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Education Children's Community Center

Education Children's Community Center image
Parent Issue
Day
5
Month
October
Year
1972
OCR Text

EDUCATION

CHILDREN'S COMMUNITY CENTER

The Children's Community Center (CCC) which operated in a tent at the Blues and Jazz Festival will begin gathering again on Friday & Saturday nights (8-12 pm) in conjunction with the People's Ballroom at the People's Community Center (502 E. Washington). The Free People's Clinic will provide two waiting rooms and a bathroom on the second floor, and the People's Education Committee of the Tribal Council will organize the operation (staffing, materials, P.R., philosophy, etc.) As this is not a baby-sitting service or 'night care' system, but rather a free program which all of us must develop collectively, it is important that we understand our present needs and limitations.

Our need for self-determination as a people has begun to be satisfied in the establishment of the People's Community Center, and now with the People's Ballroom in operation the economic base for self-reliance has also begun to be laid. The joining together of so many people's organizations & programs in one place allows us to develop new collective ways of dealing with our many problems in the rainbow community. The vital need for our youth to be educated in the spirit of loving the future, and to arrive at knowledge of practical value which enables them to advance the struggle for liberation, are most appropriately learned in the context of our advanced activities.

The strength in the cooperation amongst all the people's organizations hooked up with the CCC--and prior to that, all the energy expended to make this development possible--will all serve as an example for our children and as an inspiration to create even more collectivism among all rainbow people.

Even though formal education is largely in the hands of the death culture, our efforts to smash phony separations in regards to learning in the home & school & social community have made progress with the establishment of a regular Children's Community Center where parents are encouraged to participate in the development of philosophy and program. Our main needs at this initial point are to schedule a consistent and responsible staff of educational workers for Fr. & Sat. nights, and to solicit donations of materials.

Consideration of our physical space limitations makes it necessary at this preliminary point to request that the space be reserved primarily for the use of children 8 years and younger, and that parents with babies stay close by. As the program grows we can determine the range of our advertisement, and investigate the possibility of meeting more often. In the meantime, for more information, call Skip at the Rainbow house (761-1709), and see you at the Ballroom with your children.

PASS IT ON FREEDOM SCHOOL

A revolution is like child-birth. The new, which has been developing for some time, is delivered at the expense of the old. In the case of society-birth the old must be destroyed. Two things then are necessary: the building of the new, and the destruction of the old. In the American revolution it is in education where these two things are occurring most rapidly now.

The Pass It On Freedom School is a set of relationships among (at present) nine students, two full time teachers, and several part-time teachers. We are fulfilling the proper procedures to make us a licensed & accredited elementary school for children from 5 to 11 years.

Free schools must be understood by what they are not. They are not public schools which are irrelevant, ineffective, coercive and authoritarian. Public schools are a place where the authorities intravenously feed the garbage the cogs in their society must believe if they are to be passive slaves and know if they are to make money for the owners. If there is any short slogan to explain Free Schools, it is that they are a place where people use their own heads (with some help from their friends) to learn what they want to learn, including independence and social responsibility.

As public schools are tools of the rich, some "free schools" are nothing but private schools to give the rich the best in education. We are a tuition-free school so that we are a real alternative for all people.

Along with the functioning of our school there are several ongoing programs we have established. One is the WEEKLY WHY, our journal. In it, the real experiences of our school are analyzed with a look to better educational practice and the possibilities for human freedom and equality. Another is a weekly parent-teacher re-education meeting. At these meetings adults criticize themselves, trying to deal with our failing in child-raising. Why do we oppress children? Why do we objectivize them? Why do we set goals for them? Why do we arouse guilt feelings in them?

The Pass It On Freedom School, a part of the new society, is democratic. That is, we encourage and actively seek participation by many people. Please contact John Butler or Martha Wade at 668-6776, if you are interested in participating in any way. Pass It On!

"School is to the child what the prison is to the convict and the barracks is to the soldier--a place where everything is being used to break the will of the child, and then to pound, knead and to shape it into being utterly foreign to itself."

--Emma Goldman