136. The talk at the National University of Education in Peru, December 15, 2010

The workshop was delayed one hour. It gave me the opportunity to have a conversation with old colleagues and former students who now are running the institution. Through out the conversation, testing came up as THE solution to better the Peruvian educational system as a whole. Testing was being included in the promotion of faculty at this university!!!

Because of this conversation, I decided to change from group work to what they are trainned to do, being lectured. I know that lecturing only works for those really interested in the subject, I also know that I have to either use the first ten minutes of it to get the message accross or do a repetitive talk about the same message, I ended up using both.

As usual, the participants were sitting in rows and columns, which is part of the real school curriculum (to make them obedient and paternalized). I was at the center of the talk and in the highest place and the tallest chair, which is another real part of the curriculum (to make sure they know who is the one in charge), I had the microphone, the only one in the room, which is another part of the real curriculum (to force them to listen to me and make sure to listen THE truth from me and also to make sure they noticed that their voice was unimportant, only when they have a question at the end they would be heard, or not.). The minute I started the talk, the door was closed, which is another important part of the real curriculum, to give the ones already in a cookie for being early and punishing those who may be late. After shutting the door, a list was started, asking them to write their names and email addresses, which is the most powerfful weapon the oppressor has, to let the victim know that they are in the list of those to be saved or rewarded. While I was starting the talk, all of the above was happening as a matter of fact, as a part of the event, as normal as breathing. None questioned anything, how scary this is, to witness the level of oppression those educated fellows were under.

When I said, looking at the back of the large room,  "those of you who have been forced to attend this workshop and who are NOT interested in the subject can freely leave the room and come back at the end to receive your certification, I ask the organizers to please let this happen; this way, instead of having them in the room pretending to listen and wasting their time and their lives." Wide opened eyes turned towards me, and I asked, would you force someone to sit down in front of you quietly, to listen to you and take notes of what you are saying because you are going to give her a test about it to either reward her or punish her?

So the talk started. "Elephants at the circus are trained since they are born to be tied down to a stake, at first a strong chain is used. Then through the years a strong chain is not needed any more, the trainer can even use a piece of rope to tie the trained leg to the stake and there are cases when the rope was not used but the elephant is found to be close to the stake because this kind of brainwashing is so powerful. The animal does not own his mind anymore, he has the mind of the oppressed. We humans have gone throuh similar processes and we all have the mind of the oppressed now. After we are finished with school we are ready to apply the same process to others, even to our own children, this is the way we perpetuate a situation that we don't even know. How do we start a process to liberate ourselves from oppression? Since the real enemy is in our own mind, it is not true that we need unions, churches, political parties or mass demonstrations to fight for our freedom. It is a completely personal issue to liberate ourselves; no president, no priest, no pastor, no teacher, no counselor, nobody but oneself can liberate oneself..."

At the end of the talk, this is what I had on the white board (the stake and the chain we use in ourselves):

If we go through these steps every day during 6 years in elementary school, 3 years in middle school, four years in high school and then four more years in college, and those are the best years in our lives and the best hours of the day; for sure we become paternalized and oppressed. We all now have the mind of the oppressed and we don't know it, nor even those who pulled us through this real curriculum know it.

So, I used the traditional lecture method to give a message about the hidden curriculum that John Taylor Gatto writes about. I also mentioned that the approach to education that my team of colleagues and I use in our programs at The Evergreen State College, are directed to NOT follow any of the 6 steps that the current educational system uses. Of course some of our current authorities and administrators, who approach education in the traditional way, freak out at the idea that our approach to learning-teaching may work. Our students are the best proof that it works. Unfortunately, The Evergreen State College is the only alternative higher education institution in the US West side, and our NAS On Campus program is one of the very few in Evergreen that still really applies a pedagogy of the question instead of the traditional pedagogy of the answer, as De Souza says.

Along the talk, I mentioned all the sources and theories that support our program, like the XX Year Vision of the Native American Studies program set up in Evergreen in 1970, Paulo Freire and Pedagogy of the Oppressed, William Glasser and Choice Theory, Howard Gardner and Multiple Intelligences Theory, Howard Zinn and the Peoples History of the US, John Taylor Gatto and the Hidden Curriculum, Brain Based Learning and the use of Blooms Taxonomy and Digital Technology in education. I wrote a short hand out in Spanish to share the idea that our approach to education at Evergreen and specially in our On Campus NAS programs, like Ceremony this year, is entirely based on the proposals of these intellectuals and their ideas.

I closed my talk by saying "I was trained to become a teacher here in this institution: la Universidad Nacional de Educación "Enrique Guzmán y Valle" and I successfully applied this real curriculum in Peru for twenty years and was paid for doing it. Then I went to the US and after teaching several years at Evergreen I learned that I had been paternalizing those Peruvian students who were under my supervision. It took me a lot of unlearning and close work with like minded professionals to arrive at the decision to never again do this to any child or student. I am on a mission now to help students, parents, teachers and general public to learn what the current approach to education is doing to our children, to learn what the REAL curriculum is. Now that I have shared it with you, you can no longer say that you did not know, if tomorrow you get back to the same approach as teachers, students, administrators or parents it will be YOUR decision, because now you know. I am not telling you what to do; I am just sharing with you what I did in Peru during twenty years without knowing it. I wish someone had told me then, I would have re-thought my decision to become a teacher and probably had decided to not end up being used to train people to become oppressed and paternalized, i would never have accepted to be an instrument or a weapon used to oppress others.
Gracias."

"The most potent weapon the oppressor has in his hands, is the mind of the oppressed." S.B.
Raul H. Nakasone
Member of the Faculty
The Evergreen State College                                                                                                  REGRESAR
Olympia, WA