February 05, 2003
SAA Plans 'Liberation School'
There's a good piece in the new Willamette Week about the Student Activist Alliance and what their plans are, beyond tomorrow's general student strike, to address the loss of school days this year:
Protesters will also recruit fellow students to help plan a "Liberation School," which would make up for some of the 24 days cut from the Portland Public school year. Inspired by the boycott to desegregate Northeast Portland schools in the 1980s, Liberation School would provide supervision for younger students as well as community-taught classes on a range of subjects.
The SAA settled on the alternative education plan last week and has formed a Liberation School subcommittee. Subcommittee member Marko Lamson, a junior at Metropolitan Learning Center, says students will plan the school, with adults and community groups, such as Portland Area Rethinking Schools, playing a supporting role.
Contrasting the concerns of Charles McGee (junior-class president at Franklin High School, and the student responsible for taking the educational route rather than that of censorship in a recent controversy over The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn), who says that "his emphasis on race and class is unwelcome among SAA's largely white membership" -- a concern which I am not necessarily dismissing here -- are the statements of Marko Lamson (SAA member and a junior at Metropolitan Learning Center):
Lamson, who once took a drawing class at the Freeskool, says it rarely reaches beyond white, left-leaning middle-class youth. To be effective, he says, Liberation School will have to involve poor and minority students by being in their neighborhoods.
"We don't have those people in our movement," Lamson acknowledges, "and that's a problem."
"Several teachers" have reportedly expressed an interest, although nothing has been worked out with the teacher's union. SAA is currently looking for a location for their Liberation School.