A Teaching Manifesto

A Teaching Manifesto - 11/20/2002



After an evening of conversation with students and fellow teachers, conversations separate but united by that force of being ME, I have decided in intellectual audacity and snobbery, to declare a manifesto along the lines of F.T. Marinetti's Manifesto of Futurism. In case anyone suspects my cause or questions my sources, here is the link that you may check it out (which is in a sense, easy speak for intellectual curiousity)
http://www.unknown.nu/futurism/manifesto.html

An evening of conversation? The modern convinences of the machine - International Calls, Two-in-One tele calls, face to face pontifications - mean many ideas colasced into one mind. Followed by the downing of alcohol - Good beer, stale sherry - have put me in the mood for this. I refer sparingly to the past, hoping that what gets put down marks it and guides my days to come.
Manifesto of the Teacher

1. The Teacher is Supreme. Not what is taught, not what is learnt, not the exams or the results. But WHO I am as a teacher and who YOU are in relation to every act of learning. The Teacher is never an individual but an act, a mind that inquires extends the Teacher beyond these fragile bodily strictures to ...

2. Brashness, intelligence, the Question, will be essential elements of each "teaching".

3. The end of intellectual security must be affirmed. And in this age of uncertainty we look toward the irrational, toward faith, at doubt and wonder about how these may be refashioned with a vocabulary that WE may understand.

4. I will sing the songs of those who were truly great.

5. Systems infect themselves - never trust them. Even the belief that I may change a system from within is a Lie. Like the One Ring, I must never wear the belief. I leave it for those those of stouter hearts, or with minds lesss filled with guile.

6. I dance with those whose hearts are too weak to absorb this wonder called life. Lay down your weary soul, lay down. The song is only half sung when the feet don't dance to the rhythm of their tired hearts. Lay down!

7. I co-exist with those who have sold their Souls to the system. Why? Is this not a contradiction! Are you mad? But if indeed, they have sold their souls to the System, then I have bartered my Head for much less. For a roomful of books and a 10 year old CD player! to each his own - they fill in my forms, I fill in their Voids.

8. The Teacher must exhaust himself in every exertion. Physical, emotional, psychic burn out, brings renewal or death. Choose as you wish. Without that exhaustion, nothing will be sung.

9. Every Rumour, Gossip, Bad-mouthing, deceitful practice - in short - every act of Office Politics must be condoned if those that hold the key to Political power have surrendered their Souls to the System. There is no such thing as honset reform. The anarchic is legitimate, as it steps outside the System to bring it down. These are the terms of Revolution. But these are terms, a coward like me would be afraid to use!

10. I remain true to a belief. An ideal. An observation. An insight. No amount of seduction neatly packaged as promotion or financial renumeration will sway my adherence to this. I remain inflexible that I might retain my intellectual nimbleness.

11. Embrace! Embrace knowledges, not knowledge. Plurality, connectivity, sheets of sound and the Advant Garde. Nothing is too miniscule. I learn from all. The repetitiveness of labour challenges my imagination and I laugh at the complainers and those who are above menial work! Give me mindlessness and I will strive to form a Mind!

It is from Simplicity, the Naive belief that things cannot change, that Systems perish and that Ministers talks with their mouths full but their minds empty, from the utter lack of respect for non-contradictory, sound advice that I shoot from the Hip. Don't expect me to admit to saying these things. I merely intend to live by them!