Liberate your life -- smash your school! The public schools are slowly killing every kid in them, stifling their creativity and individuality making them into non-persons. If you are a victim of this, one of the things you can do is fight back.
This is not written for people who are not yet sure whether school is good or bad. It is written for students that realize the way that compulsory education and grades destroy the natural curiosity so many children feel ... who realize how the tracking system keeps the poor people and minorities in our society on the bottom while keeping the rich and powerful on the top ... who realize the danger of teaching complete obedience to authority and who are fed up with the racism and sexism in schools. It is written for students who have 'gone through channels' trying to correct these problems and who are tired of helplessly waiting while the schools destroy more and more minds each day. It is written for young people who realize that because they are trapped in school they don't have a chance to learn what they need to know to create a free and good life.
Before trying any of the ideas in here you should think about the effect they will have in view of the situation in your particular area. Not all of them will be effective at all times in all areas. If you think of other ideas please send them to us so we can print them in future editions.
The following section is reprinted from the 'School Stoppers Textbook', a small section of the 'How to Revolt Handbook', the fourth book of.... 'The Blacklisted News'. OK here we go . . . 102 ways to trash your school.
1. Get a syringe (minus needle) or similar device. Mix both tubes of epoxy glue with a little rubbing alcohol. You now have about half an hour to fill locks, door jams, etc. before glue hardens. If you can't get the epoxy glue and syringe a tube of airplane cement can also be used although it is not as permanent.
2. An alternative use for the syringe is to pretend to shoot up while a teacher is watching. If they speak to you tell them you have to do it because school is so horrible.
3. Call the school and leave the phone off the hook. The way some (but not all) phone systems work this will tie up their phone for as long as yours is off the hook. Great when you are pissed at a teacher.
4. Go on strike. Say school is 12 years of brainwashing without pay. Parade around for a week or so until you get your demands.
5. Draw or paste something 'obscene' on pull-down wall-maps or movie screens.
6. Get some of the punch cards that your school uses for taking attendance. Punch new holes in them either with a keypunch machine or a screwdriver. Then switch the cards with others wherever they are stored. If you can figure out the code the cards are punched by this has even more possibilities. You can often be just as effective without actually re-punching the cards by redistributing them a few days after you collect them (particularly when they're used for attendance).
7. Start an information service to get new students opinions and warnings about the teachers and administrators before enrollment day. Get a bunch of friends together and make a newsletter for all the kids that are first coming in to the school. Like tell about the dick teachers and such. Tell about how to cause carnage. Example: Get a 10th grade group and write one of the 9th graders.
8. Bad food? A good old food riot does the trick!
9. In gym class or in hallways between classes, conduct massive searches for 'lost' contacts and rings, etc. Anything small as hell! A good one for contacts is to start yelling all of a sudden while the halls are full. Scream "Don’t move!! I lost my contact!!" Get EVERYBODY to look for it. Have massive searches for 'lost' contact lenses telling people not to walk through the hall or 'you might step on it'.
10. If your school has a dress code, which most do, do something that doesn’t violate it, but pisses off teachers. Like, I found a loophole. You cannot color your hair with wash-off color, but you can permanently!! Just get a dark color and when the teacher starts bitching, say its permanent, and the teacher can't do anything!! They wont very-well kick you out for hair color!!
11. Free all the animals in the biology classroom!
12. Write a 'consumer report' on the 'education' you've been consuming. Then hand them out at faculty and parent/teacher associations!
13. Start BIG rumors about teachers. Get students and/or parents to go to the school trying to get these rumors confirmed!! This causes chaos in the office while you can roam around, or do other things listed here!!
14. Perform a citizens arrest on a teacher or administrator. Drag him/her in front of the school and put him/her on trial for screwing with the minds of youth. (This would be an excellent guerilla theatre action).
15. Rip off dishes and silverware from the cafeteria, towels from the gym, stencils and paper from the duplicating room, layout equipment from the art and drafting departments, tools from the wood shop, and light bulbs from the sockets, lots of pencils, TP, etc. from the school, then donate it to your local anarchist group.
16. During lunch turn on and light all the gas jets in the science labs.
17. Demand to see your school records on file. (Everyone can see them.)
18. You can make a very effective fuse by inserting a non-filter cigarette in a book of matches so that it touches the head of some matches and will ignite them when it burns down that far. Then loosely crumple paper around the matches and cigarettes so that they are hidden. Toss it in a wastebasket or any other area with a lot of papers preferably in the office. It takes about 5 minutes to ignite -- by then you can be on the other side of the building. Practice this at home before trying it.
19. Have giant coughing or sneezing epidemics in class or study hall.
20. Rub lipstick, glue, Vaseline, or shit onto the doorknobs of the school's administrative offices.
21. Swallow some snake bite antidote then walk into the principal's office. Most types of antidotes are harmless -- make sure you get that kind. After a few seconds, its puke time!! It usually makes you up-chuck about 90% of the contents of your stomach. Vomit all over everything, do so all over his carpet, desk, clothing, etc. then apologize profusely.
Get your local cohorts together and do this one: Buy a lot of the snake-bite stuff. Wait until after lunch and get about 30 kids to swallow it. WHOA!! Infected lunch!! Serious lawsuit!
22. Pick up some dog training liquid at any pet store -- it smells like concentrated piss. And if you can't figure out what to do with that then you shouldn't be reading this.
23. Raid the teachers mailboxes. Get all your hated teachers stuff, and make copies of all of the juicy-stuff. Then spread it out.
24. Leave notes around the school saying things like "Tuesday's the day!" or "Do you have the gas yet???!?" The latter works best and causes wide-panic among teachers. Be original!!
25. Impersonate parental voices and make irate (pissed off) phone calls to the school board.
26. Make a super stink bomb out of Hydrogen Sulfide and put it somewhere in the ventilating system. This has cleared school buildings for days.
27. If your school has a suspended ceiling (a ceiling composed of rectangles or squares resting on a frame so that the rectangles can be pushed up) you can put a dead animal -- or anything else -- above them. Or put it into empty lockers and glue them shut.
28. Write messages on lockers with permanent marker saying 'this locker will self-destruct if opened for inspection'.
29. Give your school a subscription to every magazine you can think of. Just get those Business Reply Mail cards, fill them out, and send them in!! Pretty soon, when schools don’t pay up, the magazine will bombard their mailbox with bills!!
30. Print up false notices frequently using the same format as the school uses (or steal school stationary) and distribute them to the teachers' mailboxes. Eventually they'll never know what to believe.
31. Make your own passes, forms, tickets, etc. or lift them out of teachers' desks.
32. Need a signature? Collect things that have teachers' signatures on them. Paste them all down on a sheet of white paper and either xerox or print up a bunch of copies. Forge when useful. (When getting started you might put a piece of carbon paper under the signature with the carbon paper facing down on what you want signed. Then trace over the name with a steady relaxed hand. Practice makes perfect.)
33. Do some revolutionary wall painting. All you need is a can of spray paint (red?) plus a little imagination and courage. Then write your favorite slogans on walls, sidewalks, blackboards, etc. If you are a perfectionist you can make a stencil, but that limits the size of what you can do. WEAR GLOVES or you will certainly get tell-tale paint on your spraying finger.
34. Teacher being a dick? Print up a rat-sheet. Put their phone number, address, social security number(for the hackers) and then spread them out. Put instructions to call them....late......very late. Order stuff to their house. pizzas, plumbers...think big!
35. Break into your school at night and burn it down. Yes, this is serious. But, it's the biggest thing you can do. To do this, you have to be inside, because it will burn a long time before anybody notices. This is easy to do. Wait until the janitors have left, then go into the janitors closet. Hang out there until you know EVERYBODY is gone. Then come out, and do you as you wish. Another trick to get in is to bust out a window about 3 days before you do it. Like smash a window on Thursday and go in on Saturday, when nobody is there. Be careful not to leave fingerprints -- wear gloves all the time. Once inside make sure the walls will light well by placing loose paper or wood around them, or squirting lighter fluid, kerosene, or gasoline onto them. If a lot of burnable boxes are stacked in one area spread them around. Start the fire from the inside of the building so it will take longer before it can be seen from the windows. Make sure the fire has a way to travel from one burnable area to another. Of course you should wear dark clothes and know exactly where you are going when you split. Check out info on arson put out by the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front for more details.
36. Get hold of a film to be shown in class and splice in parts of another movie of your own. Most of them are in the library. Get one, then take it home. About 10 second intervals are good. Things like XXX movies, safe sex films, things like that. Another good one is to find out what the name of the filmstrip is and tear it up. Not total destruction, just enough to piss off a teacher and make it longer than it is supposed to be. Wastes class time.
37. Clog up the drains of sinks with clay then turn on the water after everyone leaves school.
38. Teachers often leave grade books, conduct sheets, and attendance records unguarded. Take every chance to help yourself.
39. Put up posters all around the school. See the Wheat Team site for wheat paste recipes, posters, etc.
40. You could ice-pick tires, key cars, smash windshields, put superglue in key holes, stick objects to clog up exhaust pipes in school faculty cars.
41. Start wailing in the halls.
42. Let loose certain farm animals in the school. My favorite is chickens because, once a chicken is pissed off, you better leave it alone!! Other choices are pigeons, skunks, ferrets, etc.
43. Create the 'WEB OF THREAD' in your classroom. Have everybody in your class bring a spool of thread -- with extras for dopes who forget. While the teacher is gone tie your thread onto something and pass the spools around till you run out, winding thread around everything. (It is best to pick on one of your more dull-witted teachers for this one). When your teacher goes bonkers explain that you did it in the name of art.
44. Get some oregano. Roll it up and sell it. Also, get some aspirin or other medication and file off the name.
45. Put Calcium Carbide in a dissolving capsule and drop it in a toilet. Flush the toilet and leg it!! In case you were wondering, calcium carbide can be obtained from most joke shops and other stores, science labs, etc. Calcium Carbide reacts violently with water, quickly producing large amounts of HIGHLY FLAMMABLE gas and bursting pipes, etc. as soon as the water dissolves the capsule. Great fun.
46. Ride a bicycle down a busy hall.
47. Save your book reports and essays. Give them to other students to use next year or re-use them yourself with different teachers.
48. Play with lighting, climate control, and microphone controls during 'important' indoor assemblies.
49. Flush things down the toilets (preferably faculty johns) like balloons filled with air, spoons, baseballs, M80's, huge amounts of toilet paper, etc. Then build an ark.
50. Start a campaign to have the letter Z appear everywhere as the mark of angry students. Then go buy some black markers and play Zorro!
51. You can short-circuit the school's wiring by taking a regular plug with a short cord attached. Connect the 2 wires with a switch between them. Plug it in, turn the switch on, and you've blown a fuse. Turn it off, pull it out, and try another. You don't have to use the switch, but if you don't sometimes the current will arc and weld the plug to the socket.
52. Set up a fake school and hire away the lousy teachers. This takes some work. You can also put up notices inviting the entire school to a going away party for a teacher who isn't really leaving.
53. Read the school budget. Reprint and distribute a list of the stupid expenditures to parents.
54. Have a friend and you act like you are fighting. Then, when the principal calls you down, act like you are going to work it out. You will miss at least thirty minutes of class!
55. During some important test (SAT/ACT/etc. ) on each subject have some student who is good at that subject stand up and read the correct answers for as long as possible. When they're finished or silenced have someone else stand up and do the same thing. The test results will be worthless and it will have to be given over at great cost to the school.
56. Take down the American flag in front of the school and put up one of your own. The best way to do this is to lower the flag that's already up replace it with your flag and cut the rope about a foot below where the flag is attached. Then tie a slip knot around the other end of the rope that is hanging down to raise the flag. At this point there is no way your flag can be lowered without someone climbing up the flagpole.
57. Put alarm clocks in various lockers set on 'loudest'. Set the alarm clocks so they will go off about every 10 minutes then close and lock the lockers.
58. Have a group of people march around the school with a flag singing the Star Spangled Banner. If the administration tries to punish you, telephone your local radio stations and patriotic groups and complain that your school is being run by pinkos.
59. Since schools have outlawed gum. Get everyone to chew gum one day. Then at a certain time, you should ALL blow a bubble and pop it. At the same time.
60. Many schools have automatic sprinkler systems which go off automatically when sensors in the ceiling feel too much heat. Find the sensors and hold up a lighter to them.
61. Persuade the graduating class to use their senior gift money for something useful, subversive, or destructive.
62. Reprint School Stoppers Textbook in your underground paper or make it into a zine and pass it around.
63. Demand that all equipment being stored rather than being used be made available to students.
64. If your school won't have a teacher evaluation, make up some forms and do it yourself. Compile the result and publicize them to students, faculty, school board, and community.
65. Use your 'free choice' book reports, term papers, etc. to read radical literature and further the revolutionary education of you and your class.
66. Have a student lie on the ground. Crowd around him/her. When a teacher comes scream 's/he jumped' and point to the roof or third floor window. Mumble 'Fred dared her/him' or 'Maybe it was LSD.'
67. Make an address list of disliked adults in your school. Answer sex ads for them -- or order them a few gross items to their home (C.O.D. of course).
68. Toss handfuls of marbles on the floors of busy halls, assemblies, graduation ceremonies, weddings, funerals.
69. Steal cafeteria trays or plates, burn large holes in them, and turn them into the school washer saying 'I guess the food did it'.
70. Leave phony letters of resignation from teachers or administrators on the principal's desk.
71. Get all your friends to always carry screwdrivers around with them and slowly dismantle the school.
72. Lots of bomb scares tend to break up the boredom especially during exams or on beautiful days. Make C4. Or fake anyway. Get some thick, gray clay. Make sure it is thick, and semi-pliable. Stick a clock and some wires to it. Put it in a open, yet hard to see place. Like a windows frame or a locker. A good trick is to put it in a random locker. Then call the school, tell them they have 2 hours to find it. If they don’t, they can kiss the hall goodbye. TOTAL panic. I mean, cops, media, teachers, and everything!! Or you can just call in from a pay phone and leave a bomb threat. It will probably have the same effect. Leave no prints, don't get caught!
73. Photograph teachers and administrators constantly -- even without film.
74. If you've got the nerve, piss in your pants while giving an oral report.
75. Tap intro the schools intercom. This is not easy. First you must find the main box or whatever. Should be outside. Open 'er up. Look for interesting wires and splice, then hook up a mic, radio, etc.. Now you have your own guerilla radio station!! Play on!!
76. Drop large bottles of ether in science class.
77. Hang your teacher! Hang a hangman's noose from a tree - make a dummy and hang the dummy from the noose. Pin notes on it with the teachers name. To add realism put holes in the body then let diluted ketchup trickle down.
78. Newspaper stands in buildings are usually left unguarded. Take out papers and replace with dirty comics or papers.
79. Put a rotten apple or stale sandwich on teacher's desk.
80. If your school intercom has phones that connect into the intercom switchboard, put a small magnet either where the cord comes out of the handset or in the part where you hear. If the intercom just has a speaker, put the magnet near or on one of the electrical connections of the speaker. In either case it will short out the system. It may take weeks for them to find the trouble.
81. Take the door of the administration offices off its hinges but leave it standing there so that when the principal tries to open the door in the morning it will have a slightly crushing effect.
82. Have everyone bring their pets to school to show the teacher.
83. Draw anti-good guy signs or other obscenities on those big-ass white sheets teachers use to show projections on. My favorite is to draw a big anarchy symbol on it, so the teacher gets nuts!
84. Get some eye drops and put it in the milk. About four drops of Visine in somebody’s milk should do the trick well. All this does is some serious shitting!
84. Laxatives. Just the word strikes fear in teachers hearts! Get some laxatives. Crush them up. Go into the teachers lounge, and put some in food or drinks or leave a coated burrito, etc. Some teacher is bound to pick up and eat the coated food! WARNING: Too much ex-Lax can make you V-E-R-Y sick. Death. Get the picture?
85. Go in the library and when the worker isn’t looking, destroy books. Set them on fire, rip them up, etc.
86. Crash your schools LAN. This can usually be done by turning off the power of the server and then turning it on and off REALLY fast.
87. While in the computer lab at the school, try to login under a teacher. Usually this can be done by getting a teachers login and password. Install a virus.
88. Take pictures of teachers in embarrassing situations. Sell the pics.
89. Break into a teachers house and steal something of value. The next day, leave that item on the teachers desk with a note saying-"You've been warned."
89. Get the combination (or master key) of a row of lockers. Then, open all the lockers. Get at one end of the row and hold your hand out. Run forward, slamming each of the lockers. Makes a helluva noise!!
90. Get a bunch of boys to wear earrings. When the school tries to make you take them out, tell them that under federal law, the public school system CAN NOT make you take them out, for that is what we call DISCRIMINATION. Girls can wear them.
91. Bring boxes of cereal or dried mashed potatoes to school. Open the boxes and start shaking the contents all around the halls, gym floor, etc.
92. Eat most of your lunch. Pull out one of your own hairs and put it on your lunch, saying it wasn't yours. Then demand a new full tray. You could try this at restaurants too.
93. Drop things down the school air conditioning system. You know, the big heat pump things.
94. While at a A/C unit, look for a little box that it is connected to. Open it up, and flip the switch inside to "Off".
95. Leave a dirty magazine (Penthouse, Playboy, etc.) in a teachers desk. Report the teacher to the principal.
96. Start giant spitball wars during a movie in class.
97. Go to your local hardware store. Look around for a brand of Fire Ant Killer called "Orthene". Shoplift it. This stuff STINKS!! Sprinkle some of the white powder wherever you wanna cause disruption.
98. Claim you got bit by a spider or some other poisonous bug at school. File a lawsuit against the school.
99. Get a blank check form a teacher. Get the account number and transit number. Any cardist should be able to cause some hell with that!!
100. Same as above, except get the teachers Credit Card information!!
101. Get a few thousand plastic forks. This takes a while, but worth it. Once you have the forks, go to a teachers house. Stick the forks in their yard. All thousands of them!! This is hell to pick up and funny as hell to watch!!
102. Dropping Out or Battling from within the school beast? Perhaps the greatest thing you can do to a school is: Go! Think about it. How can you do these things if you don’t go? Hell, it costs the school money when you go and sabotage it! So, break out your books, and at least ACT like you care! Of course, public schools don't get paid if you don't show up. And fuck, schools sucks, so if you want to drop out and join the Rebel Alliance to fight the Empire send a donation to our buddies at the Oak and Cactus Distro for the zine 'Dropping Out' for some tips on the subject from a CrimethInc special agent.
For some more fun Yippee tips on survival from within this prison known as Amerikkka, check out Steal this Book