Rules For Radicals 3

Tactics from Rules For Radicals

“Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul…”

Thomas Paine

As quoted in Alinsky 1971

Saul Alinsky wrote the book Rules For Radicals (Alinsky, Saul, 1971). The time is right to remember and implement his tactics for social change. The dominant ideological strategy employed today for students who are most at risk of exclusion is a higher order and more complex system of exclusion than has ever existed before. This paper promotes the use of Saul Alinsky’s 13 tactics for success in implementing inclusion for vulnerable people in everyday life. Understanding and using Alinsky’s 13 rules with a view toward action and high-energy systemic change will cause positive change.

TACTICS

Rules For Radicals, Saul Alinsky

We will either find a way or make one. --Hannibal

1) Always remember the first rule of power tactics: Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks your have.

2) The second rule is: Never go out side the experience of your people.

3) The third rule is: Wherever possible go outside of the experience of the enemy.

4) The forth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.

5) The fourth rule carries within it the fifth rule: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.

6) The sixth rule is: A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.

7) The seventh rule: A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.

8) The eighth rule: Keep the pressure on.

9) The ninth rule: The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.

10) The tenth rule: The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.

11) The eleventh rule is: If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside.

12) The twelfth rule: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.

13) The thirteenth rule: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

Fundamental Assumptions

As Special Education is founded on the biological scientific model the assumptions carried by professionals are aligned with a biological / medical model of production. The doctors, who ran the institutions, defined the best procedures to serve (cure) the "patients". Following world war I & II the newly skilled doctors returned with a zeal to carry on what they learned curing the wounded. The result was a strong, assumption creating,  foundation for Special Education and rehabilitation. A minority force, social rehabilitationists, saw the environment as in need of repair and advocated for such improvements as public awareness and environmental accessibility (a robust component of this group are made up of conscientious objectors serving in institutions---watch for future blog). The resulting set of beliefs, assumptions and scientific ideals was a biological model with social agendas. This model is the core of the Special Education field today and represents the core of the problems. 

When PL 94-142 was passed in 1975 improvement was generated not toward new models and ways of knowing. Improvement was generated within the narrow confines of the biological model. In some ways the new law cemented a set of assumptions and beliefs that have become an unconscious battle cry for well educated and skilled practitioners. When these assumptions are articulated and challenged as assumptions and not personal identifiers (professionals may declare; "this is who I am") true progress will be available. Just what are these well established assumptions that are now held as truths?

What every educator must know is contained in this graphic. A trilogy is soon to be published that will explain the theories and processes.

Please do not copy or reprint this graphic or it's contents.

Positivism

While preparing for a course scheduled for the fall of 2009 I reintroduced myself to the concept of positivism. In so doing I found great understanding of the tensions I live with.  Positivism is (according to dictionary.com) a doctrine contending that sense perceptions are the only admissible basis of human knowledge and precise thought and that the application of this doctrine in logic, epistemology, and ethics supersedes theology and metaphysics and depending on a hierarchy of the sciences, beginning with mathematics and culminating in sociology. It is the culminating in sociology that impacts the field of education and particularly special education.  All of this came about sometime between 1900 and 1950 and promoted attention to actual practice over consideration of what is ideal. Further the practice must be based on what is knowable from a strictly quantitative perspective.

Positivism elements are considers of lessor import knowing through relationship, experience or observation of the environment. Unless one is counting things relevant to those areas they are of little concern to the educator trying to improve the target (student).

No wonder I have difficulty communicating with some of my peers as they are sure that what I offer and the theories of practice I teach have no basis in reality or knowledge. Tom Srtic is the man to speak with or read if you are looking for substantial insight into this (http://soe.ku.edu/Tom-Skrtic/). 

Sadness washes over me as I see clearly that I am speaking a foreign language and inviting people into a strange culture when I give evidence that suggests the source of teaching is to be found in relationships, environment, cultures and the mix of all of those. This is good news however as I now have been reminded of a plethora of resources that can be offered to teacher candidates and injected into the academy at multiple points of entry.