100 The youth of today are not permitted to approach the traditional heritage of mankind through the door of technological awareness. This only possible door for them is slammed in their faces by a rear­view­ mirror society. The young today live mythically and in depth. But they encounter instruction in situations organized by means of classified information—subjects are unrelated, they are visually conceived in terms of a blueprint. Many of our institutions suppress all the natural direct experience of youth, who respond with untaught delight to the poetry and the beauty of the new technological environment, the environ­ ment of popular culture. It could be their door to all past achievement if studied as an active (and not necessarily benign) force. The student finds no means of involvement for We now experience simultaneously the dropout himself and cannot discover how the educational and the teach­in. The two forms are correlative. scheme relates to his mythic world of electronically They belong together. The teach­in represents an processed data and experience that his clear and attempt to shift education from instruction to dis­ direct responses report. covery, from brainwashing students to brainwash­ It is a matter of the greatest urgency that our edu­ ing instructors. It is a big, dramatic reversal. Viet­ cational institutions realize that we now have civil nam, as the content of the teach­in, is a very small war among these environments created by media and perhaps misleading Red Herring. It really has other than the printed word. The classroom is now little to do with the teach­in, as such, anymore than in a vital struggle for survival with the immensely with the dropout. persuasive "outside" world created by new informa­ The dropout represents a rejection of nineteenth­ tional media. Education must shift from instruction, century technology as manifested in our educa­ from imposing of stencils, to discovery —to probing tional establishments. The teach­in represents a and exploration and to the recognition of the lan­ creative effort, switching the educational process guage of forms. from package to discovery. As the audience be­ The young today reject goals. They want roles— comes a participant in the total electric drama, R­O­L­E­S. That is, total involvement. They do not the classroom can become a scene in which the want fragmented, specialized goals or jobs. audience performs an enormous amount of work.