[Peace-discuss] Training students for apathy

[C. G. Estabrook]

[What happened to the sixties student, from a student newspaper's talk with Noam 
Chomsky, September 8, 2009.  I think this is right about the universities of the 
1960s and forty years later -- and rarely said.  --CGE]


When people talk about “the ‘60s,” what they are thinking of is about two years: 
1968-1969, roughly -- a little bit before, a little bit later. And it’s true 
that student activism today is not like those two years. But, on the whole, I 
think it’s grown since the 1960s. So, take the feminist and the environmental 
movements -- they’re from the ‘70s; take the International Solidarity Movement 
-— that’s from the ‘80s; take the Global Justice Movement (which just had 
another huge meeting in Brazil) -- that’s from this century.

Plenty of students are involved in these things. In fact, the total level of 
student involvement in various things is probably as huge as it’s ever been, 
except for maybe the very peak in the 1960s when the war was a huge issue. Or 
the Civil Rights Movement in the South that trained many students -— that was 
the early ‘60s. It’s not what I would like it to be, but it’s far more than it’s 
been.

I think [the current talk about passivity among students is] an effort to induce 
passivity. The standard picture of the ‘60s that’s presented is that it was a 
terrible time. It was what’s called “the time of troubles” -- students were 
going crazy, everything was falling apart, and so on. That’s not what was 
happening.  It was a time when the country was starting to become more civilized 
-- thanks largely to the impetus of the activist students.

Elite sectors and centers of power don’t like that lesson. They don’t want that 
lesson to be learned. They want students to be passive and apathetic. In fact, 
there was a pretty big backlash to the ‘60s. One of the reasons for the very 
sharp rise in tuition is to kind of capture students.  If you come out of 
college with a huge debt, you’re going to have to work it off -- you’re going to 
have to become a corporate lawyer or go into business or something. And you 
won’t have time for engaged activism.

The students of the ‘60s were [in college] at that time when the society -- the 
culture -- was much more open. I mean that a student could take off a year or 
two and devote it to activism and think, "Okay, I’ll get back into my career 
later on."  That’s much harder today.  And not by accident.  These are 
disciplinary techniques.

http://wildcat.arizona.edu/opinions/i-applaud-your-protest-1.436185