Article: Anarchist Pedagogies in the Neoliberal University – Liberation discourse and pushing radical assessment onto the agenda

by Luke Ray Di Marco Campbell

1st July 2024

The following is an adapted version of a spoken intervention at the Radical Pedagogies in Higher Education And Community Learning conference, co-organised by the Education, Languages, and Internationalisation Network (ELINET) and Glasgow Refugee, Asylum and Migration Network (GRAMNet). The free-to-attend space was intended to:

‘explore radical pedagogies (encompassing the widest range of transformative teaching and learning pedagogies including those you might describe as anti-oppressive, social justice-oriented, anti-racist, activist, decolonial, and anti-colonial), and how it is practiced’.

With a view to

‘cultivat[ing] a vibrant space for discussing and sharing our ideas and practices that challenge conventional teaching and learning models, and normative ways of knowing, being and relating’.

My contribution specifically occurred from a deeply situated position as a Lecturer in Community Development informed, largely, by anarcha-feminism. For those unfamiliar with the field of Community Development, we operate a deeply practice-based programme combining theoretical exploration in-class with practice placements in local communities which take place via partnerships between the university, a placement supervisor at the organisation, and the student to ensure the safety and well-being of all involved, whilst promoting a higher standard of practice. By way of a rough overview:

‘the professional and voluntary trajectories of our students are immense – encompassing youth work, adult learning, homelessness and housing, addiction-based service, language acquisition, community-based healthcare, equalities, community meal and food pantries, outdoor education, and mental health services’ (Di Marco Campbell, Forthcoming A).

Yet this extends far further into disaster relief, science centres, advocacy work, anti-hate crime, sporting interventions, creative arts, digital literacy, and much more. The placement component is intended to be for the benefit of all involved, with an outright commitment that the learning activities that occur on placement must not be negatively disruptive or risk causing harm to the concerned communities.

 

About the Programme

Quite fortunately, the contribution immediately prior to mine, ‘Correct Me If I’m Wrong … Radical Pedagogies and the Neoliberal Academy’ (Brown, 2024), considered the dearth of opportunities to bring radical interventions into the neoliberal university, permitting my work to immediately propose potential methods for carving out space that might, little-by-little, break with overly prescriptive curricula and assessment. By way of reminder, this meeting brought together educators, researchers, administration staff, and postgraduate students to collectively explore radical pedagogies amidst the constraints of the modern neoliberal university, meaning that many of us were approaching the sessions with a view to fostering practical steps to advance radical practices. As such, my efforts considered how to create spaces for our learners to flourish in directions they wish to explore, whilst still ensuring they’re still in a position to meet the marking criteria to enable a pass on any assessed materials. With the shift from ‘student’ to ‘customer’ already common discourse – whether by way of critique from disgruntled educators, or with a view to fostering a ‘positive customer experience’ – the drive to, in essence, do better by our learners and to be more sincere with ourselves was palpable.

 

Anarchist(ic) Interventions in Higher and Further Education

As is the standard experience for those of us bringing anarchist ideas into new environments, misinformation and misconceptions around such ideas and pedagogies can sometimes make for quite hostile environments – even amongst those who consider themselves rascal pedagogues or activists, with the approach(es) ‘pos[ing] a direct threat to power structures’ (Anarchist Pedagogies Collective, 2023). I am, therefore, immensely grateful to the event organisers, Deniz Ortactepe Hart and Teresa Piacentini, for the opportunity to enter into dialogue with colleagues on these topics. Thus, by way of easing the collected community of participants into the subject, I utilised the late bell hooks’ (2009) reflections on the impact and legacy of anarchism through her interview with the Federación Anarquista Rosa Negra, whilst highlighting that many attendees had likely encountered anarchist thinkers without necessarily noting the extent of their anarchist beliefs – Colin Ward, David Graeber, etc.. Specifically, hooks argued that:

‘[p]art of the heart of anarchy is [to] dare to go against the grain of the conventional ways of thinking about our realities’.

Since hooks is an already familiar and respected educator to most, this served as a logical entry point in leading towards an open and anarchist-informed dialogue on ‘radical practice’ within higher and further education, doing away with the clichéd derisions of anarchism as ‘archaic’ and ‘chaotic’ (Ward, 1973a; DeLeon, 2012; Trenwith, 2007). Rather, as we know, anarchist pedagogy is underpinned by principles of ‘freedom, mutual aid, rationality, and a complete rejection of hierarchies and rulers’ (Anarchist Pedagogies Collective, 2023).

A significant element of Steve Brown’s contribution had examined his frustrations with entering what he had once hoped would be a radical and freeing space (the university), only to encounter a great deal of frustration with limitations and resistance to supposedly radical approaches. As with my use of hooks’ work in framing my contribution, Brown cited Henry Giroux’s (2011, p. 3) advocacy of education working to create ‘citizens who are critical, self-reflective, knowledgeable, and willing to make moral judgments and act in a socially responsible way’ – emphasising that this should, Brown hoped, be the ambition of educators within and beyond the university. He further stressed that many involved in higher and further education ‘regard [this] as controversial and radical’. Whilst, as Zandra Yeaman (Curator of Discomfort at the Hunterian Gallery) would later stress, in certain domains of practice (particularly practice-based programmes), many of these aspects are the norm, yet, we’re still striving to disrupt what can often default to a soft ‘c’ conservative and deeply prescriptive outcome-driven form of education. I’m hyperconscious that the programmes I engage with involve far fewer students in comparison to those filling lecture halls with hundreds of learners, and, as such, our classrooms tend towards what many would better recognise as tutorials (supplementary spaces for assessed discussion) – certain spaces are likely distinct in terms of what may be possible within them.

Specifically though, during my session, I worked to foster a dialogue on approaches that I and others in Community Development have enacted within our educational programmes that permit opportunities for so-called radical practice to take place whilst still meeting the requirements of a university degree programme with all the prescribed learning outcomes and credits that must be achieved to garner a ‘pass’. As such, the commentary considered the need to address ‘some of th[ose] key difficulties in moving anarchist education from theory to practice’ (Anarchist Pedagogies Collective, 2023) and what liberation models can actually look like when they are willing to accept elements of the once feared anarchist pedagogies. Indeed, I felt it useful to highlight the Anarchist Pedagogies Collective (2023) recognition that ‘[i]t is complicated, frustrating, and yet enriching to be an educator in last-stage capitalist societies’. This actually serves as a promise of hope; that rather than seeing ourselves as operating in ‘late stage capitalism’ (as popularised by Marxist Ernest Mandel), to consider ourselves as part of a ‘last-stage’ enables a belief that we can collective work towards creating something better. Thus, in promoting an anarchist-influenced approach to education, democratising the learning space to the greatest possible extent is integral – sincerely treating the learners as ‘experts’ of their own contexts, and recognising them as co-educators in the classroom space when they’re afforded the opportunity to share their experiences. The limitations of this approach were also noted concerning how we need to co-create such an environment, dismantling the culture of top-down lecturing that many students have experienced previously in educational settings – in essence, killing the authority as far as possible within the constraints of what ultimately remains a credit-bearing programme.

The typical Community Development classroom, I emphasised, should – and in many cases does – strive to value the students’ expertise on the topics discussed in-class. As noted in my forthcoming chapter on engaging ‘sensitive topics’ in the classroom, core to fostering spaces for ‘radical’ dialogue means recognising that:

‘histories of marginalisation and experiences of oppressions are common (migration and displacement, being subjected to hate crime, poverty, and broader precarity), resulting in a diversity of insights, understandings and concerns that participants bring to the classroom’ (Di Marco Campbell, Forthcoming A).

In this environment, though I have my own experiences personally and professionally with substance abuse, social in/exclusion, queer lives, social movements, and sports-based interventions, those are precisely that – my own. The students are experts in their contexts far more than I am ever likely to be, even when there are certain overlaps. To consider examples of my work, I can detail my experiences supporting Roma communities concerning issues with the state’s approach to funding projects engaging ‘marginalised ‘ communities, but that’s the extent of it (Hay et al., 2020); or I can outline the linguistic co-option of Romani words into derogatory terms in the English language (Campbell, 2020a); and I can offer insights into my co-creative involvement with community responses to the specific crises manifesting during Covid-19 (Campbell, 2020b). Yet, these can only ever be my experiences and explorations of the precise contributions that I was positioned to make in collaboration with many others (encompassing all the opportunities and limitations these entailed). As such, my role (and it’s a perception I sincerely believe many around me in that conference room and involved in university education share), is about communicating ideas, concepts, frameworks, and approaches that we all might learn from. Not to impose or even permit, but to encourage.

The limitations of core reading lists had already been raised earlier in the day by co-presenting doctoral students Shruti Shukla and Jeehan Ashercook (2024) during their session on ‘Pedagogies: Collaborative Decolonial Approaches to Learning and Teaching’, during which they advocated embedding more radical and non-Western texts into the curriculum as additional materials (‘secondary readings’) towards decolonisation. An fetishising overemphasis on the ‘core’ theorists in our fields limits the scope for student reflection. Certainly core theorists like Paulo Freire deserve a place within Community Development – with few likely to argue against this – but, as I stressed, many of us encounter his work through a distanced lens, unfamiliar as we are with Latin American contexts. The lessons, philosophies, and perspectives are immensely useful, but to restrict ourselves to a canon of required texts risks creating a statistic rather than a radical or living field. I shared an example of how I’ve sought to reshape the suggested or supplementary materials on our learning platforms by offering brief contextualisation(s) for the works. For example, I shared this screengrab from the course I teach on Collective Learning and Action for Social Justice:

 

We see here that Peterson Roberto da Silva’s (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina) contribution to the specifically anarchist environment of the Anarchist Studies Conference meant students could take an idea already covered in the core content for the course (e.g. group identity) and explore that from precise power dynamic as detailed in his recorded video. This approach has yielded significant success with several learners advising me that they found it helpful in permitting them to make informed decisions on which additional materials they engaged with, whilst I’ve already witnessed a significant growth in the number of students utilising broader materials within their submissions over the last year. During the 2023/24 academic sessions, I’ve worked to expand this approach by reaching out to colleagues with precise expertise (practice, theoretical, lived) on a given issue to hear from them about why they consider a specific paper, blog, video, etc. to be of relevance to our work. Increasingly, graduate teaching colleagues and students have also contributed to expanding our reading lists, bringing new insights into the learning space and including a personalised introduction to the content – thereby exposing each other (and myself) to new insights and perspectives.

Expanding upon this, I closed out my delivery by sharing examples of where we in the Community Development department have been able to diversify assessments to permit greater autonomy amongst the students in terms of the topics they consider and in detailing how their works are ideologically-informed. The three examples I showcase covered zines as an assessment tool, the co-creation of new activities during observed deliveries, and opportunity to undertake visits to organisational, campaign, or social movements of interest. The zine format allows for alternative approaches to writing for academic audiences through collage art and other visual mediums, experimenting with typeface art, and creative forms of writing (poetry, storytelling, interviews, etc.). I highlighted the incredible interactive games a group of students had created – citing a specific example of how a team of students adapted Snakes & Ladders into an activity for exploring safe injection sites with the ‘benefits’ (ladders) including community support, the impact on increased safety, and the challenges (snakes) seeing ‘hit piece’ articles published in local media as an attack on the initiative. Finally, these organisational or campaign visits – made possible by the generosity of our hosts – enabled learners to visit initiatives that may not be recognised as valid for practice placement by the institution or the accrediting body for undertaking long-term practice placements (or lack the means to do so). Whilst the students still need to address certain elements of the university’s imposed outcomes framework to achieve their pass, these approaches start the process of liberating education – even if this shift away from traditional essays or exams remains partial. In sporting terms, we’re achieving marginal gains.

Wrapping up, I stressed the urgent need ‘radical educators’ to (co-)create our own works that push these ideologies and approaches into the academy via the literature – plugging the gaps we identify. I offered two examples where I’ve had publications released on recognising the extensive legacy Community Development has latched onto regarding mutual aid (Di Marco Campbell, 2023); and a response article to a volume that struggled to sincerely grapple with its own theme of ‘solidarity’ (Di Marco Campbell, 2021). Recognising that aforementioned centring of Freire within the Community Development canon, I shared my own example of attempting to diversify core canon – an article currently under review at a leading journal for my sector. The contribution highlights that many of Freire’s ‘leading’ ideas were actually present, even if not by name, within Kropotkin’s (1885) ‘What Geography Ought to Be’, many decades earlier:

 

Closing Reflections

Returning to hooks, I feel confident that this intervention went some way to dismantling those misperceptions of anarchism amongst these educators who hold positions of contextual power. Just as she argued that ‘we have to talk about educating the people for critical consciousness about what anarchy is’ (2009), the familiarity many already held for hooks – and the ‘confessions’ several made to me that they had never encounter hooks’ reflections on anarchism – starting from the familiar and veering into the radical ‘new’, I hope, will lead to future engagement with anarchist pedagogies, reflections, and practices by those best-placed to influence approaches to learning within the university classrooms.

As Logue and Mayo (2009) outlined, ‘anarchist thinking on education can help to show both the continued relevance of radical and creative thinking, and that anarchist thought has been part of the development of oppositional, critical, collaborative, teaching and learning projects’. Whilst anarchist approaches to education may be intimidating to some, ignoring or dismissing an entire school of thought would be antithetical to the very practice(s) of ‘radical pedagogy’. Once again, I wish to stress that this is by no means a static process, but one that remains under constant development, engaging our students in considering how we further progress these initiatives – including methods to liberate the many incredible works they produce on the degree programmes that historically disappear into the void once marked. One such example proposed by a student recently suggested the department rent a table at the future Glasgow Zine Fair, creating an opportunity for students to showcase their works, engaging others in dialogue on the topics of interest, and freely distributing revised copies of their work – now freed from the marking assessment criteria.

In the same manner that I ended the session, I extend an invitation to explore radical pedagogies through written texts or in dialogue for this very blog.

 

[If you would like to take up Luke Ray’s invitation to contribute, you can drop them an email at: LukeRay.Campbell@glasgow.ac.uk]

 

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