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Evidence Points To High-Level Conspiracy: B.P.P. DEMANDS PROBE OF MALCOLM X MURDER

(Oakland, Calif.) - Huey P. Newton and the Black Panther Party have joined with a community group seeking justice for Malcolm X in demanding Congressional investigation of the February 21, 1965, assassination of the famed Black revolutionary leader.

In a recent letter to Black Congressman Louis Stokes, chairperson of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, the Los Angeles-based committee for justice for Malcolm X declares:

"…Obviously, Malcolm's stinging and unrelenting criticisms of U.S. domestic and foreign policy in the racial and economic sphere were not taken lightly by the American State Department, Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation…

"It is our contention that the evidence will demonstrate overwhelmingly and conclusively that the assassinaton of Malcolm X was ordered…by highly-placed officials in the U.S. government…We stand prepared to document our assertions…"

The February 4, 1978, issue of THE BLACK PANTHER reported on a copyrighted story in Boston's Real Paper that members of the New York police force and the FBI may have played an instrumental role in aiding and covering up the murder of Malcolm X.

The standing legal verdict on the assassination holds that three men, forming a conspiracy, were guilty of the act. And since two of the three were well-known Nation of Islam "enforcers," the public has been led to accept

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the obvious implication -- that the murder was ordered, planned, and carried out solely by the Nation (when led by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, now called World Community of Islam in the West) as the culmination of that group's vendetta against its former chief spokesperson.

Yet, in the last few days of his life, Malcolm told people close to him that recent events had "led him to believe that the plotters of his death were much bigger than the Muslims."

The assassination itself and the trial that followed almost a year later produced a myriad of disturbing indications that two innocent men were convicted of Malcolm's murder.

Noted attorney William Kunstler has recently submitted affidavits to a New York court intended to show that new evidence unearthed since the final appeal in the case constitutes grounds for obtaining a new trial.

One of the three men originally convicted, Thomas Hagan, has now volunteered to name four other men who acted with him in the murder. Hagan says that Thomas Johnson and Norman Butler, the two men convicted with him, are innocent.

AFFIDAVIT

Kunstler has submitted Hagan's affidavit along with another that includes the transcript of testimony given by police undercover agent Gene Roberts, who says he had been a bodyguard to Malcolm X and possessed crucial knowledge about Malcolm's murder which had been withheld from the original trial.

The following is the complete text of the letter sent to Congressman Stokes:

Dear Sir:

"Though 13 years have passed since the brutal and cowardly assassination of Malcolm X, his example and contributions continue to inspire and guide increasing numbers of oppressed people in America and abroad. Malcolm X served and influenced Black humankind with rare courage, an unshakable commitment, selflessness, competence, and a charisma that is beyond words.

"His ideas and actions helped build, unify, and internationalize the Black liberation struggle inside the United States to an unprecedented level.

"Obviously, Malcolm's stinging and unrelenting criticisms of U.S. domestic and foreign policy in the racial and economic sphere were not taken lightly by the American State Department, Central Intelligence Agency, and Federal Bureau of Investigation. We suspect beyond a reasonable doubt that clandestine government surveillance, disruption, and actual physical destruction of Malcolm's organization (Organization) of Afro-American Unity) and Malcolm X himself did in fact occur, and are now history.

"Malcolm's historic and successful meetings with progressive African leaders, together with obtainable and probable African sponsorship of a United Nations resolution condemning the U.S. for its racist internal policies, threatened to undermine U.S. Influence abroad.

"Furthermore, Malcolm X sounded the `death knell' for official `divide and conquer' tactics against the Black movement when he traveled to the South during the last days of his life and laid out a stategy with Dr. Martin Luther King to link the civil rights and human rights struggles.

"The official version' has it the Malcolm X was the victim of a Muslim vendetta. Many unanswered questions and unexplained events that predate the assassination and haunt all of us in its aftermath do not support the `official version' at all.

"It is our firm belief that there may have been at least five actual assassins, and that of the three men currently serving prison terms for Malcolm's assassination only one is actually guilty Possibly four assassins, and other parties to the conspiracy, which include the paymaster, are still at large.

"We know for example, that several assassins, wounded by gunfire or beaten by Malcolm's enraged supporters at the scene, effected their escape with assistance from uniformed New York police who pretended to take them into custody.

"We believe that through the use of electronic surveillance the infiltration of provocateurs, the government exploited and intensified the divisions between Malcolm and Muslims loyal to Elijah Muhammad in order to stage the assassination as a Muslim vendetta. We have not forgotten that Malcolm himself told his closest confidants during the last days of his life that the government itself was planning his death.

"It is our contention that the evidence will demonstrate overwhelmingly and conclusively that the assassination of Malcolm X was ordered, financed, and covered-up by highly-placed officials in the U.S. government. The COINTELPRO revelations, the Hoover memorandum on the `Black Messiah,' and the ever-widening indictment of the `intelligence community' reinforces daily our suspicion that the government conspired to assassinate Malcolm X.

"Our accusations are properly within the charge and capacity of the Select Committee on Assassinations. Therefore, we urgently request that the Committee immediately investigate all circumstances and events related to the assassination of Malcolm X, with a determination to identify all guilty and negligent parties.

"We stand prepared to document our assertions and assist the Committee in every possible way."

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PROP. 13 “TAX REVOLT” SPREADS TO MICHIGAN

(Lansing, Mich.) - While several newly formed community coalitions continue to fight the devastating effects of Proposition 13, the co-author of the California measure has stepped up his right-wing nationwide tax crusade. Howard Jarvis campaigned throughout Michigan last week to aid the collection of a reported 327,585 signatures which were submitted to place a similar initiative on the state's November ballot.

"Jarvis gave us the shot in the arm," said Keneth Nyquist, a chief aide to the Shiawassee County drain commissioner, Robert Tisch, who spearheaded the Michigan campaign. "…He was worth about 80,000 signatures."

In California, spending cuts stemming from the passage of Proposition 13 will wipe out 60,000 jobs this year, the U.S. Congressional Budget Office reported last week.

The report predicted that the state could lose hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid for education, child nutrition, general revenue sharing and mass transit by being unable to meet matching fund regulations.

It is estimated that big business in the state has reaped a $2.8 billion windfall. This includes $130 million to Pacific Telephone, $150 million to the insurance industry, $20 million to Standard Oil and $13 million to the Bank of America.

A drive to get an initiative on Berkeley's November ballot which would force landlords to return some of their windfall

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profits from Proposition 13 has started by Berkeley Citizens Action. The group is collecting some of the 4,000 signatures needed to qualify the measure.

SIMILAR

The initiative is similar to legislation introduced by state Assemblyman Tom Bates from Oakland that would give renters 80 per cent of the benefits that landlords are scheduled to receive under Proposition 13.

Some 2,000 members and supporters of a recently formed community coalition demonstrated at the state capital last month to demand that a constitutional amendment be passed to limit the tax initiative's relief to home-owners only.

The demand put forward at the protest, which was organized by the Alameda County Labor-Community Coalition for Jobs and Community Services, was echoed in a resolution passed by the AFL-CIO's state convention last week.

OUTCRY

This public outcry forced Governor Jerry Brown to announce that he is stepping up pressure on landlords to "voluntarily" comply with demands for rent cutbacks.

In San Francisco, a coalition of over 40 Bay Area community, minority and consumer groups demanded Brown's support in establishing a $140 million job and housing trust as part of a plan to channel Proposition 13 windfall to businesses back into Black and poor communities.

The demands were issued at a press conference addressed by representatives of the Oakland Citizens' Committee for Urban Renewal (OCCUR), League of United Latin American Citizens, American G. I. Forum and Public Advocates law firm.

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HUEY P. NEWTON WINS SEVERANCE OF PHONY CHARGES

(Oakland, Calif.) - A beaming Huey P. Newton emerged from Alameda County Superior Court here last week after Judge Martin Pulich granted his motion that the bogus assault and murder cases which the Black Panther Party president faces be severed and tried separately.

Pulich, obviously concerned that he make no mistakes providing grounds for a later overturning of Huey's upcoming trials, denied the motion made by county Assistant District Attorney Thomas Orloff that Huey be tried at the same time for the August 6, 1974, murder of prostitute Kathleen Smith and the August 16, 1974, assault of the so-called tailor, Preston Callins.

Michael Kennedy, well-known San Francisco attorney, appeared officially in court for the first time as Huey's chief counsel at the July 12 hearing. Kennedy joined the case last month after Sheldon Otis resigned as Huey's lawyer.

Following several lengthy meetings with Huey, whom Otis describes as "a courageous and sensitive human being and political leader…" the attorney concluded that personal and other client commitments had made it impossible for him to continue as the BPP president's chief counsel due to the mounting federal campaign against Huey and the Party.

Following Pulich's ruling last week -- which came one year and nine days after Huey voluntarily returned to the U.S. from three years of forced exile in Cuba to face the false charges lodged against him -- Kennedy asked

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that the trail on the Callins assault case begin on Monday, August 21, and that the Smith murder trial date be set for Monday, November 27. Pulich granted both dates.

"POLICE AGENTS"

At a press conference last month, Huey charged that two Oakland Tribune reporters are "police agents" working hand-in-hand with the U.S. government to discredit and destroy him and the Party.

Blasting the escalation of the media vendetta against him and the BPP he founded nearly 12 years ago, Huey, accompanied by Kennedy, accused Tribune "investigative" reporters Pearl Stewart and Lance Williams with being "liars" and "snitches."

Stewart, who is Black, and Williams have written dozens of vicious articles on Huey and the Party since his return to Oakland from exile on July 3, 1977.

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EDITORIAL: BAKKE: THE WRONG BATTLEFIELD

At his recent Ph.D. colloquium at the University of California (U.C.) at Santa Cruz, Black Panther Party President Huey P. Newton remarked concerning the Bakke case:

"…We talk about an affirmative action program in which poor White workers will have to lose their jobs in order to let 10 Blacks achieve equality. I do not blame those hard-hat workers for saying no. they want their families to survive…

"We should not even have to discuss whether Bakke should go to medical school. We should be happy that he would want to go because everyone should be able to go, especially because of the poor medical health of the country…."

This is why last October, Huey wrote a position paper addressed to the U.C. regents in which he declared that the Bakke case was a "false" and "divisive" issue. While it is certainly true that Blacks and other minorities by the millions have been denied entry into colleges throughout the history of this country, our overriding concern should not focus on obtaining "racial quotas." We should be demanding quality educational programs at medical and other schools and the opportunity for those who so desire to obtain professional training.

The Bakke case is another example of the power structure picking the battlefield for left and progressive forces. Again, we have allowed the small clique of right-wingers who run this country to define the issues over which we fight, issues which pose no threat to this government.

By utilizing the law and the media, the power structure has used the Bakke case much in the same way that it has used Proposition 13 and anti-gay rights laws to push American public opinion farther to the right. Many of the people who sided with Bakke are poor working class White people who face the same oppression experienced by Blacks and other minorities but have been duped into believing that Third World people are a threat to them.

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Fallen Comrades

BABATUNDE X. OMAWALI

Assassinated: July 27, 1970

On July 27, 1970, the remains of Comrade Babatunde X Omawali were "found" lying across railroad tracks in a deserted area of Chicago by local police. Although mutilated beyond recognition, police made a positive identification of his body. Babatunde joined the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party after serving two years in the U.S. Army and quickly became on of its best organizers.

CARL HAMPTON

Assassinated: July 28, 1970

Culminating a series of incidents. On July 28, 1970. Houston, Texas police surrounded the Dowling street area where the People's Party II office was located and attacked the entire Black community. Carl Hampton, chairman and the motivating force of the small organization which followed the example and policies of the Black Panther party, was murdered during the police seige.

All Power To The People

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Letters to the Editor

PRISON INMATES SUPPORT B.P.P.

Dear Editor,

We prisoners who are subscribers of THE BLACK PANTHER and followers of Huey P. Newton regret that we are not in a position to assist the Party in its financial difficulties.

But if our situation should change, I can assure you that I for one will give all that I can offer. I am grateful for the efforts that the Party has set forth pertaining to the cry of all oppressed people.

Let me say too that we are aware of the plots of the government trying to destroy the Party. We too are subject to that same repression because we have accepted Comrade Huey's theories as a way of life. We have accepted Comrade George Jackson's code of ethics and reasoning as our platform for survival. And we have accepted our late Comrade Malcolm X's wisdom, knowledge and understanding as our key to freedom.

Don't be discouraged by that beast. Let his every action against you and the Party be a source of strength to you.

Power to the struggle,
Moses Evans Jr.
Reidsville, Georgia

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COMMENT: Julius Nyerere On Foreign intervention

Following the recent French and Belgian intervention in Zaire's Shaba Province, Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere delivered a major address attacking the Western powers for attempting to continue their domination of the African continent. The following are excerpts from that speech.

When the USSR sent its troops into Czechoslovakia in 1968, Tanzania was one of the many countries which protested. It is expected that we should not protest when Western powers send their troops into an African country?

These "rescue operations" almost always seem to result in the death of a lot of innocent people and the rescue of a government. But that is apparently not regarded in Europe as interference in African affairs… There should be no mistake. Whatever the official agenda, the Paris and Brussels meetings are not discussing the freedom of Africa. They are discussing the continued domination of Africa, and the continued use of Africa, by Western powers. They are intended to be, taken together, a second Berlin Conference.

The real agenda, inside and outside the formal sessions of these meetings, will be concerned with neocolonialism in Africa for economic purposes -- the ral control of Africa and African states. That will be led by the French.

It will be concerned also with the use of Africa in the East-West conflict. That will be led by the Americans. These two purposes will be coordinated so that they are mutually supportive, and the apportionment of the expected benefits -- and costs -- will be worked out.

But the costs may also be higher than the participants anticipate. Tanzania is not the only nationalist country in Africa. There are nationalists everywhere. Sooner or later, and as long as necessary, Africa will fight against neocolonialism as it has fought against colonialism. and eventually it will win.

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Witness Admits Drinking, Starting Fight With Huey P. Newton

(Santa Cruz, Calif.) - A White man whom Huey P. Newton is accused of assaulting admitted on the witness stand here last week that (1) he started a fight with the Black Panther Party president on May 11 of this year and (2) that he had been drinking heavily for three hours prior to attacking Huey.

The admission came from Kenny Hall, a 28-year-old welder from nearby Aptos, in Municipal Court on July 6 during the second day of the joint preliminary hearing for Huey and Party member Robert (Bob) Heard, is also charged in the incident, which occurred at the Mediterranean Lounge in Seacliff.

Under questioning from attorney Floyd Silliman, defense counsel for Huey, hall said the fight began when Huey allegedly appeared to challenge Hall's "best friend," Mike Johnson, also of Aptos.

Huey and Bob, who were subsequently arrested for the incident in the racially tense bar, face charges of attempted murder, assault and being ex-felons in possession of a firearm.

Prior to the cross-examination conducted by Silliman, George Shirinian, attorney for Bob Heard, cross-examined Hall. The 6-foot-3, 215-pound man admitted that Johnson was drunk although, Hall claimed, his friend was in "good enough (shape) to talk to a young lady."

The husky White welder claimed that his heavy consumption of alcohol had not interfered with his memory of the fight he said he started with Huey in defense of Johnson.

Silliman and Shirinian emphasized throughout last week's hearings that Hall and Johnson were too drunk to clearly remember the incident, which the lawyers maintained was the result of the racist atmosphere in the Mediterranean lounge.

The two defense attorneys mentioned anti-Huey graffiti in the bathroom of the bar in support of their contention that Huey and Bob were the victims of a White racist attack.

Further proof of the strong anti-Black sentiment pervading the Santa Cruz area -- where Huey is studying for a Ph.D. at the University of California -- was provided by a "witness" to the incident, Larry Schneidmiller,

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who said he telephoned sheriff's deputies to inform them of the fight, testified that the told the law enforcement officials, "There's a couple of niggers tearing up the place."

"NIGGERS"

Schneidmiller claimed he normally did not refer to Black people as "niggers."

Following their arrests, Huey and Bob were freed on $50,000 and $25,000 bail respectively. In an outrageous, unprecdented acction, Alameda County Assistant District Attorney Tom Orloff, who is handling the prosecution arguments in the bogus murder and assault cases Huey faces in Oakland, traveld here and persuded Stanta Cruz County District Attorney Ralph Boroff and Municipal Court Judge William Kelsay to double Huey's original $25,000 bail.

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THURGOOD MARSHALL ON BAKKE DECISION: “THE DOORS MUST BE OPENED TO BLACKS”

In rendering its controversial June28 decision ordering the University of California (U.C.) to admit Allen Bakke to the medical school on the U.C. Davis campus, the U.S. Supreme Court issued two contradictory decisions, supported by two separate 5-4 majorities.

The majority ruled that U.C. had discriminated against Bakke because he is White. The dissenting opinion declared that California Supreme Court was wrong in ruling that affirmative action programs based on race violate the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

The following are excerpts from the dissenting opinion written by Justice Thurgood Marshall -- the only Black member of the U.S. Supreme Court.

I do not agree that petitioner's (U.C.) admission's program violates the Constitution. For it must be remembered that, during most of the past 200 years, the Constitution as interpreted by this court did not prohibit the most ingenious and pervasive forms of discrimination against Blacks.

Now, when a state acts to remedy the effects of that legacy of discrimination, I cannot believe that this same Constitution stands as a barrier …

At every point from birth to death the impact of the past is reflected in the still disfavored position of Blacks. In light the sorry history of discrimination and its devastating impact on the lives of Blacks, bringing Blacks into the mainstream of American life should be a state interest of the highest order. To fail to do so is to ensure that America will forever remain a divided society…

While I applaud the judgment of the court that a university may consider race in its admissions process, it is more than a little ironic that, after several hundred years of class-based discrimination against Blacks, the court is unwilling to hold that a classbased remedy for that discrimination is permissible.

In declining to so hold, the judgment ignores the fact that for several hundred years Blacks have been discriminated against, not as individuals, but rather solely because of the color of their skins. It is unnecessary in 20th century America to have individual Blacks demonstrate that they have been victims of racial discrimination; the racism of our society has been so pervasive that none, regardless of wealth or position, has managed to escape its impact.

The experience of Blacks in America has been different in kind, not just in degree, from that of other ethnic groups. It is not merely the history of slavery alone but also that a whole people were marked as inferior by the law. And that mark has endured.

These differences in the existence of the Black make it difficult for me to accept that Blacks cannot be afforded greater protection under the Fourteenth Amendment where it is necessary to remedy the effects of past discrimination.

LEGACY

It is because of a legacy of unequal treatment that we now must permit the institutions of this society to give consideration to race in making decisions about who will hold the positions of influence, affluence and prestige in America. For far too long, the doors to those positions have been shut to Blacks. If we are ever to become a fully integrated society, one in which the color of a person's skin will not determine the opportunities available to him or her, we must be willing to take steps to open those doors.

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Supervisors Turn Highland Hospital Over To Private Management

(Oakland, Calif.) - The Community Coalition to Save Highland Hospital (CCSHH) will stay together and "monitor the actions" of Highland's new private management firm, Pacific Health Resources (PHR), said spokesperson Harvey Smith.

In arrogant disregard of the massive outcry by the coalition of health, minority, labor, senior citizen and community groups against the takeover of Highland by a private firm, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors recently approved a scheme to turn over management of the county facility to PHR.

Outrage over the move came to a head at a recent public hearing where over 250 people protested the threatened cutback in medical services to the over 140,000 Black and poor people who use the hospital annually with the changeover in management to a profitmaking company.

The Board claimed the move was necessary to deal with Highland's financial and administrative problems.

A private consultant hired by the county made the ambiguous claim that PHR could save the county $1.7 million during the two-year period that the proposed contract runs.

In addition to criticizing the supervisors' extravagant expenditure of $485,000 per year to contract PHR, Smith told THE BLACK PANTHER that the firm's major proposal entailed no more than shifting more local costs connected with Medicaid and Medical to the state and federal government.

The firm has 90 days to hire an administrator, and submit a work plan to the board for approval.

The CCSHH's proposal submitted to the Board last March when the battle began suggested the Board consider less expensive alternatives in light of Proposition 13 before spending another half million dollars.

PROPOSAL

The proposal also charged that Pacific had bad affirmative action hiring policies in the hospitals it presently manages. The CCSHH proposal would cost the county between one half to two thirds that of Pacific's.

"The coalition was disappointed in the decision," Smith said, "We are, however, going to be monitoring the firm's 90 days, because we want to be sure as much gets into patient care as possible."

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3,000 -- Mile “Longest Walk” To End July 15

(Washington, D.C.) - The American Indians' "Longest Walk" will arrive here on July 15. The 3,000-mile Walk represents Indian resistance to current anti-Indian legislation in Congress, and to marches in the past imposed by the U.S. government which removed many Indian tribes from their ancestral lands and forced them onto reservations.

One of the bills alone would eliminate all Indian treaty rights and jurisdiction, abrogate all hunting and fishing rights, and require the immediate allotment of tribal property to individuals -- thus destroying the tribes.

The Longest Walk began on a chilly morning, February 11, when 400 Indian people returned to Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay to begin the Longest Walk with a pipe ceremony and a showing of unity among many tribes from around the country.

International Longest Walk solidarity rallies have occurred, or will, in Frankfurt and Bonn, Germany, and in Tokyo, Japan. There will be a picket and vigil outside the San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle from noon Thursday, July 13, through the night to protest the lack of media coverage of the Walk, a demonstration on Friday, July 14, at San Francisco's federal building, and celebration-benefits at the city's People's Cultural Center over the weekend.

Entering the nation's capitol led by the traditional spiritual leaders and elders of all Indian tribes, the march is expected to be 5,000 strong. Representing more than 100 Native American Nations, the Longest Walk has successfully united national and world support for American Indian Tribal sovereignty.

A camp will be established for the marchers, including the large number of non-Indian supporters. With concerts, educational workshops, demonstrations, and other activities, thousands of people will be working for the defeat of anti-Indian legislation, and for the sovereignty of the Indian People.

The anti-Indian legislation now pending in Congress is designed to totally destroy the rights of Indian people. One of the bills, H.R. 9054, which was introduced by Congressman John Cunningham of Washington state, would direct the President to terminate all treaties existing between the U.S. and all Indian tribes.

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1,000 MARCH TO DEMAND FREEDOM OF DESSIE WOODS

(Plains, Ga.) - Some 1,000 Black and poor people marched in the hometown of President Jimmy Carter on July 4 to demand the freedom of Dessie Woods, a 32-year-old Black woman now serving an unjust 22-year prison term for killing a White man who tried to rape her.

Meanwhile, 500 people gathered in San Francisco's Jefferson Square for a lively solidarity demonstration with the Plains march. Addressing the Bay Area supporters of Ms. Woods, Hiba She She, a representative of the National Committee to Defend Dessie Woods, declared:

"We marched 1,000 strong today in Plains, Georgia. We're not going to let Jimmy Carter get away with the oppression of Black people anymore!"

Ms. Woods, the mother of two children, defended herself and another Black woman, Cheryl Todd, from a rape attempt by a White insurance salesman named Ronnie Horne on June 16, 1975. Following a visit by Cheryl and Dessie to Cheryl's brother at Georgia State Prison in Reidsville, the two women hitchhiked back to their home in Atlanta and were given a ride by Horne.

Horne subsequently made sexual advances to the two Black women, threatening them with his unlicensed gun. Dessie, refusing to be raped, shot him with his own gun.

As a result, she is now being held in the Georgia Women's Institute of Corrections where she has been forcibly drugged, beaten and often held nude in isolation.

Cheryl Todd received a suspended sentence and is now free on bail.

On November 1, 1977, the Georgia Supreme Court upheld Dessie's conviction despite defense motions which listed a total of 20 errors by the trial judge. Defense attorneys are presently petitioning the U.S. District Court in Macon, Georgia, for a habeas corpus hearing.

The Plains rally and march to Free Dessie Woods attracted people from all across the country. Busloads of supporters came from New York City, Chicago, Kansas City, San Francisco, Colorado, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida.

"We're here because some White men are still under the impression that they can violate women, especially Black women, and get away with it," said Akil Al-Jundi, who rode 20 hours on a chartered bus from New York to attend the successful rally and march.

Speakers at the Plains demonstration included Joseph Waller, chairperson of the All African People's Socialist Party; Omawele Kefing, chairperson of the National Committee to Defend Dessie Woods; Mafundi, a well known Black activist in Birmingham, Alabama; and representatives from the National Black Students Association and the Afrikan People's Party.

In her remarks at the Bay Area July 4 rally to Free Dessie Woods, Hiba She She attacked the alleged "human rights" policy of the President. "Jimmy Carter goes all around the globe talking about human rights," she declared, "but we know what this country's human rights policy really is…

"Violence against Black people has never stopped in this country. The violence that we see every day in our communities has not stopped because Jimmy Carter is now President. There is no `New South,' "She added.

Hiba then went on to discuss the relationship between increased repression of Black and poor people and their growing numbers in prison.

"One out of every four Black men in this country will go to jail before he dies. This is in normal times, but you know how many more will be in prison now that they have passed Proposition 13," she said.

Free Dessie Woods!

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Z.A.N.U. Charges Black Sellout Troops With Murder Of Missionaries

The following is a statement issued by Tirivafi Kangai, Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) chief representative to the United States and the United Nations, regarding the recent murders committed by Selous Scouts in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia).

Recently, the major Western news media have played into the hands of Ian Smith and his lackeys in Zimbabwe.

On June 22, the Rhodesian racist army, supported by jet bombers, attacked an agricultural project station in the Mozambican province of Manica. Seventeen Zimbabwean refugees and two United Nations officers for the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) were killed in that raid.

The Zimbabwean refugees were mostly women and children. Some of the refugees who were not killed were forced to march back into Zimbabwe, only to face more tortures by the terrorist army of the Smith clique in Salisbury. The UN-FAO issued a statement complimenting its two officers on their sacrifices while working at the project.

Most of the major media networks did not care to mention the killing of those refugees and the U.N. officers. A few did simply in passing.

According to reports from our operational zones, the Rhodesian Selous Scouts, a special detachment of Black troops in the Rhodesian army created to discredit our liberation movement, attacked a Pentecostal mission at Vumba, towards the border with Mozambique.

The attack, which took place about 24 hours after the Rhodesian army had killed 17 refugees, plus two U. N. officials, was party geared toward diverting world condemnation of Rhodesian raids into Mozambique and drawing sympathy and support for the tottering and almost collapsing regime in Salisbury. This attack was also to discredit our guerrilla movement.

No sooner had the Selous Scouts finished killing the Vumba missionaries than the major Western media started screaming. They surely danced to the tune of Ian Smith by putting the blame on our liberation movement and calling on Britain, supported by the U.S., to support the so-called internal settlement and to stop any dealings with the

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Patriotic Front alliance of ZANU and Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU).

Such an hysterical and racist approach will not solve the problem in Zimbabwe.

The Elim Missionary School in Vumba is in an area which became our operational zone many years ago. There had been a very good working relationship between our forces and the missionaries until June 23 when the Selous Scouts attacked the missionaries. They did so in order to sow hatred between the races in Zimbabwe and to destroy the good relations that had existed there.

The enemy is now on a rampage of punishing by death all missionaries who have been giving food, shelter, clothing and medical facilities to our forces in Zimbabwe.

Surely, if we were murderers and fanatics (the pictures of us painted by British papers), we would have removed those missionaries from Vumba since that area became our operational zone few years ago.

Our military targets in this revolutionary armed struggle have been and will continue to be the Rhodesian army, police, jails, paratroopers, prisons, concentration camps where we free our people, and those organs which help the racist minority regime and its puppets in power. At no point do our forces attack civilians, whether Black or White.

INCIDENTS

Below are a few major incidents in which the Selous Scouts murdered innocent civilians in order to discredit our liberation movement and to punish those civilians who supported our just cause:

May, 1976 -- The Selous Scouts, posing as guerrillas, attacked St. Paul's Musami Catholic Mission and killed several nuns and priests. The missionaries at this school had been very supportive of our liberation movement prior to the attack.

Most of the Western media simply broadcast or printed the Rhodesian communique as the gospel truth. We issued a statement putting the blame on the Selous Scouts, but our version was either ignored or mentioned in a few phrases.

December 19, 1976 -- The Selous Scouts massacred 27 African tea plantation workers near Melsetter. According to reports from our forces in the field, the workers had failed to give these notorious counterinsurgents information regarding guerrilla movements in that area. We condemned that massacre, but the Western major media took this incident lightly.

Throughout 1977, there were a wave of killings, tortures, and rapes committed by the Rhodesian army and the Selous and Grey Scouts on our people. We lost hundreds of refugees at the Chimoio and Tembwe refugee camps. These were mainly women, children, and old people.

May, 1978 -- Over 150 villagers in the Gutu area were massacred by the Rhodesian army after the Selous Scouts had told that racist army to move on and attack these civilians.

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BAY AREA RAISES $25,000 FOR ZIMBABWE MEDICAL DRIVE

(San Francisco, Calif.) - A spirited celebration was held here last week, ending a successful six-month compaign which raised $25,000 to send badly needed medical supplies to the liberation forces struggling to overthrow the illegal White settler regime in Rhodesia.

Some 200 people packed the gathering at the People's Cultural Center at which Tirivafi Kangai, the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) chief representative to the U. S. and the United Nations, spoke. Slogans such as "Solidarity With The People of Zimbabwe!" "Victory to the Patriotic Front!" "Pamberi Ne-Chimurenga! (Forward With the Revolution!" and "Build the Zimbabwe Medical Drive" on the large silkscreen posters which hung from the walls reflected the spirit of the enthusiastic crowd.

Along with Kangai, featured speakers at the rally included other leading representatives of ZANU in the U.S, among them Davis Mugabe, ZANU chairperson in the U. S. and Latin America; Prosper Takewere, Northern California Branch chairperson; and Leonard Mudavanhu, publicity and information secretary in the U. S. and Latin America.

Joseph Waller, chairperson of the African People's Socialist Party (APSP), also spoke.

ZANU's U.S. representatives extended the deep appreciation of the Zimbabwean people for the months of hard work by the Black Community Task Force and the progressive Bay Area organizations which formed the Zimbabwe Medical Drive Coalition in raising the desperately needed funds for health supplies.

ZANU, which is headed by Robert Mugabe, and the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU), led by Joshua Nkomo, comprise the Patriotic Front which is leading the 14-year-old armed struggle to overthrow the White minority regime in Rhodesia.

Regarding the Anglo-American plan for an all-parties peace conference -- which the Front has accepted (though only as the basis for negotiations) and the "transitional" government has rejected altogether -- Kangai outlined the demands which have been laid out in the Front's latest counter-proposal. These demands must be met before the Front would join in the implementation of the Western initiative which, Kangai stressed, is now "outdated."

The Front is demanding the abandonment of the "internal" Rhodesian settlement -- the bogus March, 1978, agreement reached by "Prime Minister" Ian Smith and the three Black sellout leaders, Bishop Abel Muzorewa, Rev. Ndabaningi Sithole and Chief Jeremy Chirau, establishing a "transitional" government for alleged majority rule by December 31, 1978.

Smith and the three Black puppet leaders comprise the

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ruling "Executive Council" which, Kangai noted, "has failed to stop the war and failed to gain international recognition."

The ZANU official explained that the Front is willing to join with Muzorewa, Sithole and Chirau in forming an interim governing council as proposed under the Anglo-American plan but members of the Front must comprise a majority of that body.

The Front is demanding that the government army be disarmed and that the security of the country be left to the Front.

The authority of the proposed British commissioner to oversee the transitional period must, Kangai said, be subordinate to the governing council.

The U.N. representative revealed that there is currently a move underway within the Organization of African Unity (OAU) to recognize the Front as the sole legitimate representative of the Zimbabwean people.

The recommendation was put forward by the OAU's Liberation Committee and is being considered by African foreign ministers who are currently in session. The resolution must be given final approval by the OAU heads of states.

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FRELIMO Leads Mozambique To Improved Quality Of Life

The people's Republic of Mozambique marked the third anniversary of independence on June 25. The period after the birth of the People's Republic has witnessed sustained development programs to revolutionize the backward heritage of Portuguese colonialism as the following article, reprinted from the Sunday News of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, explains.

When President Samora Machel addressed the nation on Mozambique's Independence Day three years ago, he spoke confidently about the country's future and the kind of society FRELIMO intended to forge. But his speech also contained a cautious reminder:

"We must carefully avoid being carried away by emotional feelings of euphoria… it in no way diminishes the greatness of our struggle and of our people and country to have to acknowledge that the economic and financial situation is catastrophic."

Despite the setbacks and difficulties, FRELIMO has begun to improve the quality of the life for most Mozambicans. The old society, characterized by privileges for the few and poverty for the many, is gradually being dismantled. The society is being reshaped on the socialist principles and practices developed during the armed struggle, with the maximum involvement of the people at every stage.

Land, schools, the health service, legal practices, rented property and funeral services were all nationalized in the first year of independence.

Nationalization of industrial or commercial concerns has been limited to those found guilty of illegal practices and few exceptionally important areas such as the SONAREP Oil Refinery, but abandoned farms, factories, shops, hotels, restaurants and other businesses have also been taken over by the state.

To give substance to the slogan "People's Power," however, FRELIMO has gone beyond the concept that nationalization is the same thing as socialism. Factory workers, for example, are now beginning to play a full part in the production process, including decision-making.

This development has been accompanied by courses in political and technical education to prepare the workers for the important tasks ahead, and today the beginnings of a trade union organization are functioning in scores of industrial plants.

This embryo organization takes the form of elected production councils, whose tasks include

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seeking ways to raise production, deciding on salaries, improving safety conditions, assigning work and handling workers' social problems.

There is still state management and the country's overall industrial policy which sets the framework within which the councils operate. But the Mozambican worker is no longer the passive recipient of orders.

And since the councils started towards the end of 1976, there has been a noticeable rise in production in many factories. Many others are still running well below capacity: Lack of raw materials and skilled manpower, breakdowns, shortage of spare parts, transport problems -- these are still creating serious difficulties. But the general trend is upwards.

The countryside, too, is being transformed. Within the last three years around 1,500 embryo communal villages have been started and although many are still in the formative stages, hundreds of thousands of Mozambicans are already living and working collectively.

Naturally, there are serious problems involved in the villagization program. There has occasionally been bad selection of sites and in many villages there are difficulties in supplying seeds, farm machinery and consumer goods due to lack of roads and transport.

But a national commission with the task of guiding, planning and coordinating the economic and social development of the communal villages was set up this year -- a sign of the importance which FRELIMO attaches to the program.

Alongside the communal village program there is a growing co-operative movement. In some cases, co-operative production grows from the communal villages and in others it is the villagers which grow from increasing cooperation between smallholders.

There has also been a heavy stress on the setting up of state farms. Some of these are huge, like the Limpopo agro-industrial complex in Gaza Province which covers 15,000 hectares and employs 2,750 permanent workers and tens of thousands more at a harvest time.

The complex also has factories for canning tomatoes and other products, milling rice, making sausages, drying vegetables, and a sawmill -- in addition to 7,000 dairy cows and 16,000 beef cattle.

In the field of education, literacy has taken priority and tens of thousands of Mozambicans have learned to read and write since independence. Illiteracy is still widespread, however, and it is planned to train 3,400 literacy teachers in a campaign which began this year.

Since independence more than 2,000 primary school teachers have been trained and about 12,000 have taken refresher courses. Primary schools attendance jumped from about 690,000 in 1974 to 1,300,000 last year and the number of secondary schools increased from 43 to 103 in two years.

In health care, too, a dramatic transformation is underway. The emphasis now is on disease prevention through education and health care. Playing an important role in this strategy are the Agentes Polivalents Elementares -- men and women chosen by their rural communities to take an intensive six-month course in preventive medicine, returning afterwards to serve their villages.

More than half the population have been vaccinated in a campaign against smallpox, tuberculosis and measles -- and smallpox was this year declared nonexistent in Mozambique by the World Health Organization.

Parallel to all these economic and social developments, the country's leadership has energetically set about creating the party and state structures which are intended to make the Mozambican revolutionary process irreversible. The prerequisite for this was established in February last year with the creation of a Marxist-Leninist vanguard party to replace the liberation movement which had already fulfilled its main task -- the winning of political independence.

The new party, created by FRELIMO's Third Congress, retains the name FRELIMO but unlike the old movement, its ranks are not open to every Mozambican. Today, FRELIMO party members must be dedicated to the principles of scientific socialism as well as to the nation.

In a nationwide campaign underway at present, the party is sinking its roots firmly among the people by taking in thousands of new members. The candidates for membership are not only screened by their fellow workers or villagers, who are familiar with their qualities or shortcomings, but also screened by the party before admission.

All this is not to say that Mozambique has turned into a paradise, but the prevailing atmosphere is one of confidence and conviction, a readiness to sacrifice today in order to reap the benefits tomorrow.

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F.B.I. AGENT IN K.K.K. MURDERED BLACK MAN -- TOOK PART IN OTHER KILLINGS

(Atlanta, Ga.) - The FBI's chief paid informant in the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1960's has told the Alabama authorities that, while on the Bureau payroll, he shot a Black man to death, then kept quiet about the killing at the instruction of an FBI agent, according to investigative documents.

The account given to the Alabama authoritIes by informant Gary Thomas Rowe, Jr., has been denied by the agent Rowe named, Byron McFall. A spokesman for the Bureau claimed files contain no record of such a shooting, which Rowe told investigators occurred during racial rioting in Birmingham in 1963.

Rowe, in turn, has accused the FBI of having purged its files about his undercover work in Klan "action squads" in an effort to protect its own reputation, according to investigative records compiled by the Alabama attorney general's office and the Birmingham Police Department that were obtained by the New York Times.

Rowe, a former night club bouncer, gained national attention in 1975, when, wearing a hood to protect the new identity he has assumed with the FBI's help, he told a U.S. Senate committee that the FBI had encouraged him to participate in acts of violence to gather evidence against the Klan.

Rowe had been in hiding since he testified in 1965, with FBI protection, that he had been with the three Klansmen who killed Viola Liuzzo, a White Detroit housewife who came to Alabama for the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965.

ACCOUNT

Rowe's account of the shooting of the Black man in 1963 is contained in a memo to a state prosecutor from the investigator who questioned him.

Rowe was quoted as saying that while driving through a Black section of Birmingham during one of the nights of rioting that followed turbulent demonstrations that year, he encountered a Black man who ws beating a woman and was forced to shoot the man to protect himself.

Rowe stated that he reported the shooting to a Birmingham police sergeant who was manning a barricade in the riot zone and later made a telephone call to McFall, an FBI agent to whom he frequently reported.

MEMO

According to the memo, Rowe said the FBI agent checked with the police and called back to say: "You're right. You killed him. The sergeant with the BPD recognize you?"

Rowe is said to have stated that the police sergeant did not know him. McFall is then quoted in the memo as saying to Rowe: "Just sit tight and don't say anything else about it."

Rowe told Alabama investigators of the previously unreported killing while they were questioning him last year about the 1963 bombing that killed four Black children at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.

The investigative documents show that Rowe has twice failed polygraph tests in which he denied direct involvement in that and two other bombings.

TESTS

As a result of those tests, acccording to sources close to the renewed investigation into racial violence in Alabama in the 1960's, Rowe is now suspected of having acted as an agent-provocateur, participating in and helping to plan the violent activity that the FBI had hired him to monitor.

Rowe is also quoted in investigative files as having made incriminating statements in the presence of two Birmingham policemen about his role in the killing of Mrs. Liuzzo.

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PEOPLE'S PERSPECTIVE

JoAnne Little
Trial Opens

(Raleigh, N.C.) - The prisonescape trial of JoAnne Little began here last week with the arrest of attorney William Kunstler who unsuccessfully attempted to serve legal papers on trial judge James H. Bailey. Kunstler was seeking to have Ms. Little's trial moved to a federal court. He was charged with obstruction of a criminal proceeding but returned to court several minutes later after Bailey told him he would not be punished because the July 10 incident took place during a court recess.

100,000 March
For E.R.A.

(Washington, D.C.) - Some 100,000 women and men supporters of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) marched on Capitol Hill here last week demanding a seven-year extension of the ERA ratification deadline. Without extension of the ratification period beyond its March 22, 1979, deadline, supporters concede that it is unlikely they will obtain the needed approval of 38 states. To date, 35 states have endorsed the ERA, which ensures that "equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged on account of sex." A vote is expected by the House Judiciary Committee within the next two weeks.

F.B.I. Spies At
Demo. Meeting

(Jackson, Miss.) - Three members of Mississippi's delegation to the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago acted as informants for the FBI COINTELPRO operation aimed at disrupting Black and progressive political organizations. A copy of September 5, 1968, FBI teletyped document was obtained by the Los Angeles Times from a citizen rights group sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). The decodified internal FBI memo said that three unnamed "delegates or alternate delegates" were acting as convention informants. Among the delegates in the racially mixed, 45-member Mississippi delegation was Hodding Carter III, who now serves as a White House spokesperson for the State Department.

Ex-C.I.A. Agent
Found Guilty

(Alexandria, Va.) - A federal judge ruled last week that former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent Frank Snepp III violated his contract with the spy agency in writing an anauthorized book about it and ordered him to turn over advance royalties from the book to the government. In a 14-page ruling, Judge Oren Lewis claimed that Snepp had "breached his position of trust" with the CIA in publishing his book Decent Interval without first obtaining clearance. The book concerns the CIA's evacuation of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) at the end of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war. Some 65,000 copies of the Random House book have already been sold.

Bell's Contempt
Citation Halted

(New York, N.Y.) - A contempt citation against U.S. Attorney General Griffin Bell was postponed here on July 7 pending review of an order requiring him to disclose files on FBI informers against the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). U.S. District Court Judge Thomas P. Griesa's contempt of court citation against the nation's law official came after Bell alleged that his disclosure of the SWP fules "will adversely affect my ability to function as attorney general." Earlier, Griesa denied a motion by SWP attorneys that Bell be imprisoned for refusing to comply with the court order.

Congressmen
Bribed On
S. African Trip

(Washington, D.C.) - A dispute is going on here between the U.S. State Department and four members of Congress who last week denied that the Department informed them their 1975 and 1976 trip to South Africa was financed by the White apartheid regime, not a private host. The trip was allegedly paid for by South African millionaire Warner Ackerman, but a spokesperson for the State Department said that Congressmen John Dent, Richard Ichord, Harold Runnels and Bob Wilson, who were planning a trip to South Africa, were advised that the trip was being financed by the government, not Ackerman. Senator Carl Curtis of Nebraska may also have knowingly taken the trip, which constitutes accepting a gift from a foreign government.

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Special Feature: “THE ATROCITY OF EDUCATION”

By Dr. Arthur Pearl

Education today has little to do with the real world, with the real fabric of our lives. Dr. Arthur Pearl, a distinguished educator, takes the farce out of the educational system, and out of current efforts of reform it. He spells out why the present system is an atrocity. Why student dropouts are continually increasing. Why campus unrest. Why students are alienated by the system.

Going to the heart of the matter, Dr. Pearl presents us with imaginative, workable proposals that are much more than a rehashing of the present system. He suggests that schools offer equal freedom to all students in choice of careers. That students be equipped for democratic decision-making. That schools permit ethnic diversity and promote individuality in their pursuit of personal happiness.

Above all, he believes that life in school should relate to life out of school. That this should be one system, not two.

The following is Chapter 1 of Dr. Pearl's book, The Atrocity of Education. PART 1

A SORRY STATE OF AFFAIRS

[In which I explain that the mess in education is attributable to a failure to identify goals that are relevant to the last third of the 20th century. I insist that the way out must start with defining deferrable and soluble goals; and continue with specifying procedures to implement these goals. In this first chapter I introduce the goals and set the stage for the book.]

'The machinery of our secondary education is rigid where it should be yielding and lax where it should be rigid.

-- Alfred North Whitehead

The American is subjected, from cradle to grave, to an intense drive to organize and Americanize him.

-- Jean-Paul Sartre

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

-- Mark Twain

I suffer much from being misunderstood. But I'd suffer much more if I was understood.

-- Clarence Darrow

This has been a vintage year for critics of public schools. Nearly everybody has gotten in his licks. The left, the right, and all shades in between have "socked it" to "education." And while this has been great fun and even financially profitable for some and, undeniably, enormously politically profitable for others -- nothing much has happened as a consequence. The educational system is the old system yet -- and at best a few more people have become upset

The reasons for failure of the agitation to produce results are both complicated and simple. Reduced to essentials, the critics are as irrelevant as the education they criticize. They do not define or defend education as it should be. Therefore they offer no stable bench marks against which education can be meaningfully evaluated.

This book begins where the others leave off. It starts by answering these basic questions. What is the educational enterprise all about? What is it trying to accomplish? What are the goals of a good educational system?

The primary goal of education in a technologically advanced free society is to enable every citizen to exercise autonomy in an interdependent world. The purpose of an adequate education is to enable a person to exercise choice. There are at least four areas of life in which education must take on the responsibility for increasing the options for individuals. These are:

1) The considered choice of life career. Everyone, regardless of background or circumstance, should have the opportunity to compete equally for desirable employment.

2) The ability to exercise intelligent choice in democratic decision-making.

3) The acumen to make intelligent choice in cultural matters. Everyone must not only be able to exercise choice in enjoyment of general culture but must also be able to appreciate the contributions of the variety of cultures and subcultures that make up a pluralistic society.

4) The ability to develop oneself and live harmoniously with one's neighbors. Everyone must be provided with the "know how" to choose, among the myriad of social roles available to him, those personality characteristics which provide him the greatest gratifications. He must also develop those skills and sensitivities that will keep him from impinging on the growth and enjoyment of others in a world where man is thrust in ever-more-crowded and complicated relations with his neighbors.

This book, in its essence, is an elaboration of these four goals of education. Herein the reader will find a justification for each goal and descriptions of good and bad educational practices in relationship to these goals. But before we come to that, observe the sorry condition that sloth has brought about.

Education and Alienation

An aimless education must lead to alienation of students. Critics of education have waxed endlessly if not eloquently about alienation, and yet they have failed to identify its cause. Alienation occurs at two distinct levels. At one level we find the poor and the minorities -- they are alienated because school plays a significant role in denying them equal opportunity for a decent job, political power, cultural identity, and personal gratification. How this is done is dwelt on in this volume at length. The victims of such alienation sometimes are driven by their frustrations to violence or abusive use of drugs.

A second, very different, level of alienation can be attributed to education. The alienation stems from the lack of relationship between schooling and nature. Educational activities as currently implemented are ecologically indefensible. Students are taught incredible absurdities about work, politics, cultural activities, and interpersonal relationships. They are discouraged when they raise ecologically relevant issues. Students are not encouraged to critically examine the structure of employment. They are not led to question the legitimacy of work efforts which deplete the earth of its scarce resources without improving the quality of life. Students are not stimulated to invent new criteria for assessing work activities nor are they intellectually prepared to suggest new kinds of work to replace activities that are destructive.

A similar lack of connection exists between education for citizenship and the "real world." In school the relationship between such vague concepts as "rights" and the everyday struggle for survival are obfuscated, not clarified. The exercising of power for environmental preservation and the impact that different actions have on population, pollution, and consumption of resources are not examined in school. The relation between political activity and war, poverty, and racism -- and the connection that this trio of horsemen has to mankind's immediate and ultimate survival -- is, when touched upon in school, only likely to lead to the further confusing of an already confused student.

Cultural education consistent with survival requires a general and universal appreciation of aesthetics, a passion for scholarship, and an empathy for persons different from oneself. None of this happens. As will be shown, the student is instead encouraged in his isolation and ethnocentricism; he is denied a historical perspective; he is crippled in his ability to use language; he is foiled in his tentative attempts to analyze and conceptualize a life style for man that would be consistent with nature, and he is forbidden to experiment with ways of relating to other humans which violate, even innocuously, cherished shibboleths.

The alienated of the second level are not discernable by their deviance. No. They are complacent. They are only too willing to do what they are told. They may be so totally alienated that they no longer are capable of recognizing the very real danger of impending ecological disaster. Here we find the students of Dr. Pangloss, bursting with eagerness to echo his statement that "Here at last is the best of all possible worlds." They believe, because as good students they are taught to believe, that the threat of population growth is vastly exaggerated, that business and government are doing what is sufficient to curb pollution (and that it is only right that the cost of such curbing be borne by the consumer), and they believe that there will be oil, iron, rubber, space, water, and air somewhere after we have exhausted all that we now have.

The extent of our alienation from ecological reality stands bold-face in the travesty of Earth Day -- April 22, 1970. On that day we, as an educated nation, were to commit ourselves to our survival. On that day we would set a new course and reorient our life enterprises to compatibility with nature. On that day we would ask our best minds to come forth and help us zero in on strategies to overcome our threatened extinction.

We had all the help imaginable. The media leaped in; our elected officials gave their solemn bipartisan pledges. Scientists cheek to jowl, with aggregate statistics and pie charts, laid it all out there for everybody to see. And

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yet nothing of significance happened. Every action hostile to nature goes on just as if Earth Day had never happened.

Earth Day was a fraud because nowhere was there a careful and detailed analysis of the relationship between a stable human society and the distribution of wealth and power. Earth Day was a fraud because nowhere was there a proposed plan to adequately finance an effective antipollution campaign. Earth Day was a fraud because nowhere was the relationship between war, poverty and racism, and ecological imbalance spelled out. Instead of signaling a redirection of man's destiny, Earth Day was reduced to a one-day, nationwide antilitter campaign (and look around you to see just how effectively that trivial goal was achieved).

Much of this book is devoted to the second level of alienation and the kinds of activities that schools must get with if there are to be many more earth days -- days on earth.

Two Illusions of Progress:
The Efficient School and the Open School

Critics of education do prepare remedies. These solutions almost inevitably fall into one of two camps. There are the advocates of efficiency and there are the advocates of humanity. Among the former group are those who favor improving basic skills through principles of engineering. They are product-oriented. Define the outcome, analyze it for its elements, train the teachers to be precise and hold them accountable for the end result. Throughout this book we encounter in various guises the educational engineer who would have us upgrade education by doing what we are doing now -- only better. He is, at this writing, the darling of the funding agencies.

He is not treated with high regard here. This type of innovator tells you how to do things, but he doesn't question whether they should be done at all. He is very much caught up in measurement (a very worthy concern), but because he has no ultimate educational goals, he always ends up with an answer, and insists that some one make up a question to go with it.

For example, he knows how to design an "achievement" test and train people to score highly on it. He is engaged in the exciting (?) pastime of taking persons suffering from the first type of alienation and making them victims of the second type. And my Mother asks yet again, "From this nonsense he makes a living?"

In the other camp are those who react violently to the rigidity and inherent totalitarianism of the first group. They are less concerned with what children learn and more occupied by how children feel about their school experience. The humanists are concerned with the dignity of the student. They tend to be Rousseauesque in their philosophy and believe that intellectuality will win out if not blunted by insensitivity and brutality. The advocate of the open school operates with the notion that children know best what is good for them. In this book the open school is roughed up quite a bit and charged with short-changing youth in their efforts to attain self-reliance in a world which does, and will continue to; structure work and political, cultural, and social relationships.

The failure to define a set of educational goals for a world fit for human beings leads to many calamitous symptoms. The symptoms themselves unremedied, in turn generate new problems. Education becomes caught up in the vortex of all this. Illustrative of the inability of education to play a useful role in a serious social problem is the hodgepodge of efforts surrounding the issue of "white racism."

Education and "White Racism"

Lacking a guiding star, the wayward course of education has contributed heavily to the major social problems of our time. Not the least of the problems for which education must bear important responsibility is white racism. White racism here is defined as those structures and attitudes of our society that have "locked" certain minority groups into positions of inequity and robbed them of dignity. As used here it extends beyond a matter of skin color and includes also biases based on economic and ethnic considerations. Our educational leaders cry, "Not fair!" when so accused. It is their opinion that they cannot be held accountable because others in the society establish the norms which dictate educational policy. They argue that major business concerns, mass media, urban and suburban developers are the major culprits and that educational policy can only follow where the more powerful lead. In one superficial sense, at the level of immediate decision-making involving school board action or bond elections, this argument has some credibility (although, even here, action taken which reinforces social inequity and bigotry is often more the consequence of weak educational leadership than it is the result of overwhelming, overt racist influences). But more basically, education must take the responsibility for the "racists" and the unconcerned among us. It cannot be denied that the powerful leaders of industry, government, commerce, and communication received their education in this country, as did the persons who accept them as leaders. We continue to refuse to accept what parsimony surely implies, that we educate people to be "white racists," and while we do a poor job of education in other areas, we do an excellent job here. Even when we try to do something positive about this disturbing problem, its pervasiveness gets in the way. The "Kerner Report" is a case in point.

The "Kerner Report" -- Good Intentions and Latent Racism

In March of 1968, back in those days before "benign neglect"' was a national policy, a Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders was made available to the public. The report had blockbusting impact. Authored by a group of moderates, it nonetheless told it "how it is," asserting that "white racism is essentially responsible for the explosive mixture which has been accumulating in our cities since the end of World War II."

The Commission recommended a variety of actions to right the injustices that "white racial atitudes" had wrought. The areas the Commission selected as crucial targets for remediation were employment, education, welfare, and housing. While all the areas have some relevance to this book, for the present the recommendations dealing with educational change will be given concentrated attention.

The report did not water down its attack on education. The Commission identified the difficulties the poor, in general, and the black, in particular, encounter in public schools. Specifically, the Commission cited the following as key factors to educational failure of disadvantaged youth:

1) Increased racial and social class isolation in the schools.

2) Less experienced and less qualified teachers.

3) Overcrowded classrooms.

4) Dilapidated and poorly equipped classrooms.

5) Curriculum and materials which are alien to the life of the student.

6) Disproportionately small share of the tax dollar.

7) Increased estrangements between the school and the community.

8) An environment which is antagonistic to education.

The Commission enunciated strategies to right the educational wrongs they defined. Included in a broad-gauge attack was a smorgasbord of remedies.

The Commission wanted an end to "de facto" segregation. They believed that integration could be accomplished through technical assistance to school districts: through providing bonuses to desegregating schools; through the development of "magnet" schools which could, because of their outstanding offerings, attract white middle-class students; and through the establishment of "educational parks" which, by their location, could insure multiracial and multiclass associations.

The Commission recommended that ghetto schools offer "quality education," and suggested a number of prescriptions to achieve it. Talented persons could be attracted to the ghettos to teach through the expansion of the Teacher Corps. Prospective teachers and teachers currently assigned to ghetto schools could be made more effective if they received specialized training in the problems of the slum resident. The slum school could offer an education of enhanced quality if it would remain open the year-round and provide imaginative and innovative programs. To offset the accumulated deprivation of slum living there should be marked expansion of early childhood education modeled after the "proven success of Head Start."' There could be improved educational practice in the schools if teachers received incentive pay, classroom size was reduced, there was recognition of the history and culture of the disadvantaged youth, residents were involved as teacher aides and tutors, and students were enrolled in intensive programs to improve verbal skills.

To improve school and community relations the Commission recommended decentralization of control over educational policy, education programs designed to serve the needs of all residents in the community, employment of local residents to serve as teacher aides and tutors, and regularly scheduled reports to the community on student progress.

The Commission also directed its attention to Higher Education. Here its concern was for creating new opportunities for the disadvantaged. Included in a variety of proposals was an expanded "Upward Bound" program to prepare the disadvantaged for college, the removal of financial barriers to college education, and an increase in vocational education offerings to the disadvantaged.

The Kerner Report was widely acclaimed. In

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the Introduction Tom Wicker commented:

"Reading it is an ugly experience but one that brings, finally, something like the relief of beginning. What had to be said has been said at last, and by representatives of that white, moderate, responsible America that, alone, needed to say it."

The report was, however, not universally well received. It was attacked as overly negative and unrealistically expensive. However, neither the critics nor the supporters got to the heart of the matter, and that is that the Kerner Report is irrelevant! If it were adopted in toto, it wouldn't make a whit of difference, because, stripped to its essentials, the Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders is a racist document. It is racist because, in the absence of precisely defined goals, it reduces to an advocacy of continued current policy. Very simply, the Commission concludes that all that is really needed in the Great Society is a greater amount of the Great Society. And therein lies the report's weaknesses and its fallacy.

Sprinkled throughout the Commission's recommendations are proposals that could, if put into effect, only reinforce class, race, and ethnic inequality. Examine two programs that the Commission commends: Head Start and Upward Bound. There is the call for expansion of Head Start to build upon its "'proven success." And who could possible quarrel with an expansion of a proven good thing, except that Head Start has never been proved a success. In fact, there is no universally accepted standard against which Head Start can even be assessed. But even more important than a statement of the alleged quality of Head Start is an appreciation of its undergirding premises. Head Start justifies its existence on the postulated inadequacies of the upbringing of poor children. It is assumed that poor children are doomed even before they start school because of the accumulated deprivations of their preschool experiences. It is argued that they fail in school because they have been denied the benefits that the children of advantaged parents receive.

Note how little we have learned in the past four centuries. See how eager we are to assume another "white man's burden" and impose our ideas with missionary zeal on some luckless poverty-stricken people. With an arrogance almost impossible to describe we jump to the conclusion that lack of initial success in school is the consequence of inadequate preparation. Nowhere is the suggestion that the school, riddled as it is with racist teachers and racist structures, must be adjusted to meet the students' needs.

It is curious that a report which points the finger to white racism doesn't logically conclude that relief must come with the extirpation of white racists from positions of authority in education and the reformation of the structures of the society which buttress social inequality.

Look, now, to the persons who really benefit from Head Start. Those who reap the most in wages from a Head Start program are those who are not poor. Head Start has opened up opportunities for the middle class. The teacher in charge is the only member of the staff who receives a halfway decent salary. She invariably is a person possessing the necessary credentials. She is frequently a well-situated member of the Establishment. Her values, her language, and her perceptions have been conditioned by her life experiences. She may even be an out-and-out racist, but frequently she is a well-intentioned liberal who, because of the nature of her training and upbringing, judges the poor as inferior merely because they are different.

Head Start follows the Commission's recommendations that local residents be hired as aides and tutors. But the wages they receive are hardly sufficient to allow an escape from poverty. Although there are rare exceptions, the aide usually cannot move upward. If there is any career ladder at all, it is extremely truncated. Only in the most unusual situations is it possible for the aide to graduate to upper-echelon positions in Head Start or in other educational institutions. Training, an essential part of the upgrading process, is, when offered to the aide, almost always a traditional education. This education (as will be explained at length later) is saturated with race, class, and ethnic bias.

There is a game that low-income blacks play. It is called "the dozens."' The dozens is a form of verbal assault in which the competitor attempts to score by insulting the opponent's mother. Head Start is a sophisticated form of the dozens. It institutionalized the attack. In a variety of subtle or not so subtle ways the poor child is informed upon entrance into the program that he has a "lousy mother." He is hardly in the position to respond to such an assault. In point of fact Head Start reflects all the inequity that the poor have had to face in their negotiations with the Establishment.

The key to early childhood education is schools which are free of social prejudice. The basic values, the kinds of language that are accepted, the opportunity to process grievances are the crucial factors in such a school. But even more important is the substantive nature of the school -- the materials that are to be taught, the persons who are to do the teaching, and the evaluation of effective scholarship. Unless clearly specified the school will perforce become afflicted with the paramount social prejudices of the society. Because those who lead Head Start, like the Commissions, talk very little or are silent on these matters, Head Start, as currently constituted, cannot be even a part of the solution.

At the other end of the educational spectrum the Commission recommends expansion of Upward Bound programs to enable many more disadvantaged persons to get through college. At first glance this proposal makes eminent good sense. Ours is a credential society. To exercise occupational choice persons must successfully negotiate many, many years of formal education. Entry positions in the largest and most prestigious enterprises call for at least a college degree. Any effort to facilitate the poor person's attainment of a college education would appear to have unchallenged worth. But, lamentably, that just isn't the case. Upward Bound, like Head Start, is undermined by faulty assumptions and blatant prejudices. In a typical Upward Bound program, disadvantaged youth are brought to a college campus for a summer between their junior and senior years in high school. They receive follow-up support back at their high schools during their senior year and return for another summer prior to their entrance into college. At the college campus the students receive some academic stimulation, some individual tutoring, and some remedial work. These services are continued in the final high-school year and culminate during the second summer's experience at college. The Upward Bound program is designed for that very small fraction of disadvantaged youth who have been identified as academically able and who have "underachieved" in high school. The call for Upward Bound can be understood only as a candid admission that traditional educational establishments and approaches have failed. And yet Upward Bound rewards and gives power to those established institutions -- the very same colleges who trained the teachers and administrators who so ingloriously flopped in the first place. Upward Bound failed because it recapitulated the evils that have befallen the disadvantaged throughout their school career.

The Upward Bound student encounters white racism on the campus. The teachers in the Upward Bound program reflect the biases of the institution. The college and university, even more than the elementary and secondary school are disproportionately staffed by white and middle-class persons. The cultural deprivation thesis is quite popular on the campus (and seemingly is accepted uncritically by members of the Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders as well), and persons working in an Upward Bound program are receptive to such thinking (forgetting that whenever another's culture is viewed as inferior, it necessarily implies that one's own is superior; and that is the stuff from which white racism is made). And in those rare Upward Bound programs that are free of manifest bias and in which blame of failure to educate is laid to the public school, there is also a problem. The program emphasis is upon remedy making up for the failures of the prior schooling. And while there is no frontal attack upon the student or his family, the effect is the same. The program does not draw upon the individual and cultural strengths of the student because the staff member, limited by experience, wouldn't recognize these strengths if he encountered them. Upward Bound programs suffer because staff members can only do "their thing,"' and their thing is not only inappropriate but is also saturated with class, race and ethnic bias.

There are all kinds of inducements and corruptions in Upward Bound programs. The programs are funded annually, and the primary criterion used for evaluation is an ability to play the "numbers game." If the institution can keep its students without an outbreak or publicized trouble it has done a good job, and can expect to be funded once more. To insure that students remain, scholarship and intellectual content very often are watered down, and the program degenerates into "fun and games."' As further insurance, institutions work hard to recruit persons who might do very well without additional help.

Upward Bound programs are "'spoiled image programs." The student is made to feel that he is a charity case; other students are quick to remind him of his low status. Certain individuals in the administration and faculty feel free to extend gratuitous insults.

There is great concern and debate in the high councils of the university as to whether

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inclusion of a handful of disadvantaged youth will or will not undermine the hard-won "standards" of that institution. Over and over again the Upward Bound student is reminded that he is a parasite, with his maw in the public trough, by persons who receive their salaries from public monies or whose education is financed by public support.

The Upward Bound program is often a cruel delusion. There is no commitment of the institutions to the student. The university or college does not even promise to admit the Upward Bounder to its entering class, and many of those who are admitted are not destined to stay long. In most instances the Upward Bound participant is "dumped" into the university. The university offers no special program to its common, everyday enrollee, so in the name of fair play and other things holy the Upward Bound student receives equal treatment. More than one-third of the regular admissions fail to complete the first year in the university. It is no wonder that at least that high a percentage of the Upward Bound students come a cropper of the university deselection process. For a great many disadvantaged youth, Upward Bound is a glimmer of hope -- that straw for which a dying man grasps. But it turns quickly into a nightmare, another illusive reward that one chases and never catches.

The university or college is a hostile place for anybody who is different. But the disadvantaged youth in a college setting is, to paraphrase A.E. Housman, a stranger and afraid in a place he never made. Everything about the college smacks of race or ethnic or class prejudice. The admissions policy is racist. Persons are admitted who resemble those who are already there (white and at least middle income). The dorms are racist -- the behavior of only certain subgroups and cultures is found to be acceptable. The dorm counselor, typically a nice, compliant white, middle-class student, perceives his job to be to help shape up or ship out those who are different. The food served at the dorms or in the student union reflects only the dominant culture. There is no "soul" food, nor is "soul" reflected in any other aspect of dorm living. Blacks, Mexicans, Indians, and poor whites suffer in the dorms. They are subjected to insults which the dorm counselor ignores (if he isn't the instigator of them). Petitions are sometimes circulated in the dorms requesting that the university stop bringing undesirables to the campus. Even if not personally abused, the poor and the minority youth find the university a lonely place. They aren't invited to much that is going on, and, even if invited, they lack the wherewithal to feel comfortable.

The financial assistance program is racist. Persons in charge of the program distinguish between the deserving and the undeserving, and the deserving are invariably persons who resemble those who disperse the money. The financial assistance program is rotten at its core. It simply doesn't supply enough money for the poor! Financial assistance is sufficient for those who have some resources but not enough to easily manage college. There isn't any consideration in financial assistance for the student who may not even have enough money to buy clothes or meet a special contingency. Not only is the disadvantaged student expected to skimp along with support less than necessary to survive, but he's expected to do this while thrust into proximity with persons of means who own automobiles and expensive clothes and who talk about exciting things happening at wondrous places.

But worse than all of the above is the racist nature of the academic fare. The classes are taught in a racist language. The history is an apology of injustices perpetrated on blacks, Mexicans, Indians and poor whites. The Social Sciences are thinly veiled rationalizations to justify current injustices. The professional school generates an ideology which militates against underclass students. (This aspect will be discussed at length later.) The university maintains itself as a place of the racists, by the racists, and for the racists. Whenever challenged on the possibility of maintaining racist tradition and curriculum, the university usually investigates itself and declares itself to be pure.

Universities demand exorbitant dues from their disadvantaged enrollees. The university insists that the disadvantaged students conform to its rules and mores. The disadvantaged student must make all of the "changes," but first-class membership is not even conferred on the disadvantaged student who does all that is asked of him. He is not a full-fledged member of the club. He does not get the same rewards even if he is submissive and obsequious. If finally convinced that inequality exists, university officialdom requests patience, arguing that all possible progress is being made at deliberate speed. But there is no evidence of progress, and it is so easy to tell someone else that, in deference to reality, he must accept unequal treatment, while the person counseling patient humility piously benefits from the inequality.

Upward Bound inevitably becomes a "safe" program. Neither the university nor the federal government is willing to sponsor programs that encourage militancy. In crystal-clear tones those paternal figures sing out that Alma Mater doesn't allow militants to play in here. And when the response to such challenge is, "We don't care what you Mothers allow, we're going to be militant anyhow," the program is the recipient of all the fury a university is capable of mustering. Because the programs are safe and because the institution is determined to create an illusion of doing a good job, it is difficult to assess how bad a job the university actually is doing. A cautious conclusion is expressed by John Egerton, after an intensive survey of university activities for the disadvantaged: "Most of the nation's colleges and universities have not yet decided whether they have the responsibility, the resources, the skills or the desire to serve them."

All the criticism of the Kerner Commission's recommendations have been predicated on the assumption that higher education is a good thing. And here the Commission may have engaged in some bad timing. They are recommending that universities and colleges open their doors to the disadvantaged at the very moment many of the advantaged have had it with the university.

Students have become vociferous in their criticism of college programs. They are unhappy about their impotence in matters that affect their lives. They do not like the dreariness of the classroom or the irrelevance of the material taught. And though the majority of students are not in sympathy with hard-core radicals who resist and riot, their quarrel is with the methods, not the cause, Recruiting disadvantaged students to the campus may make for less change than the members who comprise the Commission on Civil Disorders think. Probably disadvantaged students are merely exchanging the settings in which they will experience second-class citizenship. Many observers have commented on the student in the university. Donald McCulloch describes the interpersonal arrangements in the university as unilateral relationships, with the student low man in the pecking order. "In the typical unilateral relationship the dominant member does not simply believe that he knows more than the other, he believes that he knows better." Now that is exactly what is told to poor youth in the ghetto. Therefore, if he is allowed on campus, he will join only the most under of the under classes. As McCulloch observed: "It may seem a very long leap from the situation of the Negro, the Indian and the chronically poor to the situation in our universities but the differences in material circumstances must not be allowed to obscure the essential similarities." The students have learned, like all other disadvantaged, that… "their thoughts, their imaginings, their feelings, their concerns are of secondary or no importance as compared to that of the teachers." And woe be to that poor black student who insists on his rights. He'll learn very quickly what happens to an ingrate who fails to appreciate all that has been done for him.

Upward Bound is similar to Head Start in one very critical aspect -- "It's the rich what gets the gravy, the poor what gets the blame." Decent paying jobs in the program go to the college faculty or to high-school teachers or to graduate students who form the staff. Even those most hostile to the program benefit from the distribution of money that universities receive in overhead expenses.

Having directed an Upward Bound program, I also recommend that these programs be expanded but for very different reasons than those advanced by the Kerner Commission. It is the university which needs the poor, rather than the reverse. An Upward Bound program can force the campus into some considerations of reality. Those mythologies passing for social science theory which now go unchallenged can be opened up for disputation and debate. In the process, life can be breathed into a moribund institution, and intellectual leadership can supplant the disgraceful condition that now exists. An Upward Bound program may provide a base for developing meaningful teacher-training programs to replace those shabby facsimilies of preparation currently in effect. An Upward Bound program may generate dialogue between black and white, rich and poor. An Upward Bound student population can confront those who are now in power (or who are soon to assume power) on their racism.

The Commission on Civil Disorders is unable to extricate itself from its provincialism. It bases its solution on the extension of current services. The major problem, as perceived by the Commission, is inadequacy of the poor as a consequence of policies of segregation and prejudice. This misses the target completely. It is not the poor who need to do the changing. The inadequacies are in the institutions. It's the college that must be altered to fit the needs of the people. It is not only the disadvantaged who receive shabby treatment in higher education; everyone else shares the raw deal. But because the Commission on

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Civil Disorders lacks a clear picture of good education it is hardly in the position to make intelligent recommendations. For want of precise goals the Commission is unable to come up with a coherent plan of attack. The recommendations, like all eclectic approaches, are a hodgepodge of nonrelated, even contradictory, proposals. Amitai Etzioni had this to say: The Kerner Commission managed to come up with a report in which "The road to hell of conservative status quo is paved with heavenly liberal rhetoric."

Because the Commission cannot clearly conceive specific outcomes it is inevitable that they end up steering a course between the extremes of right-wing desire to crush conspiracies and left-wing agitation for control of local institutions. In final analysis the conclusion of the Commission report may prove not only to be too little but may have come too late. The call for integration without guarantee of equal treatment may lack credibility to people betrayed too often by authorities who purport to have their interest at heart.

Since the Kerner Commission came and went without making a dent, other commissions have strutted and fretted their hours on stage, only to signify nothing. These other commissions, which delved into such things as crime in the streets and college disruption, shared with the Kerner Commission an inability to relate their findings to the goals of education. As a consequence of this failing, the only accomplishment of those investigations is a public (stirred up by a Vice President who has a mouth which is disconnected from central nervous system control) that would prefer to be silent about matters they think they cannot solve.

Does It Really Matter Who Mismanages the School?

The Kerner Commission rejects the notion of black control of black intercity schools as a retreat from "direct confrontations with American society on the issue of integration" and as "as accomodation to white racism." Others, however, view transfer of control of education as the basic solution for its ills. The reasoning isn't too hard to grasp. A growing number of black people believe that white-run education is now, has always been -- and they have no reason to doubt -- will always be racist. They desire that black communities be given the responsibility for education of black youth. The Commission of Civil Disorders makes slight mention of this in its grab bag of proposals by recommending "…centralized control over educational standards and the raising of revenue while decentralizing control over other aspects of educational policy." But for many critics of the system, more drastic measures seem necessary. They argue that only with black control can there be black dignity:

"It is no longer reasonable to expect that black people will continue to accept oppressive colonization by the white majority; nor that black people will submit to a genocidal system that deprives white as well as black of certain potentialities for human development.

"Black people in American cities are in the process of developing the power to assume control of these public and private institutions in our community. The single institution which carries the heaviest responsibility for dispensing or promulgating those values which identify a group's consciousness of itself is the education system."

Advocates of community control see in such proposals, as those of the Kerner Commission, a diluting of power. To them this is merely an artifice to keep control in the hands of the oppressive majority. The Kerner Commission, in asking for centralized control over educational standards, opts for development of educational subsystems in the inner city. This is flatly rejected by a growing number of Black educators:

"Black people will not be satisfied with the compromise which subsystems represent. We will do whatever is necessary to gain control of our schools. We view movements toward incorporation of the concept of community control into school systems whose basic control remains with the white establishment as destructive to the movement for self determination among black people."

Implicit on all the arguments for black control is the conviction that control over policy influences educational programs, and the belief that American education suffers because those who control it are bad people. This, however, is not my view. The people who run education are not bad; they are merely fools. They do not do what they do primarily because of malice, but rather because of ignorance. Again, the absence of clearly defined goals leads to all manner of corruption. It is perfectly possible that an exchange of whites for blacks in board control would be a difference that makes no difference. The classroom experience would still be just as dreary. Black youth would be just as bored by classes in black history as white students are bored with classes in white history. Classroom activities could prove to be just as irrelevant and the teachers as poorly qualified as they are now. The board as the body which determines school policy may in itself be an antiquated notion that gets in the way of quality education.

That the school must be responsible to the community is an incontestable notion. Any other school is perforce a totalitarian intrusion. But local control over policy, while necessary, is not sufficient to insure quality education. There must be enunciation of the ends that are desired and the means to be used to obtain those ends. Any assumption that transfer of control will magically produce the strategies and tactics necessary for a good society flies in the face of history.

Education and the Essences of Modern American Life

To be relatively autonomous a person must have the knowledge, the skill, and the experience to cope with his environment. Clearly, education must contend with technological change, the media of communication, complex social organization, and the changing ecology of human life. These concerns crop up in various guises throughout this book and are only lightly treated now as part of the panorama of introduction.

1. Technological Advancement. Sophisticated technology intrudes into every aspect of modern life, markedly altering employment, leisure, and even influencing child-rearing and religious worship. While the school has been slightly influenced by technology, "computer assisted instruction" is a much exaggerated term for the actual programs which have been developed. There is little in the school program or in teacher education that prepares staff to utilize technology effectively. As a consequence, the school and, later, the graduate from the school become the prisoners of the machine. Rather than forcing the machine to serve man's need, we restrict man to the computer's limitations.

2. Mass Media. Neither the school nor the family has a monopoly on educating youth. Television, motion pictures, and the recording industry are also in the game. The mass media disseminate data, influence language, affect behavior, and establish social values. This simple truth doesn't get through to the advocates of the 3 r's. They just don't understand that a deadly grating classroom offers no competition to the Grateful Dead. Many parents have difficulty getting this message. And often they blame the school for the radical notions and the radical behavior of their once well-behaved children. It is precisely because of mass media that modern youth have become the most learned and sophisticated generation to come down the pike, and they got that way despite, rather than because of, formal educational establishments. To be relevant, schools must swing! Classrooms must tie in to that emerging youth culture that is reflected in the mass media. The bridge that will interest youth in art, music, history, and literature is the tentative searching efforts of youth. The class may retain a relevance only when it is placed in contrast with the works of a John Lennon, a Bob Dylan, or a James Brown. A curious phenomenon has developed as the world evolves and it becomes more impossible for us parents to control the world of our children, no matter how desperately we try.

3. Complicated Social Organization. No individual or local community can claim self-sufficiency. Each of us relies on complicated organization to survive. No individual even controls the air he breathes or the water he drinks. Complicated social control is required to determine whether water will or will not contain fluorides. Individuals depend upon sophisticated structures for food. Huge bureaucracies control the production, marketing, storing, and transporting of foodstuffs. These bureaucracies tend to overwhelm and depersonalize all the individuals involved. But meanwhile, back in the ranch-style school-house, a make-believe primitive social organization prevails. Students compete individually in meaningless tasks. It is no wonder that so many find it impossible to fit into the outside world. Relevant education is education that simulates outside-of-school realities and generates social relationships in the school which resemble the interdependence of modern day life.

4. Population Explosion and Exploding Populations. An already crowded world will nearly double in population before the next century. This gruesome fact places new challenges on vital life stuffs, production, and distribution; and if this prospect is not sufficiently disquieting, most of the world's population will be in constant turmoil. The

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future can be seen only through a glass darkly, but some inevitabilities appear in bold-face -- the poor will not be content with their poverty, the nonwhite will resist white domination, the advancement to technological sophistication by economically underdeveloped nations will not be smooth or tranquil, and national aspirations overlaid by internationalism will threaten the existence of mankind. These truths place unique challenges upon the leadership role of the United States in the years ahead. We must look for that leadership among those who are now our students. The schooling they receive will determine the course of history. Relevant education, thus, is simply a life-or-death proposition.

Education and the Problems of Bureaucracy, Segregation, Nonredemptiveness, Loss of Privacy, and Uselessness of Person

The Kerner Commission's biggest shortcoming was that it focused on the symptom and ignored the underlying cause of social problems. Racism, while contributing and extending America's difficulties, is a resultant condition of more pervasive social malaise. We are hamstrung because we haven't developed the techniques and the organization to match our mountainous problems. As a consequence we have developed systems to maintain an operation which limps along, but in such a manner that a rising number of casualties is one of the results.

To deal with complicated social interaction (without developed appropriate leadership) bureaucracies have been formed; their principal characteristic is intransigence. They are inflexible and mechanical. Bureaucratic intransigence allows the human to abdicate responsibility -- and this is essential because humans have not been prepared for such awesome responsibilities. In place of human leadership a manual of operation is generated which forces conformity upon the humans in the system. Decision-making is automatic. Rules and regulations are slavishly followed. The justification of a program becomes distorted, in a manner reminiscent of Big Brother's domination in Orwell's 1984: "War becomes peace, slavery becomes freedom, and ignorance becomes strength." The hallmark of a good bureaucratic system is efficiency, and efficiency is determined by conformity.

In actual practice the most active supporters of bureaucracy are those who pride themselves on being the conservatives. They are dedicated to an economy which can be attained through a reduction in unnecessary government spending. But they inevitably end up opting for big government because, in the final analysis, they see things in simple blacks and whites. To illustrate, their simplest solution to deviant behavior is to declare such behavior illegal. The argument goes thusly: Permissiveness encourages delinquency, whereas severe and certain punishment deters delinquency. Therefore a publicly supported police power would solve the problem of crime through severe and certain punishment. This is an eloquently simple approach. There's just one problem. It doesn't work! Deviant behavior has never been deterred by the passage of proscriptive laws. In most instances, the deviant is immune or oblivious to law. But increasing the police force does add to the size of government. The consequences of police action -- the courts, the probation officers, the correctional systems, the parole bureau -- enlarges the bureaucratic structure. This inevitable consequence never seems, even fleetingly, to occupy the thoughts of the advocates of increasing police power.

The devastating effects of bureaucratic intransigence are felt everywhere. Discretion gives way to ritual, justice to consistency, passion to ruthlessness, and wisdom to habit. Red tape gums up the works at every level. Procedures take precedence over social imperatives. It is no overstatement that necessary changes in a higher education program may take half a decade before finally being approved by a faculty curriculum committee. Commissions authorized to make systems of operation more efficient always lead to procedures that are even more cumbersome than those they replaced.

BUREAUCRATIC INTRANSIGENCE

Parkinson's Law and The Peter Principle (of incompetence) contribute heavily to bureaucratic intransigence. Bureaucratic organizations function like cancer. They grow without reason and metastasize in every possible direction. As the span of control gets larger, the necessity to limit independent decision-making is the inevitable result. Bureaucratic organization generates that set of conditions which prizes innocuous behavior in the lower stations to such an extent that this alone becomes the primary criterion for promotion to higher levels. The persons who have offended no one are more likely to be promoted than one whose activities for progress ruffled a feather or two. Thus it is possible for people to be continually promoted on the basis of minimal competence until such time as they prove themselves inadequate, and once at a certain level, because of the typical lethargic nature of the bureaucratic processes, there they will remain until death or retirement. Bureaucratic process inhibits initiative. All the actors function as if they were suspended in Jello. Bureaucratic organization inhibits creativity and undermines the individual. Political ideology has little to do with the matter. Hard-core, conservative Republicans are as bureaucratic in their management of private business as are unreconstructed New Deal Democrats in the administration of a public agency. The problem is less one of ideology and more one of paucity of talent and leadership.

The system is most bureaucratic in the realm of work. The credential society has imposed a ritualistic complex which both locks in and locks out the individual. The worker is selected, advanced, and transferred on impersonal criteria. Because of the crucial nature of work, the development of a credential society has its impact on all other systems. The school is no longer a sanctuary. It is not a place where you go to learn; it is a place where you prepare to earn. Any behavior that jeopardizes a standing in the school can also jeopardize future earning power. The reinforcement this gives to the bureaucracy is awesome and thus becomes an overwhelming influence on the dehumanization and depersonalization of man.

Segregation

Ours is an extremely segregated society and, because of all the influences mentioned earlier and because of bureaucratic intransigence, it is becoming increasingly segregated. Segregation distorts every aspect of American life. By feeding xenophobic responses our society devotes a considerable amount of its energies to paranoid ruminations and to the development of exclusionary systems. The worst thing about segregation is that it inhibits growth. As man is restricted in his contact so is he restricted in his stimulation. Segregation reduces breadth of language, magnifies unessential differences, and blunts the sensitivities to essential differences. Segregation is directly influenced by the credential society. A system that established prerequisites of years of formal training for entrance into the growth industries perforce excludes from participation all those never deemed eligible for higher education. Once individuals are denied admission to lucrative and presigious employment, they are thereby denied admission to areas of residence which depend upon income, to social activities which depend upon contacts developed on the job, to intellectual stimulation which comes from dialogue with persons from diverse walks of life. But even more important, those it locks in are also handicapped. They, too, are denied intellectual stimulation that comes from wisdom not obtained within school walls and they are denied introduction to the essence of life which accompanies the day-to-day struggle for existence.

Uselessness of Person

To some extent all individuals in a society which is complexly organized and diffuse in its delegation of responsibilities feel a sense of helplessness and uselessness, conditions which are markedly influenced by bureaucratic intransigence and segregation. Uselessness of person is particularly burdensome for youth, who, within the framework of a credential society, are reduced to a passive, dependent state for more than two decades. This is all the more galling, since youth are continually chided that they are not contributing, while at the same time they are denied an opportunity to do anything constructive. It should be evident that it is impossible for a person to be psychologically healthy, to have a positive self-image of himself, if he serves no useful function in society. The feeling of uselessness often prevails throughout one's life. It is difficult for a person to obtain a sense of personal importance in organizations where rules and regulations determine behavior. If systems are developed which deny individuals any responsibility for important decision-making, the result must be disastrous to the individual. Apathy must supplant commitment, dedication give way to disinterest, and hopelessness replace hope. Laurence Peter depicts it vividly:

"Dorothea D. Ditto had been an extremely conforming student in college. Her assignments were either reasonable facsimiles of textbook or journal excerpts, or transcriptions of the professor's lectures. She always did exactly as she was told -- no more, no less. She was essentially neutral in the learning process -- adsorbent rather than absorbent. She was considered a competent student, and graduated with honors from the teachers training college.

When she became a teacher, she taught precisely as she herself had been taught. She followed exactly the textbook, the curriculum guide and the bell schedule.

Her work goes fairly well, except when no

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rule or precedent is available. When a water pipe burst recently and flooded the classroom. Miss Ditto kept on teaching until the principal appeared and rescued the class.

Although she never breaks a rule or disobeys an order, she is often in difficulty when problem-solving situations arise. She has reached her "level of incompetence" as a classroom teacher, and will therefore remain in that position throughout her career.

Mr. N. I. Skigh was an inspiring and popular science teacher. His lessons and lab periods were exciting. His students spent many extra hours in the laboratory and kept it in order. Skigh was not a proficient record keeper, but this weakness was more than counterbalanced by his success as a teacher. Skigh was regarded as competent: therefore he was eligible for and in due time received a promotion.

In his present job as head of the science department, Skigh has to order supplies and keep extensive records. His incompetence is now evident. For three years running, he has ordered Bunsen Burners but no tubing for connecting them. As the old tubing deteriorates, fewer and fewer burners are operable, although new ones accumulate on the storeroom shelves.

Skigh is not considered for further promotion. His ultimate position is one for which he is incompetent. He has reached his level."

The End of Privacy

Interdependence, technology, and complicated social organization have eroded personal privacy. In a relatively simplistic society there was a certain protection of self resulting from remoteness and inefficiency. In a complicated society the various agents of that society pry into every aspect of personal life. What a person earns and how he earns it must be reported to the government. In applying for a job the applicant must reveal whether or not he has ever been convicted of a crime. Friends and relatives are questioned before credit is established or insurance sold. Electronic devices monitor private conversations and even eavesdrop into the intimacies of the bedroom. In the school, personal privacy is not respected. Under the guise of counseling, a student is persuaded to discuss matters of utmost sensitivity. Under the guise of therapy, children are persuaded to become finks against their parents. This practice continues and even proliferates, although there's not a smidgen of evidence to suggest that a child is actually assisted by these investigating processes.

The invasion of privacy is doubly handicapping. There is a nonredemptive quality to it. Once labeled -- forever labeled! Once identified as a disturbed child, it is virtually impossible for the student to escape the classification. All behavior is interpreted in the context of a prior history. In the school setting, this history can be examined by any "privileged communicant," e.g., teacher, counselor, or psychologist.

What happens as a consequence of such examination is often horrendous. The following is not an untypical occurence.

A young lady from a poor background is offered an opportunity to attend a university. She is recruited into an unusual Upward Bound program which offers its precollege preparation to persons with very unfortunate backgrounds. The sole parent of this girl was virtually incapacitated by fits of despondency. On numerous occasions the girl had attempted to escape unhappiness by running away. As a consequence of such "incorrigibility" she was ultimately committed to a mental hospital for "treatment." She was released from the hospital to enter the scholastic program.

From the moment of entrance she participated eagerly in the program. Despite a prevailing atmosphere of racial conflict on the campus that unnerved even those entrusted to exercise professional leadership, the girl maintained her "cool." She not only maintained her equilibrium, she prospered.

In the fall she entered the university and made a good start. Shortly before the end of the first quarter her grandmother, the most stable member of the family, died, The girl got drunk in public and was apprehended by the police. The matter was referred to the university health service, and with a week to go before the end of the quarter, the psychiatrist ordered her to be expelled immediately from the school for the protection of herself and the school.

Reflect on that. The girl's behavior, while not to be recommended, was not particularly heinous. If everyone who got drunk at the university was asked to leave there would be very few people left -- including the faculty. The act itself did not prompt the psychiatrist to his decision; it was her "reputation."

Responses to Bureaucratic Intransigence, Segregation, and Uselessness of the Individual

There is lawfulness in a society which reduces the individual to a cog in a machine. Individuality is processed out, and in its place is symptomatology of a variety of predictable types. The most prevalent and probably the most pernicious is the conformist response. Here we find the beaten-down people. They are certain that City Hall cannot be fought. They are horrified at the prospect of rocking the boat. They are not only leery of any change but tend to suspect anyone advocating change as being a subsidized conspirator. In a society undergoing rapid change, a system that generates a suspicion of change is sowing the seeds of its own destruction.

Another response to a society in which one feels overwhelmed is flight. There is a drive to want out, to escape, to reject the society, and to refuse to participate. What makes this response dysfunctional is that it can't happen. And while there is undeniable charm in Timothy Leary's slogan: "Turn on, tune in and drop out," there is also a glaring flaw in it. Those who dominate the society will not allow it. They will insist upon everyone participating in wars. They will insist upon submission to laws. And they will even invade the home base of those who want no part of the society and regulate behaviors. This is the supreme irony. The more the individual chooses not to participate, the more strength he gives to those in power to "mess him over."

Yet another response to an overwhelming structure is direct effort to introduce change. The introduction of change takes many forms, from modest efforts to repair to calls for total upheaval. Campaigns that are doomed from the start because of a lack of constitutency have a pathological influence on further efforts. The changes which society desperately needs never happen because those who desire the change become fatalistic. They believe that the cause is hopeless. They refuse to analyze the appropriateness of their tactics or strategy. Most individual efforts or even small-group efforts directed against the system are doomed to such failure. In almost every instance those who "attack" the system lack the essential prerequisites for victory: the analytical and conceptual skill to assess the situation. As a consequence they make the error of overgeneralization and tend to perceive a monolith in organizations that are ridden by factions of every stripe and aspiration. One of the other skill generally lacking in those who attack the system is the ability to enlist allies. The essence of a modern structure is its size and complex organization. These attributes serve as forces of inertia against change. The Establishment can either ride out the attack and deplete the resources of the attackers or it can slowly restore itself to its original shape after the impact of the attack is over. Thus it is imperative that if people are to change a given system, they have the competence both to persist and to enlist others to their cause. And because the organizations they confront are more difficult to engage than anything ever previously developed, their talent and their skill must be proporti