I’ve been facilitating political education in my chapter for several years now. I write facilitating because I have come to realize that the typical mode of political education that I have witnessed, been part of, and personally done has been, in a word, inadequate.
Political educators in DSA, and most other left organizations, have invoked Paulo Freire and his writing Pedagogy of the Oppressed in nearly every single lesson-planning meeting I’ve been in. And, of course, I’m guilty of this too. Like many phrases, aphorisms, and buzzwords these have become another leftist shibboleth. Leftist educators, either volunteer or professional, have come to use these to signal their membership in the Leftist political education tradition. These phrases and authors have become neutralized and, in effect, become the intermittent flashes from a lighthouse. You are reminded that you’re in the right place and on the right path. We all intone grayly against the banking method of education and the need for popular education. I completely agree with this.
But what really precipitates from these conversations in our evenings while we all mutually stare at an outlined document? Typically, replications of what we’re saying we’re against.
I’ve done this–I’ve sat down and sketched out an entire lesson. I’ve read bell hooks, Paulo Freire, and other teachers of teachers, and education models, and learned from professionals. But I look at what I made and I realize I’m doing the same as what I had to endure through public school and college. I planned another lecture. I made another reading assignment with pre-lesson work and homework. Why?
The majority of Left Political Educators in the US have gone through our didactic schooling system. Schooling across this country and the teachers that instruct at these schools are raised and taught to use that banking method–the student’s head is an empty piggy bank and the teacher has knowledge jangling around in her pocket which she deposits into the student. The more coins, the smarter the kid–in theory. To be clear, this is no knock on teachers–not in the slightest. Public school teachers are typically constricted by the curriculum standards and methods of their school board (many incredibly reactionary) and the for-profit testing companies (de facto reactionaries) which have become fused to our education system, like metal welded to flesh.
We know this doesn’t really work–personally I know it doesn’t work. I hated school. I didn’t do well, I was bored constantly, I struggled with homework and projects, I daydreamed and limped through most of my courses. I had to visit the writing lab at my college every time I had a paper due because by the time I finished an essay it was basically incomprehensible. This is a more common experience than we want to admit. School is boring and it sucks.
I’ve heard plenty of arguments from good people whom I deeply respect that defend the methods that we typically employ. A two hour lecture from a prominent left writer and intellectual, a debate between two people that effectively believe the same things–we’ve all been party to these. And I think we have to admit that these are our intellectual vegetables. I’ve definitely attended one of these, excited to hear what an author I have read and revered has to say, only to zone out because their voice has devolved into white noise. I wouldn’t describe this process as anhedonic–I and others want to learn, but it feels perfunctory. I want to understand the political-economic merits of reforming our sclerotic healthcare system. In the abstract I find that interesting. But in practice, in the virtual lecture hall, I can’t stand it. It works for some but I know we can do better.
So what do we do? How do we hook people? Half of praxis is education. Without theory we’re rudderless, and without action we have no engine.
I propose that we shift our understanding and models of education from pedagogy to andragogy. We pivot, definitionally and literally, from leading children to leading adults. The vast majority–I’d wager all–of our political education is intended for adults. So why do we not teach like it? Again, nearly all of us have gone through the conveyor belt of the US public education system and since that’s what we have reference to we just do what we’ve seen.
Coined by Alexander Kapp, developed into a theoretical framework by Eugen Rosentock-Hussey, and expanded by Malcolm Knowles, Andragogy acknowledges that adults are different than children, that we’re not just taller and have to do stupid jobs. Adults have had more life experiences, are neurologically different, are busy and have different needs than children. Andragogy, according to Knowles’ writings, states that adults have 5 motivations to learn. Quoting him directly these are:
- Self-concept: As a person matures his self concept moves from one of being a dependent personality toward one of being a self-directed human being
- Experience: As a person matures he accumulates a growing reservoir of experience that becomes an increasing resource for learning.
- Readiness to learn. As a person matures his readiness to learn becomes oriented increasingly to the developmental tasks of his social roles.
- Orientation to learning. As a person matures his time perspective changes from one of postponed application of knowledge to immediacy of application, and accordingly his orientation toward learning shifts from one of subject-centeredness to one of problem centredness.
- Motivation to learn: As a person matures the motivation to learn is internal
I find these compelling and tend to agree. The question turns again to: how does this precipitate?
Lessons look and function differently. People don’t just bring their experiences to lessons, they share them and integrate them into it. We no longer have someone at the front of the classroom, literally or metaphorically, reading directly from their slides. Our lessons are adaptive–we have to embrace that we may not get to every point we wanted to. We avoid shutting down discussion and debate and we stop correcting people. We let people work out their ideas, even if we disagree and even if what they’re saying is not materialist or Marxist or inline with what we believe as an organization. We recognize that people will grind their heels in if we demand that they believe what we know is correct. We need to be creative in the construction of our lessons. We integrate it into our projects, campaigns and actions–even going so far as doing it during these. We explicitly outline why students should learn what we’re trying to teach and explain how that knowledge can be used. We acknowledge that some of our lessons are going to fail and that we have to regroup and learn from those and understand where we went wrong. To invoke the phrase of a childhood favorite, we “take chances, make mistakes, get messy!”
I’ve had the pleasure of actually doing something like this–my chapter has held Queer Sewing Lessons. These lessons were integrated into our campaign to get cops out of our city’s Pride celebration. The lessons were successful. We were answering a reported need from our community–the need for skills-based education, one that allowed them to fix their clothes, and a free, sober, all-ages space where people could learn and teach each other. People wanted clothes that made them feel good and that they had pride in. People wanted to make sure that they could look sharp and neat because they had an interview coming up and didn’t have something they felt would improve their chances. People just wanted a place that they could meet other queer people and not have to spend money, have the expectation to drink or do drugs, or have sex.
We provided basic lessons on sewing along with access to materials and machines. During a lesson we would teach people how to fix a tear and talk about the fast-fashion industry, climate crises, and ecosocialism. In a lesson about how to iron clothes we would talk about the labor theory of value and time banking and labor notes. We answered this need as well as used this to onboard and grow membership and get people involved in a campaign. Now when a banner is torn in the middle of a march, we have a union of seamsters that can patch it quick with a needle and thread.
I spoke on the phone with a friend of mine a little while ago, someone that I don’t believe would describe herself as a socialist. She told me about her plans to open her repair café. She described planned obsolescence and the eradication of technical learning in schools. This repair café would help address this. These cafes are part of a broader movement to help fight back against these issues that we’ve had to endure. Amateurs and experts come in and help instruct and talk through how to fix what they bring in–and not just do it for them. What could provide a better opportunity to talk and teach one another? If you plan a day where people can bring in their bicycles and others help work through fixing these, you take that opportunity to talk about the issues that pedestrians face, about car culture in the US and your city’s lack of public transportation. And it’s not just snuck into the lesson–it’s stated explicitly that this is part of what we’re doing that day.
While I don’t have a repair café, I have had similar experiences where a trans woman and I are working through how to construct a skirt and talking through the expectations of femininity in trans women and how that connects to what we’re doing and how this has a historical connection to Stonewall and legislation and getting arrested for having condoms in your purse and how the police glare at her when she walks across the street and how she has to keep herself hidden at work. By the end of it we were both hollering for queer liberation and an end to rainbow capitalism.
Andragogy as a theoretical framework is immature–it’s not fully fleshed out, it’s not totally embraced widely by even the most radical of educators, it’s got holes in it and makes assumptions that I would characterize as liberal. But I admire and believe that there is merit to these principles and methods, and will continue to design our lessons and encourage others to do so as well.
