning within the confines of a hierarchical, non-democratic school structure. At the moment progressive teachers and students are on the defensive against a myriad of attacks; privatization, lack of resources, budget cuts, No Child Left Behind, etc. all represent conservative aggression intended to consolidate and centralize power in the hands of the few and leave the rest of us begging for crumbs. However, we have a wide range of tools available to help combat misinformation, selective omission, and the dominant ideology. We must make use, both inside and outside of the classroom, of educational resources such as Howard Zinn’s A People's History of the United States to challenge the whitewashing of history, periodicals such as Rethinking Schools to help articulate our arguments for a critical pedagogy, Jonathon Kozol’s The Shame of the Nation to combat American-style educational apartheid, and various other materials which can help in the struggle. Indeed, when Huey P. Newton said that people learn best by observation and participation, his words could not ring any more true for educators today; it is our role to be models of the struggle for our students. The fight for quality educational standards, equal funding for all children, and the removal of reactionary policies and programs for our schools will have many similarities to the struggle for racial equality, better wages and unionization, and the GLBT movements of both past and present. It is time that teachers stand up and fight back.

* views of Haley
~views of Tozer

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

/random/ boredom

When I'm bored, i try self indulgence with a method in my madness.



Monday, August 8, 2011

/on educational system/ one



In these articles named "On Educational System" , I'll try to deal with issues concerned with theoretical approaches to classroom pedagogy and their broader implications upon us as educators and our students.

One of the most fundamental distinctions educators must explicate upon and understand completely is the training-education dichotomy. The role of the educator, functioning within a purported democratic institution (i.e. school), is to democratize society and the schooling process to the fullest extent. This prodigious challenge can be met in various ways, including the engagement of students in dialogue, fostering critical thinking abilities, helping students understand the totality of both society and their schooling experience, and finally how the dominant ideology and the political and economic institutions which it arises from affects them. These vital concepts cannot be overemphasized. However, without the proper educational approach, or with a narrow training-centered praxis, the above mentioned topics become nearly impossible to communicate to students, let alone effectively foster understanding and critical engagement required for democratic participation by the majority.

Thus, the training-education dichotomy becomes a vital aspect to understanding how democratic education should be approached. “Training may be described as a set of experiences provided to some organism (human or not) in an attempt to render its responses predictable according to the goals of the trainer”~. Training, in some limited sense, is of course a prerequisite for education (being taught to read prior to engaging historical or philosophical works). Humans, however, differ from animals in that they have the potential to transform society by their own self-activity. Animals live only for the present, the concept of time is absent and altering one’s destiny is an impossibility for the animal that simply acts (responding to environmental stimuli) and does not reflect. Humans have the capacity, given certain conditions are met, to perform both action and reflection and thus have the potential to transform society. Despite this, humans, like animals, can be trained to simply act in accordance with the dominant ideology and institutions of society. They can be psychologically manipulated to accept societal structures as unchanging and historically ossified; they can be taught that society is beyond their own capacity to alter. Functioning in a society where the goal is conservation of the social order, this style of top-down training serves its purpose; this applies to “democracies,” monarchies, and bureaucratic regimes alike where the ruling elite wish to conserve their dominance. However, if humanity is to fulfill its “historical vocation” of becoming more fully human and thus be able to collectively assert its democratic will as Paulo Freire articulates in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, a more profound educational pedagogy must be developed.

The pedagogy, extending beyond the narrow goals of training, is a true education which emphasizes various human capacities:
Education involves reason, the intellect, intuition, and creativity. It is a process or set of experiences that allows humans to ‘create’ themselves. The educated person’s responses to a problematic situation [emphasis added] are based on trying to understand and make calculations about that situation.~
This distinction is necessary to understanding how pedagogy in a democratic setting should be constructed. What has been articulated here is not simply the distinction between training and education, although this is essential; it also presents the conflicting models of the banking style education and problem-posing education. The former, where information is simply deposited in the student and regurgitated, facilitates the preparation of the student for a job of unquestioning exploitation and alienation within the current economic and social structures. The latter, stressing problem-posing to allow creative responses and foster analytic skills engages the students and presents society as a problem which can be transformed through human activity.
As Freire explains, “the dominant elites utilize the banking concept to encourage passivity in the oppressed”. On the contrary, the program of a problem-posing education must differ drastically:
The starting point for organizing the program content of education or political action must be the present, existential, concrete situation, reflecting the aspirations of the people. Utilizing certain basic contradictions, we must pose this existential, concrete, present situation to the people as a problem which challenges them and requires a response – not just at the intellectual level, but at the level of action.*
Broadly, this means that the material conditions within which the students function must be discussed and analyzed. The dominant institutions and structures of society which dictate these conditions must also be critically challenged and scrutinized. The issues facing society, such as poverty, war, racism, sexism, exploitation, etc. are all problems which the students can be challenged and urged to help propose solutions to. They must first, however, be convinced of the immense significance of their own historical vocation (that of becoming more fully human) and thus, to determine the destiny of their community and humanity in the broadest sense.

More concretely, this means in the classroom that students should be engaged in the course material. They should have a say in the material covered, in how it is presented, in the structure of the classroom. These issues should be posed as problems for the students, who in conjunction with the educator will help formulate a solution, a plan of action. History should not be taught as a static, unchanging sequence of facts and dates and events in isolation from one another, but rather as a dynamic interplay of contradictory forces which have forged human history to the point it has arrived at today. The problems within the school and within the community are not only to be passively reflected upon, but also acted upon; both action and reflection, in constant and dynamic integration, are essential. This manifestation of collective action and reflection in dialectical relation to one another is the truest form of democracy and plays a pivotal role in empowering students to actively pursue progressive change for themselves and future generations.

This also means that educators should be able to effectively communicate with students. Dialogue is vital to any sort of positive, trusting, and democratic teacher-student relationship. To postulate a hypothetical situation: an educator in an urban setting where black vernacular is the most often expressed dialect would only effectively isolate him or herself by moralizing to students about utilizing “proper English” (this term, at any rate, is not only completely irrational given the nature of language but carries with it implicitly racist undertones). Instead, the true educator would both respect the creativity of oppressed communities in formulating language which articulates their own objective conditions and also emphasize the importance of language as an expressive tool. The educator should “understand the structural conditions in which the thought and language of the people are dialectically framed”*. Dialogue is the tool which allows problem-posing education, and simultaneously, democracy, to flourish. Without it, education is nothing more than passive assimilation into a culture of oppression and alienation.

~ views of Tozer
* views of Freire

/on educational system/

I tried to write on this subject before and even did. But now i'm not writing but responding on it. On Education. Not as a subject but as an issue. Not as a spectator but as a victim. Victim? Yes. Victim. I've been a victim of the prevalent education system which is collapsed to the obvilion. Education itself being a complex issue, reflecting on it can prove challenging, but what i'm going to present in these articles named "On Educational System" is purely personal reflections of mine based on my exposure on the issue. Hence, intellectual comments and suggestions are entertained (although that doesnt suggest that i'm going to edit my series in accordance to your suggests if i tend to agree with it, but i'll surely learn something, again on the personal level).

PS: For my earlier post on education which was pretty intellectual to me at that time while i sense it pretty lame with my current exposure, you can read the post named "On Educational System of India" posted previously in my blog.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

/poetry/ pleine de grâce.

A distant darkness,
Beyond unknown,
Clasping waves,
Worries clawed away.

Trampled shadows,
Encore unenfant,
An unknown man,
Simple la mortalité.

Stolen foot prints,
Faulty residue,
A chimingecho,
Voices subdued.

Retraced journeys,
A chilling breeze,
Warmth captured,
Simplela solidarité.

A flickering light,
Boggled thoughts,
Hopeful vessels,
Un souhait sur un nuage.

Je vous salue, Marie, pleine de grâce.
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Saturday, July 30, 2011

/poetry/ numéros and poetry

Un, deux, trois.
Respirer.

Eyes pursed.
Forgotten obscurity.

Un, deux, trois.
Graver.

Mind tailored.
Mesmerised thoughts.

Un, deux, trois.
Influencer.

Lips subdued.
Residual mirages.

Un, deux, trois.
Effacer.

Flesh numbed,
Contradictory decisions.

Un, deux, trois.
Rêver.

Voice rhymed.
Defining repercussions.

Un, deux, trois;
Quatre, cinq, six ;
Sept, huit, neuf ;
Dix…
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Thursday, June 23, 2011

/mindscape/ metamorphosis

Either remain cocooned for all eternity, failing to
realize one’s true potential;

Or break free and awe the world with one’s
wondrous ways.

Become a butterfly...
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Friday, April 22, 2011

/poetry/ devil's apprentice

Himself the demon,
I, myself, the apprentice;
Forgiveness unheard of.

Petit garçon,
The world shall never be yours;
Don't bother conquering.

Sinners are overrated,
Our sins unaccountable.
- Your life perilous.

Believing in a Higher Power,
My faith uninspired.
Have me in your prayers...

His agony stricken tears,
Almost paternal, perhaps maternal.
- A mere erotica.

Your eyes astray,
His hands locked in mine.
Too late my son...
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/poetry/ disappear

With cheekbones so deceiving,
A luscious lifestyle all along.
Lost in a promenade of pillows and quilts.

With lips so veteran,
Suspended by a mirage of memories.
Nauseating motel scents.

With skin so soft,
Youth almost a myth.
Tears under the shower.

With wrists so delicate,
Standing naked in reflection.
Dancing in solitude.

With eyes so mischievous,
Contemplating perilous words.
Stuffed olives and gin.

With a mind so ragged,
Priorities unnumbered.
Slumber of turbulent dreams.

Craving a touch of warmth,
Relentless frustration.
Perhaps the search must cease.

Perhaps...


...you should disappear.
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Wednesday, April 20, 2011

/poetry/ the storm

The howling wind;
Wrapped in his arms,
Her skin,
Cool against his...

The rustling leaves;
Searched by his palms,
Her body,
Pulsating with his...

The deafening thunder;
Locked in his embrace,
Her lips,
Caressing his...

The pouring rain;
Exhilarated by his voyage,
Her gasps,
Subduedby his...

The seizing storm;
Lying beside him,
Her mind,
At ease with his...
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