There once was a time when teachers and communities were able to exercise democratic control over their schools. Now that power has been taken away, both centralised and privatised, under the guise of “reform.” There is a forgotten history of the time before reform, and within it a bright horizon is visible, reachable only if educators and society at large can learn the lessons of the past.
Robb Johnson entered the classroom as a new teacher in the 1980s and has spent a lifetime alongside his pupils encouraging both creativity and a healthy distrust of authority. This book is both memoir and polemic, a celebration of children’s innate desire to learn, share, cooperate, and play, as well as a critique of bureaucratic interference. Johnson details how we ended up with the contemporary mass education systems and why they continually fail to give children what they need. Combining practical experience as a teacher with detailed pedagogical knowledge, and a characteristic playful style, Johnson is both court chronicler and jester, imparting information and creatively admonishing the self-important figureheads of the reform agenda.
This book considers how schools and education relate to the wider society in which they are located and how they relate to the particular needs and abilities of the people who experience them. It shows that schools and education are contested spaces that need to be reclaimed from the state, and turned into places where people can grow, not up, not old, but as individuals. It offers alternative ways of running classrooms, schools, and perhaps even society.
I’ve been a working artist, curator, community activist and teacher for more than 25 years, creating and producing intimate solo performances, large-scale public happenings, socially engaged interventions and performance art workshops and lectures. My practice extends across black boxes and white cubes, art fairs and subway stations, international festivals, and single bathroom stalls. I’ve operated an artist-run newsstand in a vacant subway station kiosk, a soup kitchen for artists, a breast milk tasting bar, and a performance festival hub for kids. I’m forever inspired by the rebel queers, renegade witches, and other dyke moms I run with, and bound to many brilliant artists, activists, spell-casters and healers. For many years I made performances that drew from my own experiences of trauma and transformation, intimacy and motherhood. More recently, I’ve experienced a shift in my practice, where my attention has turned to wider theoretical questions about the nature of performance itself to ask questions about when, where, how we perform - in theatres and galleries, on social media, and in our everyday lives.