continued from page 12 blame is relative, the important function in society is who controls the blame patterns. Why is it that millions of working people assign blame downwards for what’s wrong?...We néver think that society should blame upwards to the handful of people that own all this and don’t do a damn thing for it. The blame pattern has been manipulated.” [Scripner] described kids being sent to schools mandatorily, to state-controlled schools, as empty milk bottles that get filled up with whatever the boss wants there. The boss wants people who come out of school to have answers, not people who have questions. Growing up is taking that milk bottle, turning it over and other press >>> CULTURE think that education is employability? If you want to go to a trade school, go to a trade school. Education is learning enough about a great variety of things, and then learning how to coordinate that, how to organize that in your head so that you can begin to make cre- ative decisions about what you’re going to do with your life, rather than getting the first job you find and giving your life away by becoming somebody's drone. No, education is a wonderful thing. | bailed out on the insti- tutional approach to become self-educating because | knew that’s what had to happen. All my parts weren't being fed by those institutions. It was up to me to find choice, it’s to turn that goddamn thing off, throw it into the street, join TV Anonymous, get a sponsor just like in A.A. Get together with people you love and want to be with and talk to each other and play games and build things and write poetry and dance. All we want to be is completely human and in each other's company. We can’t let them take that away from us. That’s what we want. That’s who we are. Do you think storytelling and music can compete with TV and take its place? Phillips: They’ve always done that. That was their pouring all that stuff out. And then you seek out people who can put things back in there that can be good for your life. They'll help you control your labour, help you lead a decent life without you getting burned out, fried, all used up. [Scripner] was right. He said, “You aban- doned your children to authorities and institutions over which they have no con- trol. They have automatic levers and but- tons built into them through the education- al process. When they get to the job mar- “| looked at grown-ups when | was little, and they were flying combat airplanes and running banks and | thought ‘I don’t want to turn out that way. So | decided to grow out, or through, or by, or around, or under, but God help me, not up.” role for thousands and thousands of years. But now TV comes along and says, “You can’t own this story unless you buy the product.” They do that with little kids on Saturday morning television, don’t they? | used to take a coffee can and a Quaker Oats box and make a rocket. | thought it looked like a rocket, but | was in charge of that reality, it unlocked my imagination. Now TV says that | can’t have that story unless | buy the object. That’s the opposite of what we’re equipped to do, the opposite of who ket, get a job, buy their first TV set and turn it on at night when they come home from work, the boss reaches out through that set and pushes those buttons and pulls those levers and elicits massive sup- port for or against anything he wants. So he said, “We didn’t go to school. We were unedu- cated, largely illiterate people. But we came into the freight yard on the trains looking for work in the logging camps. We'd see the boss's private car off of the side of the yard. We saw the mansions building up around Spokane.” He said, “We knew where that was coming from: it was coming from our blood, under ground and in the forest.” “And that’s why we had it easier than you,” he said. “It was easy for us to understand what we were fight- ing. It’s a whole lot harder for you.” You’re saying education is primarily manipula- tive? Phillips: Oh absolutely. Of course it is. Who makes the textbooks? Who formulates the curriculum? The curriculum is formulated according to needs not as you define them. So who defines what the needs are? Most educational institutions, in fact too many universities now, are defining education as employability. No, that’s schooling. You can school a horse but you can’t edu- cate it. Why don’t they call them trade schools if they the people who could feed them, and | did. In your 65 years of travelling, do you think there has been some sort of definable change in the peo- ple you meet? Phillips: Of course there’s been a change. It would be hard to define it because it would be very complex. It needs to be studied. Television is consciousness altering. If it wasn’t, the advertisers wouldn't use it. So we’ve had over 50 years of television, sometimes up to eight hours a day, with an advertising structure that uses motivational analysis to understand your behav- iour, and then, through colours and sounds, encour- ages you to buy things. You can’t tell me that we’ve had 50 years of that massively and there hasn’t been a change in people’s temperament, the way they inter- pret reality, the way they respond to any stimuli. I’m not sure what that change is. | haven’t had a TV set for 27 years; | can’t stand to be around them. When | do sit down about once a year and turn on a television set, the impact of the images is staggering, the frequency of the images is staggering. | can’t track that much data. So people have to turn off at some point. They can’t pay attention to the stimuli they're receiving. | think that’s when they’re really vulnerable. So if | could encourage people to do something by we are. So get rid of that damn TV and get back to our best and most natural self, which is the storyteller, is the singer, is the dancer, the glue that always held culture together. All those things that we used, the glue that held culture together, are now commodities, and we have to buy them. Just say no. That’s why we have a folk festival, why we have a folk singers society and singers’ circles. People get together in a living room or a backyard, have a potluck and sit in a circle once a week or every other week. All you have to do is bring a song, a story, a poem. No competition. No performance. You go around that cir- cle, and you have three choices: You can do some- thing, you can pass, or you can request something from somebody else in the circle. And you go around a couple times, have some food, and then go around some more if you want to. Sometimes, I’ve been in singing circles where they’ve said, “The first time around, let’s do mining songs,” and you get encour- aged to learn new kinds of songs. It’s healthy, it’s par- ticipatory, it’s creative and it’s cheap. And it’s yours, and you’re building community. What do you think has to happen for people to accept that way of life? Phillips: I'll keep on talking for as long as | can. Just pay attention. Pay attention.