(from Teaching as a Subversive Activity by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner, Penguin 1969, 1971)
1. Declare a five-year moratorium on the use of all textbooks.
Since with two or three exceptions all texts are not only boring but based on the assumption that knowledge exists prior to, independent of, and altogether outside of the learner, they are either worthless or harmful. If it is impossible to function without textbooks, provide every student with a notebook filled with blank pages, and have him [sic] compose his own text.
2. Have English teachers teach maths, maths teachers English, social studies teachers science, science teachers art and so on.
One of the largest obstacles to the establishment of a sound learning environment is the desire of teachers to get something they think they know into the heads of people who don't know it. An English teacher teaching math would hardly be in a position to fulfil this desire. Even more important, he would be forced to perceive the subject as a learner, not a teacher…
5. Dissolve all subjects, courses, and especially course requirements.
This proposal, all by itself, would wreck every existing educational bureaucracy. The result would be to deprive teachers of the excuses presently given for their failures and to free them to concentrate on their learners.
6. Limit each teacher to three declarative sentences per class, and fifteen interrogatives.
Every sentence above the limit would be subject to a twenty-five cent fine. The students can do the counting and the collecting.
7. Prohibit teachers from asking any questions they already know the answer to.
This proposal would not only force teachers to perceive learning from the learner's perspective, it would help them to learn how to ask questions that produce knowledge.
8. Declare a moratorium on all tests and grades.
This would remove from the hands of teachers their major weapons of coercion and would eliminate two of the major obstacles to their students' learning anything significant…
14. Require each teacher to provide some sort of evdience that he or she has had a loving relationship with at least one other human being.
If the teacher can get someone to say, "I love her (or him)", she [sic] should be retained. If she can get two people to say it, she should get a raise. Spouses need not be excluded from testifying…
16. There should be a general prohibition against the use of the following words and phrases: teach, syllabus, covering ground, IQ, make-up, test, disadvantaged, gifted, accelerated, enhancement, course, grade, score, human nature, dumb, college material and administrative necessity.