Excerpts from the RC journal COLLEAGUE
Colleague Commitment
As a full-fledged human being, I promise to think and respect thinking; to allow no invalidation of any scholar or teacher, including myself; to refuse to be isolated from my colleagues, or to act as an agent of oppression; and to boldly apply my full knowledge and power to the creation of a just world.
Colleague No. 5, page 72.
Draft Working-Class Faculty Commitment
I promise to work for the liberation of my working-class people everywhere - male and female, young and old, black and white, Jew and Gentile, Polish and German, Asian and Latino, Irish and Sicilian. I will, from now on, celebrate my brilliance and claim my complete worth as a human being. I will stand among colleagues as a proud example of the beauty, intelligence, power, and endurance of my people. I will work to end all forms of working-class oppression in higher education, especially the belief that some people are smarter than others. I will make higher education a force for working-class liberation, and I will settle for nothing less than the complete liberation of all people.
Colleague No. 5, page 72.
Becoming People's Intellectuals
Humankind as a whole depends for many of its advances on the accumulation and systematization of knowledge, on the sharing of this information widely and on its transmittal to succeeding generations. We have every reason as intellectuals to be proud of playing a key role in these processes. The professor, the professional, the intellectual, the artist, the writer or the musician deserves greater satisfaction and self-esteem than has ever been allowed him or her by a society which has instead parceled out recognition in competitive, controlling, manipulative ways. Just in the nature of what we're doing, we deserve to have enormous pride and satisfaction in ourselves. We perform a key role for all humankind! The present isolation and segregation of intellectuals from working people, however, is ridiculous. We can find ways to end this isolation ....
Harvey Jackins
Colleague No. 2, page 9.
Can co-counseling tools be effective against the isolation and other relationship problems which tend to accompany the faculty position? If so, how?
Can RC be effective in enhancing individual intellectual activity, research, teaching?
Can co-counseling be used to break down insularity, cliques, and factions among faculty members and turn department staffs into cooperative teams, expediting each other's progress and reinforcing each other's power?
Can we place RC theory and practice in the possession of students to enhance their learning abilities?
Can we use our faculty positions to train RC teachers and organizers from among our students to penetrate the general population effectively and establish RC communities everywhere?
Harvey Jackins
Colleague No. 1, page i.
Draft Statement for an RC Faculty Policy
... As college and university faculty we have many important common bonds. We respect and enjoy learning. We are committed to assisting our students. We can be a positive force for all humanity by spreading and developing our knowledge and skills. We play similar roles in, and have similar problems with, the economic systems and societies in which we live and work.
As faculty using Re-evaluation Counseling, we seek human re-emergence, e.g. to regain the full use of our intelligence, our humanness, and our full human potential, and to assist others to do the same.
Initial Steps for the Achievement of our Goals
A general program for the creation of an education system and a society fully supportive of our intelligence and humanness will develop in detail as we engage in concrete work. We must also seek immediate, practical goals. We can use our efforts to achieve short-range goals, not only to make limited improvements in our and others' lives, but to increase our understanding of our situation and of one another, to develop skills and structures for working together, and to achieve fuller and wider unity.
While engaging in immediate efforts, we will always need to stress our ultimate goal of creating a society which is in keeping with basic human capacities for thought, cooperation, and exciting interaction with the rest of the universe.
Five areas in which we can direct our initial efforts are: spreading knowledge, developing knowledge, making knowledge accessible to all groups and all people, developing unity among ourselves, and winning allies among all other groups....
Pam Roby
Colleague No. 5, pages 73-4.