Anarchist Pedagogies (the book)

This post is a brief summary and review or Anarchist Pedagogies: Collective Actions, Theories and Critical Reflections on Education (PM Press, 2012). This book is a collection of essays edited by Robert Haworth, (at the time of publication) a professor of education at West Chester University. This book was a promising entry to close this gap in anarchist theory in practice, but unfortunately it has not really been surpassed by other English-language books on the topic since it appeared.

The book serves as a decent introduction to the topic for folks coming from either branches of anarchist organizing that want to deepen their knowledge of the tradition, or also for educators that may be wondering about the anarchist roots of many familiar teaching practices. Highlights from the book include:

• Chapter 1: Justin Mueller's essay that gives a good survey of the philosophical underpinnings of anarchist education, and how to understand it in relation to other "alternative" pedagogies. This essay is sort of like a brief summary of Judith Suissa's book Anarchism and Education (which itself has a brief, essay form)
• Chapter 6: Isabelle Fremeaux and John Jordan's chronicle of their visit to Paideia, the anarchist school in Mérida, Spain with a 50 year history that continues to inspire anarchist educational projects around the world.
• Chapter 10 Elsa Noterman and Andre Pusey ponder the relationship between the modern university and anarchist pedagogical practice, wondering how compatible are they.
• Chapter 12 Alex Khasnabish discusses Zapatista philosophy with regard to personal and communal intellectual development, and how struggle can be a context for pushing radical imagination.
• Chapter 13 Lucy Nicholas discusses how postructuralist and queer theory can contribute to modern conceptions of anarchist pedagogy. In particular, the creation of spaces of discourse and positive valuation of practices which encourage sharing can be turned into ethics of anarchist education.

The whole book is worthwhile, though the authors frequently acknowledge that there are gaps and needs for further development on all of the fronts they discuss. It also misses a synthesis of a lot of very interesting history of anarchist education, going back to the first writings of William Godwin, through to more recent experiments outside of the anglophone world. There are throughlines that could be profitably traced to inform future contributions to the field.

Here's a text version on theanarchistlibrary.org.