Bill Ayers Biography

Americans Who Tell the Truth
Bill Ayers
	Bill Ayers Biography Educational Theorist, Professor, Writer, Anti-War & Civil Rights Activist. b. 1944 "There is, after all, no basis for education in a democracy outside of a faith in the enduring capacity for growth in ordinary people and a faith that ordinary people … can, if they choose, change the world." William Charles (Bill) Ayers considers himself "a work in progress, swimming through a sea of contradictions;" he believes that whatever he says about anyone else or what anyone says about him, "should be thought of as partial, contingent, unfinished, and doubtful as a useful summary." From his life story we have chosen but a few events that have influenced his participation in society. What is most notable about Bill Ayers is his integrity, his determination to lead a life that is in harmony with his beliefs, his truths. Ayers has devoted his life to social justice, democracy and education, and the political and cultural aspects of schooling. He is known for his 1960s activism opposing the Vietnam War and racial injustice, as well as his current work in education reform, curriculum, and instruction. In Chicago, where he was born, Bill and his wife Bernardine Dohrn raised their three sons, Zayd, Malik, and Chesa, with whom he is most delighted because of "all that they are making of what they were made." He currently lives with Bernardine in Hyde Park, a diverse neighborhood on the Chicago South Side, and has, as he says, "made his twisty way through life with a hard, bright kernel of Chicago embedded in his heart." Ayers began his work in primary education while he was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, from which he received his B.A. in American Studies. Along with several other students, he founded The Children’s Community School, CCS, and became its director at the age of 21. CCS was a project based on Summerhill School and the Freedom Schools of the Southern Black Freedom Movement. Like the people involved with Summerhill and the Freedom Schools, Ayers and the CCS co-founders believed that children learn best when free from coercion and in an integrated, non-judgmental setting; they encouraged cooperation rather than competition. One of the major motivations of the founders of CCS was to provide a good model of an integrated school; they felt that the integrated schools that existed thus far were in many ways as racist as their segregated predecessors. As Ayers stated at the time, “Not only do we have black and white kids in the same school, but we don't make any value judgments about either of those groups of kids, because making value judgments turns out to be racist.” CCS provided a curriculum that enabled children to learn by testing reality and not by being told by a teacher what the truth is. The Children’s Community School experience had a deep and lasting influence on Ayers and much of his subsequent educational philosophy was drawn from it. In the mid-1960s Ayers became involved in the New Left and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), rising to national prominence as an SDS leader in 1968 and 1969. The mission of SDS was to influence the U.S. political system to achieve international peace and remove the threat of nuclear war. In domestic matters, it sought to eliminate racial discrimination and economic inequality, and to give trade unions greater control. In June 1969, the Weatherman, an SDS splinter group, took control of the SDS at its national convention, where Ayers was elected Education Secretary. In 1970 Ayers and others created underground collectives in major cities throughout the country. While underground, Ayers and fellow member Bernardine Dohrn married, and the two remained fugitives together, changing identities, jobs and locations. In 1973, new information emerged regarding FBI operations against the Weather Underground, all part of a series of covert and often illegal FBI projects called COINTELPRO. Because of these illegal tactics, government attorneys requested all weapons -- and bomb -- related charges be dropped against the Weather Underground, including charges against Ayers. In response to accusations that the Weather Underground was a terrorist organization, Ayers told an interviewer for the Chicago Tribune in 2001: “We weren't terrorists...we did not commit random acts of terror against people. Terrorism was what was being practiced by the United States in the countryside of Vietnam where thousands of people were being killed every week." He has also said, "While we did claim several extreme acts, they were acts of extreme vandalism against property,” and, “We killed no one and hurt no one." After leaving the underground, Ayers returned to education, obtaining Masters Degrees from Bank Street College, Teachers College at Columbia University, and Bennington College, and his doctorate at Columbia. He joined the College of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago, in 1987 and became Distinguished Professor of Education in 1999, which position he held through 2010. He is the founder of the Small Schools Workshop and the Center for Youth and Society, Ayers has written numerous books and articles, the subjects of which indicate how deeply he believes in societal equity and peace and the "enduring capacity for growth in ordinary people." His writings epitomize Ayers’ inherent insistence on telling the truth. Books include: Teaching the Personal and Political: Essays on Hope and Justice; On the Side of the Child: Summerhill Revisited; A Simple Justice; A Kind and Just Parent, Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism; Fugitive Days: A Memoir; Teaching for Social Justice: A Democracy and Education Reader; Teaching Toward Freedom: Moral Commitment and Ethical Action in the Classroom; Handbook of Social Justice in Education; To Teach; and Race Course Against White Supremacy. Bill Ayers believes that “Social justice… requires full recognition of the humanity of each person, and this requires an entirely new kind of education, one geared toward transformation rather than transmission. Transformative education asks students to become artists, actors, activists, and authors of their own lives. To change themselves, to make the world their own.” This is how he teaches and how he lives his life.	Next Portrait Previous Portrait Read essays, blog and other writing by Bill... http://billayers.org/ Youtube about the comic version of Bill's education classic , To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher , great interview that informs the thinking behind the creation of the comic. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2Uwcw2DzaY Bill working with young students having their first experiences with teaching- Wonderful interaction and realistic situations presented... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVNw3EiLdIc&feature=related Bill discussing the role of schools and school reform... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33_SjJp_0tg An essay by Bill Ayers on education- The Four Seekers and The Road to Oz should be shared with all teachers and students! How do we create school communities that are places of decency? See our curricula for an activity related to justice in schools. http://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/curriculum/justice_school.php Note: This essay is shared in AWTTT teacher training workshops. Highly recommended! The Four Seekers and the Road to Oz Teaching is intellectual and ethical work; it takes a thoughtful, reflective, and caring person to do it well. It takes a brain and a heart. The first and fundamental challenge for teachers is to embrace students as three-dimensional creatures, as distinct human beings with hearts and minds and skills and dreams and capacities of their own, as people much like ourselves. This embrace is initially an act of faith—we must assume capacity even when it is not immediately available or visible—because we work most often in schools where aggregating and grouping kids on the flimsiest evidence is considered common sense, where the toxic habit of labeling youngsters on the basis of their deficits is a commonplace. A teacher needs a brain to break through the cotton wool smothering the mind, to see beyond the blizzard of labels to this specific child, trembling and whole and real, and to this one, and to this. And a teacher needs a heart to fully grasp the importance of that gesture, to recognize in the deepest core of your being that every child is precious, each induplicable, the one and only who will ever walk the earth, deserving of the best a teacher can give—respect, awe, reverence, commitment. A teacher who takes up this fundamental challenge is a teacher working against the grain— you have got to have the nerve. All the pressures of schooling push teachers to act as clerks and functionaries—interchangeable parts in a vast and gleaming and highly rationalized production line. To teach with a heart and a brain—to see education as a deeply humanizing enterprise opening infinite possibilities for your students—requires courage. Courage is a quality nurtured in solidarity with others—it is an achievement of colleagues and allies. In order to teach with thought and care and courage, you really need a home. The four seekers lurching toward Oz provide one other lesson for us. We can all constantly work to identify obstacles to our freedom, to our fullness. The obstacles will change as we develop and grow, but there is always more to know, always more to become, more to do. In our quest we can all reach out for allies and friends to give us the strength and power to move on. And we can now know in advance that there is no wizard at the end of the road, no higher power with a magic wand to solve our all-too-human problems. Recognizing that the people with the problems are also the people with the solutions, and that waiting for the lawmakers, the system, or the union—or any other fraudulent great power hidden behind a heavy curtain—to save us or to get it right before we ourselves get it right is to wait a lifetime. We can look inside ourselves, summon strengths we never knew we had, connect up with other teachers and parents and kids to create the schools and classrooms we deserve—thoughtful places of decency, sties of peace and freedom and justice. We are on the way, then, to our real Emerald Cities. In your classroom as in your life, the relationships you build are most important. Make them mutual. Listen with the possibility of being changed; speak with the possibility of being heard.

Americans Who Tell the Truth