Newspapers / University of North Carolina … / Sept. 24, 1969, edition 1 / Page 5
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The Student As Mgger The Carolina Journal, September 24,1969 Pape 5 Reprinted from Daily Bruin Spectra Tuesday. April 4, 1967 G. Farber is Associate Prof of English at Cal State, La. Editor’s Com. (EDITOR’S NOTE: While all of this material is not relevant to our campus, this article has been published in many campus newspapers, and we feel that it is worthwhile for our readers to be acquainted with this point of view.) by Gerald Farber Students are niggers. When you get that straight, our schools begin to make sense. It’s more important, though, to understand why they’re niggers. If we follow that question seriously enough, it Will lead us past the zone of academic bullshit, where dedicated teachers pass their knowl.edge on to a new Scneration, and into the fdtty-gritty of human needs and bang-ups. And from there, we can 80 on to consider whether it ^tght even be possible for students to come up from slavery. , Pirst, let’ssee what’s happening now. Let’s look at the role students play in what we like to call education. At Cal State L.A., where I teach, the students have separate unequal dining facilities. If I them to the faculty dining room, my colleagues get ttncomfortable, as though there ®re a bad smell. If I eat in the student cafeteria, I become bnown as the educational * ®‘l’rivalent of a nigger lover. In at one building, there are even r®st rooms which students may not use. At Cal State, also, there is Unwritten law against tudent-faculty love-making, nrtunately, this anti-misce- Senation law, like its Southern „nterpart, is not 100 per cent etlective. Students at Cal State are politically disenfranchised. They ^re in an academic Lowndes ounty. Most of them can vote in nstional elections - their average ^8e is about 26 - but they have no oice in the decisions which affect dreir academic lives. The students ^re, it is true, allowed to have a toy government of their own. It is ® Sovemment run for the most P®rt by Uncle Toms and I ^ncemed principally with trivia, yte faculty and administrators decide what courses will be offered; the students get to ^oose their own Homecoming ^Ueen. Occasionally, when student leaders get uppity and ■rebellious, they’re either ignored, pot off with trivial concessions, or ■Maneuvered expertly out of position. A student at Cal State is expected to know his place. He J^ls a faculty member “Sir,” or Doctor,” or “Professor” - and he smiles and shuffles some as he *fonds outside the professor’s office waiting for permission to enter. The faculty tell him what courses to take (in my department, English, even e ectives have to be approved by a ^ulty member); they tell him to read, what to write, and requently, they set the margins do his typewriter. They tell him ^at’s true and what isn’t. Some teachers insist that they encourage Assent but they’re almost always jiving and every student knows it. Tell the man what he wants to near or he’ll fail your ass out of the course. When a teacher says, “jump,” students jump. I know of one professor who refused to take up class time for exams and required students to show up for tests at 6:30 in the morning. And they ■bd, by God! Another, at exam finie, provides answer cards to be filled out — each one enclosed in a paper bag with a hole cut in the fop to see through. Students stick fheir writing hands in the bags while taking the test. The teacher isn’t a provo; I wish he were. He does it to prevent cheating. Another colleague once caught a student reading during one of his lectures and threw her book against the wall. Still another lectures his students into stupor and then screams at them when they fall asleep. Just last week, during the first meeting of a class, one girl got up to leave after about ten minutes had gone by. The teacher rushed over, grabbed her by the arm, saying, “This class is NOT dismissed!” and led her back to her seat. On the same day, another teacher began by informing his class that he does not like beards, moustaches, long hair on boys, or capri pants on girls, and will not tolerate any of that in his class. The class, incidentally, consisted mostly of high school teachers. Even more discouraging than this Auschwitz approach to education is the fact that the students take it. They haven’t gone through twelve years of public schools for nothing. They’ve learned one thing and perhaps only one thing during those twelve years. They’ve forgotten their algebra. They’re hopelessly vague about chemistry and physics. They’ve grown to fear and resent literature. They write like they’ve been lobotomized. But, Jesus, can they follow orders! Freshmen come up to me with an essay and ask if I want it folded and whether their name should in the upper ri^t hand corner. And I want to cry and kiss them and carress their poor, tortured heads. Students don’t ask that orders make sense. They give up expecting things to mike sense long before they leave elementary school. Things are true because the teacher says they’re true. At a very early age, we all leam to accept “two truths” as did certain medieval churchmen. Outside of class, things are true to your tongue, your fingers, your stomach, your heart. Inside class, things are true by reason of authority. And that’s just fine because you don’t care anyway. Miss Wiedemeyer tells you a noun is a person, place , or thing. So let it be. You don’t give a rat’s ass; ^e doesn’t give a rat’s ass. The important thing is to please her. Back in kindergarten, you found out that teachers only love children wiio stand in nice straight lines. And that’s where it’s been ever since. What school amounts to, then, for white and black kids alike, is a 12-year course in how to be slaves. What else could explain what I see in a freshman class? They’ve got that slave mentality: California state colleges, the obliging and ingratiating on the faculties are screwed regularly and surface but hostile and resistant vigorously by the Governor and underneath. Legislature and yet they still don’t As do black slaves, students offer any solid resistance. They lie vary in their awareness of what’s on their stomachs with their going on. Some recognize their pants down, mumbling own put-on for what it is and even catch-phrases like “professional let their rebellion break througli dignity” and “meaningful now and then. Others - including dialogue.” most of the “good students” - Professors were no different have been more deeply when I was an undergraduate at brainwashed. They swallow the UCLA during the McCarthy era; it bullshit with greedy mouths, was like a cattle stampede as they They’re pathetically eager to be rushed to cop out. And in more pushed around. They’re like those recent years, I found that my old, grey-headed house niggers being arrested in sit-ins brought you can still find in the South from my colleagues not so much who don’t see what all the fuss is approval or condemnation as about because Mr. Charlie “treats open-mouthed astonishment, us real good.” “You could lose your job!” College entrance requirements Now of course there’s the tend to favor the Toms and screen Vietnamese war. It gets some out the rebels. Not entirely, of opposition from a few teachers, course. Some tudents at Cal State Some support it. But a vast LA are ex^ t con artists who number of professors who know know perfe ’Uy well what’s perfectly well what’s happening, happening. They want the degree are copping out again. And in the or 2-S and play the game. If high schools, you can forget it. their egos are strong enough, they Stillness reigns, cheat alot. And, of course, even I’ni not sure why teachers are the Toms are angry down deep so chickenshit. It could be that somewhere. But it comes out in academic training itself forces a passive rather than active split between thought and action, aggression. They’re unexplainable If might also be that the tenured thick-witted and subject to security of a teaching job attracts frequent spells of laziness. They tiniid persons and, furthermore, misread simple questions. They that teaching, like police work, spend their nights mechanically puHs in persons who are unsure of outlining history chapters while themselves and need weapons and meticulously failing to other external trappings of comprehend a word of what’s in authority, them. At any rate, teachers ARE The saddest cases among both short on balls. And, as Judy black slaves and student slaves are Eisenstein has eloquently pointed the ones who have so thoroughly out,, the classroom offers an introjected their masters’ values artificial and protected that their anger is all turned environment in which they can inward. At Cal State, these are the exercise their will to power. Your kids for whom every low grade is neighbors may drive a better car; torture, who stammer and shake gas station attendants may when they speak to a professor, intimidate you; your wife may who go through an emotional dominate you; the State crisis every time they’re called on Legislature may shit on you; but in class. You can recognize them ^he classroom, by God, easily at finals time. Their faces are festooned with fresh pimples; the bowels boil audibly across the room. If there really was a Last Judgement, the parents and teachers who created these wrecks would bum in hell. So students are niggers. It’s time to find out why, and to do this, we have to take a long look at Mr. Charlie. The teachers I know best are college professors. Outside the classroom and taken as a group, their most striking characteristic is timidity. They’re short on balls. Just look at their working conditions. At a time when even migrant workers have begun to fight and win, college professors are afraid to make more than a token effort to improve on their pitiful economic status. In students do what you say - or else. The grade is a hell of a weapon. It may not rest on your hip, potent and rigid like a cop’s gun, but in the long run it’s more powerful. At your personal whim - any time you choose - you can keep 35 students up for nights and have the pleasure of seeing them walk into the classroom pasty-faced and red-eyed carrying New Books Hard Cover — Paper Backs THE CHARLOTTE BOOKSHOP Phone 332-4696 344 Charlottetown Mall Charlotte, N. C. Ia« B(i.p_aa PB 8 tfloflooooooiw MUSICLAND Complete DISCOUNT Record Center ROUMSrOfiES ~ TBOHOITKPtSr, MMUf VU Regular Price $S.79 Our Price $4.67 Special $3.96 Tryon Mall 596-8389 8389 a sheaf of typewritten pages, with title page, MLA footnotes, and margins set at 15 and 91. The general timidity which causes teachers to make niggers of their students usually includes a more specific fear - fear of the students themselves. After all, students are different just like black people. You stand exposed in front of them, knowing that their interests, their values, and their language are different from yours. To make matters worse, you may suspect that you yourself are not the most engaging of persons. Wliat can protect you from their ridicule and scorn? Respect for Authority. That’s what. It’s the policeman’s gun again. The white bwana’s pith helmet. So you flaunt your authority. You wither whispers with a murderous glance. You crush objectors with erudition and heavy irony. And worst of all, you make your own attainments seem not accessible but awesomely remote. You conceal your massive ignorance - and parade a slender learning. You might also want to keep in mind that he was a nigger once himself and has never really gotten over it. And there are more causes, some of which are better described in sociological than psychological terms. Work them out, it’s not hard. But in the meantime, what we’ve got on our hands is a whole lot of niggers. And what makes this particularly grim is that the student has less chance than the black man of getting out of his bag. Because the student doesn’t even know he’s in (Continued On Page 6) Pat ^tc^im-t’s, Welcomes You to UNC-C Sept. 15 - Oct. 15 a 1OG discount will be given to anyone with a UNC-C ID card. 133 S. Tryon ©KDGDMADL University City Boulevard ' CHarlotte, N.C. ^
University of North Carolina at Charlotte Student Newspaper
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Sept. 24, 1969, edition 1
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