Starting A Student Union In High School

[Captain Alec]

I browse this site a lot, never actually posted. I'm in high school, and it's been hard for me to find an effective way to spread revolutionary energy and ideas in a place where anything besides sports and TV is "gay". In another thread, I saw a suggestion that commies in high school try to start a student union. As obvious as this seems, I'd never thought of it before.

Turns out, getting people interested is waaaaay easier than I thought. Here are some points you can bring up whenever anybody is feeling discontent with the school system, like after they fail a test or get punished for talking. These worked on honors kids in my suburban high school, I'm not sure how they'd work elsewhere.

--We're going to forget half the stuff we learn in school. Nobody who actually attends high school will argue that. It's not doing any good while we know it, and we're going to forget soon. Doesn't sound too bad, until you remember that we waste years of our life learning this stuff, and the pressure to succeed in remembering it literally makes kids cry. It's criminally backwards.

-- School makes learning so "uncool", so boring, and so socially alienating that pretty much no-one continues studying non-job related school subjects after they get out of high-school/college. This is the exact opposite of what school is supposed to accomplish.

-- Nothing you learn is school you learn has anything to do with you. You're only learning this stuff because some administrator who hasn't been in high-school for 40 years thinks that you need to know calculus or understand Transcendental poetry to be a "well-rounded person". The "well rounded person" is a myth. You only need to learn things that are interesting to you or relevant to your goals. Anything else is just force feeding information down your throat that you'll forget.

-- Getting talked at for five hours a day is the most off-putting way to learning anything. Finding groups of people with interests similar to yours, picking the direction of your own education, and pursuing it because you want to makes much, much sense than the usual lectures. Teachers should help you learn what you choose to learn, rather tell you what you have to learn.

After you've got some people interested....
-- The school can't even implement obvious stuff, because they have no idea what they're doing. Why do I have to wake up at 5:30 every morning? It's contrary to a teenager's natural sleep cycle, and there are countless studies showing that kids do crappy and can't concentrate in the morning. In some schools in Minneapolis, kids start school at 8:30. Grades there are higher, depression and dropouts rates are lower. Why hasn't our school implemented such a common sense change? They're just too entrenched and lazy to do anything positive. Only a union is understands the situation well enough and is brave enough to make the change.

--Why do we need standardized tests? To make sure that we never learn what we want to learn and never stray into what may actually be useful or even interesting? The morons running our schools think standardized testing is a savior. Right now, only a student union understands that self-motivation is the only way to learn anything, and attempting to teach without it is useless.

These worked great for me, after my friend got a bad grade on a test I just started talking and by the end pretty much everybody in class was listening and agreeing. The union's first meeting is on Wednesday. We're gonna draft up a pamphlet and start distributing in the cafeteria.

I hope this helps anybody who's not sure how to be a revolutionary in high school, sorry if it doesn't help.

[Fawkes]

I like the idea, good job, though I'm curious as to how the union would go about obtaining their goals.

[Captain Alec]

Originally posted by [email protected] 20, 2007 03:15 am
I like the idea, good job, though I'm curious as to how the union would go about obtaining their goals.
Yeah, obtaining goals might be tricky, but once we have things organized at least it's a start. I figure some issues, like starting school later, the administration might actually work with us. If we get a win there, we'd definitely take off in confidence, and hopefully in membership.

Once we get enough members, we can boycott the MAP test, our standardized test that decides which schools get funding.

That's really all conjecture, but the group seem really interested, so we're aiming high.

[RedLenin]

Excellent job. I too have thought of forming a student's union in my high school, so as to combat certain school policies. Mass action among students is definitely a good thing, and if this union can get the support of a very large amount of students, you can have some considerable power.I would of course suggest involving as many students as you can directly in the process. Work on issues that students really care about and will support in mass. Strength lies in numbers and organization. If you have both, you can go a long way.

Just be careful of the administration. If your's is anything like mine, actually starting a student's organization that fights school policy may be difficult. My suggestion would be to start very small. For example, my friend and I worked to get opt-out forms officially recognized by the school. As this was a pretty minor demand, it worked with only a newspaper article and me handing out some forms. Start small and work your way up, while consistently maintaining your mass support.

[apathy maybe]

Make sure that any funding you get from the school (if any) is completely untied to anything. Get it in writing. Otherwise (at least in some parts of the USA (or so I have read)) they will be able to dictate what you work on or what you put in any newsletters, papers or pamphlets.

Sounds good generally otherwise.

Just a couple of quick points, yes students shouldn't be forced to learn crap that they are latter never going to use or remember. However, certain things (such as basic maths and science) should be taught to everyone for two simple reasons. The first is that these subjects help teach logic and problem solving skills. Even if you can't remember how to do any of the maths you have done, the problem solving skills are in a different part of the brain. Second, knowing how the world works and knowing basic sciences helps prevents people from being sucked into crazy cults and so on. Having a basic materialist outlook (which your science class should be providing) is essential for having a rational population.


Some ideas about choosing directions: I assume you have 4-6 years in high school (where I am from, high school is generally for ages 13-16, then there are a further two years of optional study, generally in a different school). In the first one or two years students should have a wide range of subjects demonstrated and taught to them. Then they can begin to specialise if they want.

Edited to attach this picture which I stole from Infoshop
Edited for a second time to simply link to the picture, as attaching images doesn't work.
http://www.infoshop.org/graphics/torture.jpg

[arielle]

i recently started to try to get the students together but all it took was a 10 day suspension and a threat from the school that my school career was on the line if I tried to pull anything like that again.
All i did was put up a few signs, had a meeting with a max of 20 students... and that was pretty much it

all we wanted was for the school to recognize that them firing teachers and putting more money into school sports and not education was wrong and we were suffering from it.

:\ well i got the wrong end of the stick. and recently I found out that for some odd reason I have to take another year of highschool because I didn't pass a chemistry class my sophmore year (senior now). Call me paranoid but I have records that show that i passed and yet in the school computers it says otherwise.

Sad to say, my parents believe the school over my records so now because of one little decision I made, I have to take another year of highschool and my account for the school is under surveilance at all times.

I suggest being very careful with what you do. The school system is ruthless when someone gets in their way.

[welshred]

Yes I will start a union, Our headteacher is firing the science teachers because he wants art, music and drama to play a bigger part in education. He has made science optional. How pathetic is this? I was talking to one of the teachers and suggested a strike and she said they are going to. What about the students education? If they want to do science then where are all the teachers? Maybe a boycott of those stupid subjects he wants or somthing? what should I do?

[Forward Union]

Good stuff. You're right this stuff always pretty easy it's just that people are lazy, and like to make mountains out of molehills.

One thing I would put emphasis on is that it's the senior staff (management), and the council who are your opposition. Not the teachers and lecturers.

Teachers are working class people like us, and get screwed by the senior management that run the college/uni as well. Working with them makes you pretty powerful. Though, its sometimes hard to come across as credible, to your institutional superior. And their jobs are actually on the line if they engage in actions that you as students can get away with.

Theres a whole topic here and I don't have time to go into teacher/student unions.

[YSR]

Originally posted by welshred+February 21, 2007 06:53 am--> (welshred @ February 21, 2007 06:53 am) Yes I will start a union, Our headteacher is firing the science teachers because he wants art, music and drama to play a bigger part in education. He has made science optional. How pathetic is this? I was talking to one of the teachers and suggested a strike and she said they are going to. What about the students education? If they want to do science then where are all the teachers? Maybe a boycott of those stupid subjects he wants or somthing? what should I do?

[/b]
Don't fall into the trap your headmaster has created for you. He is dividing students along the subjects they prefer, favoring one over the other. By boycotting a certain subject, you'd be alienating every student and staff member who is involved with that discipline. Definitely don't do that.

Solidarity across boundaries of disagreement is the only way to create a "union," formal or informal.


LU
One thing I would put emphasis on is that it's the senior staff (management), and the council who are your opposition. Not the teachers and lecturers.

This is only partially true. Many teachers are as part of the power structure as not, particularly in countries with a heavily bureaucratic reformist teacher's union (like the U.S.)

I gotta run to class (ironically) but I would point people towards the SDS pamphlet "The New Radicals in the Multiversity". It's got plenty of solid suggestions and ideas to chew over. Primarily aimed at large public universities, some of its elements can be applied to private colleges or high schools.