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> From: “Greg Swann” <gswann@presenceofmind.net>
> To: “Don Cloud” <dcloud@aguafria.org> > CC: “Arizona Education Superintendent Lisa Graham Keegan” <lkeegan@mail1.ade.state.az.us>, > BCC: <suppressed> > Subject: Guerrilla Schooling #2: The silencing of the censors... > Date: Sun, Aug 8, 1999, 6:05 AM |
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The silencing of the censors...But, soft! Even now there is a new issue of Guerrilla Schooling, a web-based magazine concerned with practical strategies for wresting a rigorous academic education for our children from an education establishment stoutly committed to doing everything but providing rigorous academic education. We are guerrillas, not reformers, and what we seek is a real education, not any of the many unreasonable, unreasoning facsimiles. For our children, not all children everywhere. Now, while they’re still children. This much is shorn from “The silencing of the lambs” in the new issue: [....]
[....] What more do we need to say? The words speak for themselves: http://www.presenceofmind.net/Guerrilla/ Even so, we do go on. For one thing, we dump a little cold water on the idea of tax-funded parents’ choice. Be assured, though, that we did not get the cold water from Agua Fria Union High School, whence Principal Don Cloud is honored as our honorary baboon. And, of course, we rhapsodize about Mr. Shakespeare, plotting out a guerrilla strategy to grace your children’s minds, if no others, with his art. For the benefit of Mr. Cloud, we’ll repeat this from our first web-page update notice:
It were well for us to quarry that pile of prose for the soul of wit, because we’ll be saying it over and over again. As time permits. For now, Mr. Cloud should anticipate hearing from a few parents. And we expect he will also overhear the half-stifled titterings of his wittier charges. Laughter may not be the best medicine, but it is the guerrilla’s best weapon. This is why it is so often banned. Which brings us to this: Satire is legal in the United States. We heard from someone called J. Z. Al-Huriyeh (jzah@bellsouth.net), who characterizes last week’s send-up of Mr. Morris Feller as a “libelous vendetta”. This is untrue on both counts, of course, but it does not matter. We have the right to speak freely. In a public posting, Al-Huriyeh claimed that we had plagiarized someone, we can’t imagine who. This is all so much hot air, except that Al-Huriyeh copied his email to our ISP, asking them to shut us down. He also expressed the hope that Mr. Feller would sue us. Such a suit would lose, of course, but the purpose of this sort of thing is to silence debate, to throttle speech rather than to refute it. But: Our heart is pure and therefore we have the strength of, well, several, anyway. We do not scare. But Al-Huriyeh also asks that we cease posting to the Usenet group k12.chat.teacher, the hole in the veldt from which he hides from life. This much we are gracious enough to do. We do not wish to impose where we are unwanted, and we never voluntarily associate with barstool Napoleons, tin-pot Torquemadas or other would-be supervisors of every mind but their own. Instead we shall turn—this once, anyway—to humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare, where the turn of mind turns always to turning the earth of the mind, the truest act of cultivation. Dig we must. That’s enough. Links and email addresses if you have them. Forward and reprint as you like, except as noted on the site. Raise hell, make waves, rock the boat—but look out for your own. Until next time, Greg Swann
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