PAPERWEIGHT OF THE MONTH. DECEMBER 1969. [caption title]

Monmouth, Oregon: The Teacher Paper, 280 N. Pacific Avenue, 1969. Single sheet, 56 x 29 cm., printed on both sides. Recto prints an illustration, signed in type by "RAB," of a naked, chubby "Administrator Obsoletus / Semper Vulgaris," wearing only a wreath of leaves about his bald head, perched on the backs of his oppressed teachers, all assembled on a crumbling marble platform. Verso contains the teachers manifesto: "for underground teachers: the New Guerilla Manual," listing 162 tactics designed to generate "support from parents whose kids are getting shafted by the schools... eliminate barriers isolating good teachers from one another... [and] all are concerned with humanizing the schools. If you want to find out where you and your school fit, just try No. 36 below...." [tactic no. 36 reads: "Post the Guerilla Manual on the faculty bulletin board."] Printed at the bottom of the manual is a warning "to the administrator and/or teacher who removes this poster from the bulletin board: you are the reason this manual even came into existence. Think about it." Old fold lines, two thumbnail sized chips at margins, one of which affects two of the numbers in the manual, otherwise a very good example.
Many of the "tactics" were concerned with activism on the part of teachers in support of their own rights and those of their students, and "[a]pplying any given tactic may prove a conservative, liberal, or radical act." For example: "Alert students to placing mousetraps in their lockers on locker check day;" "Sabotage the course requirement system by inviting state department people to classes;" "Arrange ACLU presentations for kids about legal rights;" "Set up a phony school and hire away all the crummy teachers;" "Forget about the cirruculum for a day and talk about the good books you've read recently;" "Insist on a Black Studies program in your lily-white school;" "Plant grass in the chalk trays;" [and numerous others, both amusing and pointed]. The "Teacher Paper" was one of a group of alternative or anti-establishment organizations attempting to change traditional public and private schools. [see: Alan Gorr's book "Problems in Today's Education," (Ardent Media: 1973)]. One listing found on OCLC: Michigan State.