Japan notes : Bunny self-narrative on schooling

Added on by Drittens Cat.

Posted by Pinky.

One of the things I was doing in Japan was organizing the thousands of pages of notes that Bunny and I had written or transcribed on the subject of education. Although we had been working on our book for quite some time, much of the material has yet to be organized properly and there's even some sections that still require more thinking and clarifying. I'm confident I'll do a good job putting everything together and eventually I'm sure I'll get it published, but to be realistic now that I'm doing most everything by myself I'm guessing this is probably going to take a while. It's a big job because this book will have not just words, but also many drawings and illustrations and photos. But it will be fun to read. :-)

Anyway, in the meantime, I'm really enjoying re-reading some of Bunny's materials. I'll try to remember to post some of them here in this diary from time to time. Here’s an unedited transcription of some Bunny-talk:

"When I was young I was very violent. Basically I had this idea that I could solve any problem with some kind of violence. If someone made me upset I'd quickly find myself yelling at them. If someone looked at me funny I'd just bite or punch them. Even if, say, my tape recorder wasn't working properly, I'd just shake it hard. Obviously I wasn't getting great results from all this. So after a while I found myself thinking that there had to be a better way; the anger and violence thing wasn't working for me. This is around the same time I decided to become a teacher. For a little while I was a teacher in schools - did you know that about me? Anyway, that's what I was doing - "teaching" - until slowly I began to realize that the school system that I was a part of, is actually itself one of the most important components in the transmission of the Logic of Violence - society-wide violence, state violence, structural violence - violence on a much more massive, broader scale than anything I could've ever been able to achieve alone - as a single, violent individual so to speak. When I began to understand how schools are used for conditioning the imagination, and that I'd actually become a functionary, a tool, within this supremely violent system - and that everyday I was doing my part to actively promote control and subjugation, that's when I decided that I had to get out. I had to remove myself as a first step towards freeing my mind and body of the kind of habituated thoughts and actions that a violent civilization demands of its captives..."  ~Bunny