Expected Student Learning Results

dan diamond is my educator friend with whom i discuss educational theory.  he knows about all the educator trends like Expected Student Learning Results=ESLR.  i think that is similar to Student Learning Outcome=SLO.  all these cute educational theories got so popular as the shift away from authoritarian teaching styles was popularized in the seventies.

he explained the trouble with LACC's flagging reputation.  how it is so ironic that this is where students are coming to escape the ravages of the decaying blue-collar economies.  we are here to become upwardly socially mobile.  and how that it then makes it doubly ironic if the teachers try to speak ghetto at us because they assume that is how we think.  it is really condescending. maybe a little racist. when eckford defends wholeheartedly the use of bitch shitty asshole etc. in the classroom, i feel he might be subconsciously reifying the class system that keeps us shut out of better schools and a visionary future.

i feel like i need to have an ESLR for my teachers.  let them know we want more, we will take it, that the blogosphere exists quod erat demonstrandum.

i told dan diamond how ironic it was to be sitting in front of the 4X4 che guevera red flag in eckford's office as i was told that because i don't have a PHD ($$$) i am inappropriate.  i wonder how they would treat the renegade man.

the great thing is i don't have a salary to lose, i don't have a future to mess up.  we are literally writing the rules of the future.  google doesn't mind if i blog here.  they give me free therapy.  so i don't think anyone is suspending me from anthropology for blogging about the vulgar words in the clasroom.  i think they rethought it.  and eckford never told me to go jump in a stream.  he told that to keith fink.  it was so funny!!!!!  it was like the jane goodall movie with the wild primates trying to play dominance games. or it was like straight out of some bad mafia movie in the eighties.

it was very godfathery.  "you can't scare me tough guy!"
and then fink said, i'm not trying to scare you, i'm just trying to communicate with your department on behalf of mary eng.  (that's me.)  so when eckford said, "i have a relationship with mary, with the teacher, but not with you" and that he didn't know if he should be talking to the lawyer . . . well . . .
i just wish fink would make me pay him!!!!!

i brought a check just in case.  he doesn't seem to care about money though.  i think he just cares about free speech generally speaking.  so when eckford told him "i'm going to hang up on your dumb ass," while it was classically unprofessional and undiplomatic, i could see eckford's point, in an anarchism kind of way.
like f-you, f-the law, f-my reputation, f-LACC, f-equality, f-free speech.  it was so punk rock!!!!

if what eckford meant was, buzz off, don't threaten my power, i can try to talk down to mary and coerce her etc, i guess he's right.  i went to the fake-mandatory meeting like a lamb led to slaughter in quite a quandry about what is the right thing to do.

this is where i need the "i'm sorry about the internet" hallmark card too.
because i am sorry, and sorry i have compulsive blogging tendencies.  it's the way i hold on to the world, and to precious moments.

i wonder if che guevera would tell me if i was "inappropriate."  i asked eckford if it was true che was violent?  he said he was a soldier for hire.

i think the only solution is for everybody to start being nice to each other at LACC.  power trips are super deluxe funny.  blogs are power trips too!!!!!  i think when teacher accused me of cyberstalking whatever that means, he could think of it more like anthropologizing the anthropologist, or like dan diamond says, like jane austen sense and sensibility.  or anyway i am pushing thirty-five blogs now, some more or less dead wastes of digital space, and i have so many pointless things to write about now, i should just mention it.
here are some subjects i like to write about: the environment, war, islam, rape, nick maybury, music in hollywood, smog, graphic arts, the holocaust, digital space, copyright, labor law, fake organics, nihilism, gareth pugh, fassbinder, bergman, viktor and rolf, all the gazillion friends i ever had, galleries, travel, fashion, poverty, homelessness, the past, androgyny, homophobia, linguistics, economics, veganism, megalomania.  so really trying to get all the credit for monopolizing my brain waves is a little true, but not that much, because my new obsessions are regenerating out of the ash.  the saddest thing about wanting an education is the cost factor.
now that i have fully embraced the whole student loan lifestyle and rocked out the bankruptcy law wisdom of lanzer, i feel more confident about ruining my good credit for the sake of an education.
i never thought money was real anyway.  it is more like a conspiracy, or a value consensus.

the reason any of us came to class was indeed relational to thinking class was worthwhile or tolerable to an extent.

all great teachers have students, followers, and reactionaries.  we take from our great teachers, parasitically, and then attempt to overthrow them with our value system and cultural and generational differences.  when the social sciences people act like the internet is satan, i feel like they are like nancy reagan playing me tapes in reverse to show me how its satanic.  and i am like no, actually communication is a good thing, because now we're communicating.  and if i am like, hey there is this little equality law that says i get a sexism-free school, it is thanks to the internet that i even know about that law.  so when yu try to tell me that internet is satan, and PHD is god, i'm like no man.  this is too weird.
now this is getting alittle imaginative.  they didn't call the internet satan, but rather, "inappropriate."  i think rock and roll was inappropriate, even waltzing, ankles, women going to university.  it was all inappropriate once.
if blogging and letter writing were so inappropriate . . .so too was letters from the underground, or 1984, or grunge, or prison writings.
why does it happen????  why do we want to write and make documents????  isn't it hope for a better future????  hope for a human experience?????  hope for a little respect????/
 it is the logic of "bite the hand that feeds you." and why feed they that bite?
the peaceful dialogue of the future will find radical rupture in all systems.  system disruption will perform integrity checks.
if the leadership system at social sciences protects an unequal atmosphere, just as the law protected jim crow and segregation, we, the militant civil rights activists must throw a wrench into the mechanism.  i don't think the old ways are inherently evil.  true they shut women out of the monasteries and universities.  like my friend and hebrew teacher eva watler said the classics got translated into aramaic and arabic and preserved in the east as the roman empire fell, all literacy would have faced extinction.  the preservation of knowledge took other forms, and upon retranslation, disavowed a lineage which disrupted power myths.
everything will be fine at LACC.  maybe even a few less curse words will get hurled (like vomit on our underprivileged economically disenfranchised community college selves).
maybe those of us who are poor or struggling will find strength somewhere in the school system.  maybe we will become entrepreneuers and visionaries.  maybe we will help bridge the digital divides, the literacy crises, globally.  maybe a new kind of learning will emerge, with students taking a more active and less passive role.  maybe we can learn together.
when progressives rely on old power structures to maintain their illusions of dominance, they fail us.  they carry us only so far with their chomsky and anthropology.  if we are left in a wasteland of power catechisms, the brainwashing tatics might fail.
i sprayed my brain with a no-stick hydrolyzed grease.  it just falls away.  catholic schools do that.  they make fierce rebels, atheists, satanists, anarchists.
so much propaganda and force-feeding actually leads to a reverse reaction.  i just vomit up everything i am force-fed.  if you force-feed me power, i vomit it back onto my plate.
i think it runs in the family.
the only way to get anything into my hard head is through diplomacy, eloquence, graciousness, and a mystique.
the ubiquitous words, the crass tits and ass and shitty and asshole, turn my brain off.  i can forgive and forgive and forgive only so much.
there is a reason i am coming to school.  to get away from banal moronic words.  so what is really cool about LACC is that we, as students may not be as rich as the kids at USC, but we deserve the best. we might even be rich in something money can't buy: class, dignity, integrity, honesty. we will demand the best.  i don't care that much if you call me crazy or anything else if that makes you feel better.  and if you tell your best mates to "stop their bitching" and "i'm bitching at you" etc. well whatever.
whatever whatever is no excuse for hurting human beings.
i think we all need to work on our compassion, and look into ways we could be more fair, more enlightened, more inspiring, more transcendent.
more open to utopia.
i was thinking of that old cheesy film "dead poet's society."  the guy who wrote it went to school at the boys school montgomery bell academy in nashville.  i used to hang out there to do theater.
when i was about thirteen i was idealistic about things like this.  now i feel a little more practical.
like, yeah it is totally unpoetic to talk harshly to us, but moreover it hurts the school.  it hurts the students.  it hurts our self-respect.  it makes it seem more ghetto than it is.  it reinforces some power systems.
curse words are like crack cocaine inflicted on the student body to keep us enslaved.
the french revolution will happen over and over again.  power elites will topple.  aristocracy will not hold, if so high and mighty it must crush the poor, or women, or the diverse student body here.
i think LACC deserves the very best our teachers can give.  and that we deserve to be heard and not suppressed.  if we feel discomfort, might we not just say it????
i have three more exams to go.  good luck everybody.
power to the people all the time.
we should make education a right not a privilege, and fight for respect, no matter where we come from.  we shouldn't accept the watered down version just because this is community college, or a poor smoggy neighborhood.  we should ask for more not less.  good luck.
and hey teachers, i'm only giving you tough time here because i owe so much to you for the gift of your education.  thanks for everything.  really LACC is amazing, and could be even more amazing with a little self-reflection.
respect is a process, equality a transcendent consciousness, compassion a manifold unflowering in the human spirit.  and hey, you know what? you can apologize.
a little "i'm sorry" goes a long way.
you can tell me you are sorry for threatening to suspend me for blogging my feelings about sexist words in the clasroom.
you can say sorry what you said made me cry.
you can say sorry for cursing at keith fink.  he is tough.  he could handle it, but even lawyers shouldn't have to be verbally abused.
you could say sorry for calling me inappropriate when actually my words are important.
if a woman says the words "bitch" or "tits and ass" make her uncomfortable, especially in a professional setting, you could at least acknowledge her right to speak.
silencing women has gone on too long.
in the future women will find self-authorship.
they will not necessarily need these old words, or men telling them they are inappropriate for having feelings, or desiring respect.
in the future we will all respect each other so we can conquer huge problems together like war, environmental catastrophe, starvation, dessertification, carcinogenesis . . .
i respect you enough to pose this challenge:  treat the future LACC students with dignity, respect, and kindness.  the rewards will give you so much more profound happiness, than the false freedom of the idiocratic "academic" freedom to slur in the classroom.  when you show us respect, so too will you be respected . . .
philo sophos
the love of wisdom . . .
and when the wisdom of women is accounted for and the PHD learns from the child with an open heart and an open mind . . . then who will be the teacher and who the student????  it is the wisdom of the young that will free us from war and poverty . . . so when we whisper or blog . . . please listen.  and thank you for listening and thank you for everything . . .