ROBEL NOIR

Even in the best schools a close examination of curriculum and its sequences turns up a lack of coherence, full of internal contradictions. Fortunately the children have no words to define the panic and anger they feel at constant violations of natural order and sequence fobbed off on them as quality in education… Confusion is thrust upon kids by too many strange adults, each working alone with only the thinnest relationship with each other, pretending for the most part, to an expertise they do not possess…

All global ambitions are based on a definition of productivity and the good life so alienated from common human reality that I am convinced it is wrong and that most people would agree with me if they had a choice. We might be able to see that if we regained a hold on a philosophy that locates meaning where meaning is genuinely to be found—in families, in friends, the passage of seasons, in nature, in simple ceremonies and rituals, in curiosity, generosity, compassion, and service to others, in a decent independence and privacy, in all the free and inexpensive things out of which real families, real friends and real communities are built. Then we would be truly self-sufficient.                   -JTG

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Written in 1992 by a schoolteacher of seventeen years, this account of the education system details the purposes of the system, the design behind the façade. Form your own opinions upon reading the entire text here: www.worldtrans.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt

to apply to yourself the same standards you apply to others, you’ve won. From then on, it’s easy. -NC

you’re one of the rare few who observe moral principles in their relationships with others, there is a temptation to sink into amorality, not out of conviction or pleasure, but simply to avoid further pain. -MP

knows how will always have a job, but the person who knows why will always be the boss.      -JCM

what I believe I have accomplished is the goal of another; likewise, my weaknesses are another man’s strength. None of us we’re perfect. Holding fast to God is the only thing I know for sure. That, and the Word, which is Truth.

huffing and puffing down the fast track to nowhere, always looking to the dollar sign for direction. That’s the only standard we recognize. We have no built-in beliefs, no ethical boundaries… “Where did I go wrong?” is the traditional wail of parents of kids-gone-wrong. The eighties version says, “We gave him everything—clothes, a computer, a car, a college education.” Everything but a conscience.

We are products of a high-tech society; amoral automatons outfitted with calculating brains and sleek casings, just like the computers with which we are so compatible. But they forgot to give us souls.

What good is lolling in your Jacuzzi in the beautiful backyard of your breathtaking home if you feel an aching emptiness in your innards—a chronic pain that all the wine cooler in the world can’t numb?                                                                                                         -BA

do not exclude the mysterious. In this way, you will see life as being more than alive.                -RMR

[he] saw stupidity as a portal to a vast, infinitely happy universe; he would float away among the stars and planets, following the elliptical orbit of his species.                                              -MP

Believed, but the seed of doubt was there, and it stayed, and every now and then sent out a little root. It changed everything, to have that seed growing. It made [him] listen more carefully to what people meant, instead of what they said. It made him wise.                    -OSC

for metaphor in any poet—in any poetic sensibility—but the ceaseless defining of the self and of the world by way of language?                                                                   -JCO