As true conscious self-directed educational achievement is pursued
despite the protocol of intellectual slavery, the academic Matrix responds
by flushing out or rather flunking out these mutant resistant units.
In plain terms, as punk youth excel in their personal curriculum, they
feel ever more abused, alienated, and exploited by the standard curriculum
and thus academic performance suffers accordingly and the system's immune
response is to "expel" them.
-A clear example is of a 14 year old female guitarist and vocalist in
an East L.A. conscious crust-punk band. She has been driven by her heart
and spirit to create music about the destruction of the earth and the
exploitation of people. Her passionate focus on peace, equality, autonomy,
and sustainability makes first period math seem exponentially more dreadful
and profane. She's been awakened to the historic responsibility to bring
humanity and nature back from the edge of industrial devastation, consequently
the fate of being mined and molded into a "cog in the machine"
is desperately resisted.
-This paradox has resulted in the destruction of many young lives. The
kids who are developing passionate self-actualized personal and collective
learning structures outside of school are being punished for it. Due
to poor scholastic performance, parents take away their bands, their
art, their friendships, their mobility, they have to repeat grades,
they get in trouble with the law, etc.
-The A.M.T. is an integrated approach intended to legitimize punk after-school
activities and to reframe the attitude of youth towards the standard
curriculum. It equips youth with collectivized learning tools that will
provide them means to easily master the depersonalizing, montonous,
standardized experience of school learning. Our belief is that the best
way for self-actualized youth to navigate through the mandatory school
system is to master it. Going about the non-negotiable 4 year sentence
can be done in a sluggish way where freedom and autonomy are tightly
restrained, or it can be done with complete focus and mastery.
-With high scholastic performance benefits for youth can include scholarships,
access to school resources, parental trust and privileges, community
respect, etc. in other words: MEASURABLE AUTONOMY AND EMPOWERMENT. It's
insane that even amongst siblings there is little to no "passing
on" of the data, skills, techniques, etc. used to even barely survive
the experience of school. It seems to be so traumatizing that no one
wants to even look back, not even to help their own siblings. NO ONE
has created a system to support each kid being coerced through this
cycle.
-The A.M.T. Project is a system based approach that borrows from the
idea of "harm reduction" which states that if a problem exists,
don't hide from it, don't ignore it, don't lock it up or declare "war"
on it; rather find peaceful ways to actually reform the situation accepting
that there is no easy over-night solution. When youth skip class, they're
not addressing the problem, they're not accepting that they HAVE to
take that class. Avoidance and evasion are not mature responses. Minors
have no rights, the first step is acknowledging this and then finding
creative ways to extract freedom from a state where none of it guaranteed..
What the A.M.T. is attempting to create is a system whereby students
don't SKIP CLASS, they SKIP GRADES! The idea is to view problems as
opportunities, to reframe negative self-defeating attitudes into problem
solving intelligence, to recalibrate the understanding of mandatory
school so as to view it as a game. Yeah school, is crude, silly, inefficient,
uses partial brain learning, puts the body in unnatural long periods
of contortion, cages, domesticates, and imprisons the soul ,etc. BUT,
once one accepts and develops a mature attitude towards the predicament,
opportunities, ideas, and new avenues begin to open.
-In the Vietnam war, it was only the P.O.W.s who developed a deep sense
of self-love, spiritual connection, and hope for a beautiful long life
after the trauma, who actually survived the imprisonment mentally and
physically. Those P.O.W.s who did not immediately "make the best
of the situation" died or went completely insane. This is an extreme
example but the point is: where ever anyone is in time and space, no
matter what the problem, with a positive attitude you can become like
MacGueyver and manifest the way out. But that way out will never be
procrastination, cutting corners, cheating, or b.s.ing on any level.
The experience must be embraced and mastered.
-Using such resources as the A.M.T.’s academic archive (which
includes research, arguments, lectures, case studies, books, pdfs, etc.
that equip a student to debate and argue like a Samurai), we could transform
the dynamic of disempowerment and discouragement from teacher to student.
Rather than having each new student have to re-invent the wheel and
do it wrong every single generation, we'll HEURISITCALLY have a wheel
making shop where anyone can come in the use our materials, skills,
technologies, etc. to build the wheel that they need to fit the situation.
All the students who've heard teachers praise Christopher Columbus but
didn't feel equipped to immediately rattle off stats about native American
genocide can call us and we'll text message excerpts of Howard Zinn's
"A People's History of the United States" to their cell phones
(not during tests of course!). And help them use whole brain learning,
raw foods, and other mneumonic techniques to PERMANENTLY learn whatever
facts they found most useful.
-The standard curriculum is exactly that: STANDARD! It's not a moving
target. As a global integrated network of conscious academic survivors,
we can create a support group for the those who are and will be inducted
into the education Matrix. By flooding youth with all the inputs they
need to master the obstacle course, we'll create generations of scholars
who have earned the privilege to actually wield some of the awesome
power of high school campuses. Imagine the ability to have shows on
site, have organic gardens, silk screening, bring in speakers from the
d-i-y movement, create an alternative track whereby you can earn a years
worth of credits as an intern at the Gaian Mind. The possibilities are
infinite, already we've built a network of college faculty who are thrilled
at this transformative concept. With their support and the integration
of global caring scholastic survivors...we'll see these 14 year old
punk eco-feminist teenagers grow into some of the most powerful, wise,
intelligent, and masterful beings ever to exist.
-At the Gaian Mind, we've seen the demons of drugs, alcohol, gangs,
apathy, etc. destroy our collective's little brothers and sisters. We
know that out of every young magical pair of adventurous punk infant
best-friends, one of them will be swallowed alive by the many negative
black holes of self-destruction. We’ve heard the guitar strumming
layered by the soft singing of peace-punk anthems of harmony and equality
get transmogrified almost over night into the sounds of screams, the
slamming juvenile hall doors, and the shouting of alcoholic parents.
We’re trying to create a warm fire for us all do crowd around.
We gasp and embrace a spirit of shared strength and endurance through
these dark times of alienation. Our natural birth-right to be raised
by the peaceful nurturing tribal cultures of our not-too-distant past
has been stolen. The sentient predators of greed, ego, materialism,
male dominance, abuse, and exploitation are always chasing us waiting
to feast on our weakness, our hate, fear, and doubt. Our hope lies in
the conscious punk youth, unfortunately their life-expectancy is declining.
-We see it all the time. Los Angeles is an incubator for conscious punk
youth, hundreds are hatched in high schools in every zip code every
year. Every weekend these teens organize shows to express themselves,
playing in the dark in back yards, getting busted by the cops. For many
of them, it's an escape, for some it's a place to share their passion
and fury about the dysmal state of the world. A.M.T. hopes to provide
the nutrients and support needed to allow those who want to develop
in a positive way to do so effortlessly-through mastery.
|
