Aux Armes, Étudiants
Have you been told that University is a lot different from school and that
a lot of adjustment will be required both in intellectual and personal terms? Well it is
not.
We have the same problems in university as you face in School - the
problem of paternalist regulations of various details of personal and intellectual life,
the problem of an examination system which is no more than a structure to meet the needs
of a class society, the problem of exclusion from the decision making machinery which
attempts to regulate students' lives. At University, however, a pretence is maintained
that 'enquiring minds' are free to ask relevant questions of problems, with the important
proviso that the answers must be acceptable. At school it is not normal procedure for
students to ask questions about arguments from authority and inertia, but university
dissent to a greater or lesser extent revolves around unacceptable answers to relevant
questions concerning the aims of education, and the organisation of the structure to
promote these. Apart from the fact that our headmaster is termed 'vice chancellor', and
our prefects are called wardens, security guards and porters, that we are 'sent down' and
not expelled, that we have our pockets not our arses caned, the questions raised in
university dissent are as relevant to schools and colleges as they are to university
structures.
There are over ten million students in this country, there are too many of
us to close down every protesting university, to cane every independent minded student at
school, to gag every dissident voice. If YOU are interested in the abolition of corporal
punishment in schools, the abolition of exams, prefects, compulsory religious education
and assemblies, school uniform, tyrannical headmasters, school rules and the whole
apparatus of educational control, then come along to the university next MONDAY JUNE 30 at
7.30 pm to room B7 in the Portland Building and help form a Schools Action Group in your
school. We will offer you every subversive aid we can, we can organise together, to break
down both the existing school structure and university structure and social structure.