NLA Invitation: Other Voices

[MNoyes1234 at aol.com]

Hi, my name is Matt Noyes. I'm a teacher of worker education and adult
education in NYC. I currently teach in the CUNY system (Queens College and
LaGuardia Community College) and at the Association for Union Democracy, an
independent organization that helps union members learn to exercise their
rights on the job and in the union.

In response to the call for other voices and other issues, I am curious about
who is out there, on the NLA list. Are their others interested in problem-
posing or critical approaches linked to social transformation? 

I think my question appears naive, which is okay. On the one hand, there is
virtue sometimes in asking naive questions, on the other, I have struggled in
my own work life with the dissonance that arises in the conflict between the
rationale of our work and the actual practice. Our programs, and often we
ourselves, claim the best for our teaching -- empowerment, transformation,
etc. -- and then practice a form that is so distant from the real problems and
actions of taking power in a meaningful and collective way, that we end up
being hypocrites. I have seen students suffer the effects; I've even been
fired and even "blacklisted" as a result of crossing that line between
rhetoric and action. 

There's a very didactic chart in a book called training for transformation,
which defined traditional, liberal, and transformational or radical approaches
to education. While I strive for the latter, I have found that the starting
point for me, a part-time teacher in an institutional context not of my
making, is liberal at best. The challenge, I think, is to develop a liberatory
practice from within a liberal or conservative context. One part of that, in
my experience, has been organizing unions of educators, practicing
empowerment. Anyway, I wonder if there are others out there who are struggling
to practice that Freire-style stuff -- in a real way.

Given my teaching orientation, I find most public policy discussions to be so
constrained by the assumptions -- that we have to work within the confines of
the, whatever you want to call it, "system" -- as to be unrelated to what
inspires and challenges me as an educator. Not to ignore the material
conditions of our work -- I  rely on the funds allocated in the political
process -- but to question our willingness to accept the parameters of the
politics of having a seat at the table, of being in the loop, as opposed to a
politics of organizing collectively. What draws me to the work is the prospect
of inciting and participating in movements for radical change.

Interested in thoughts people may have, 
Matt Noyes