Abstract
I need to begin this essay with a disclosure. I lead a punk rock band, run a punk rock record label, and, if life had worked out as I had wanted it to, my career would have been touring with a Ramones or Clash tribute band.
Like Rebekah Cordova, I have always felt that punk rock had a connection to adult learning and education and the three frames she introduces in the first chapter of DIY Punk as Education to me make perfect sense. The first is public pedagogy, the intentional conduct of education outside any kind of formal, institutionally organized schooling or training. There is an enormous amount of public pedagogy in the punk scene that goes on around not only the creation and performance of music. The Do-It-Yourself ethic is embedded in local and national protest movements, producing food, providing shelter, finding drugs, dumpster diving, creating art, and making clothing. In all these situations a store of knowledge is accumulated that is rarely written down, so it has to be shared orally or via social media. There is no written constitution of the mosh pit, but there are norms that need to be learned about how to crash into people in ways that do not injure them, when stage diving is appropriate, what can be thrown on stage, when the microphone can be grabbed, and so on.
The second frame featured in the book is that of social learning theory, understood as a Vygotskyan emphasis on the ways people create meaning and interpret experience via social interactions. Punk created its own rituals, dances, and language that quickly became imitated and commodified. In the extensive chapter 3 that profiles punk learner narratives, we can see people managing the dialectical tension in punk between the emphasis on doing creative work in whatever way that moves you and the punk commitment to participatory democracy. One theme that is highlighted in these narratives is the way that punks often think that they are the only ones who see the world in a particular way. Finding like-minded peers at punk events triggers a move away from alienation and toward the creation of identity rooted in a collective enthusiasm and project.
The third frame adopted in the book is that of self-directed learning, the process by which people learn skills and build knowledge outside of institutionally sponsored programs. Of course, self-directed learning is not an isolated process; rather, it intersects with the practice of public pedagogy and social learning. The skills and knowledge people choose to learn in the punk scene are learned collectively from others. At the heart of this is the major project of creating and implementing democracy in multiple settings. In bands, apartments, food co-ops, street theater, and protests there is typically a commitment to nonhierarchical communication and to making sure everyone is included in whatever is happening.
Cordova’s long section of narrative profiles that are at the center of this book are book-ended by these three analytical frames. The narratives themselves are untheorized until chapter 4’s analysis of some of the themes that emerged. The way that positive and negative self-concepts of oneself as a learner is built during schooling is examined, and the concept of miseducation (drawn primarily from John Dewey not Carter G. Woodson) is used to explore the experiences of dislocation, anger, inadequacy, shame, and betrayal surfaced in the narratives. The empirical and analytical trajectory of a typical learning journey in the book is completed with a section on “Punk as Educative Healing.” Here involvement in the punk scene is recorded as being affirming, empowering, and creating a sense of community. I would love to think of the punk scene this way, but I have to admit than in my 40 years in the scene I have also witnessed intimidation, racism, brutality, exclusion, ridicule, and violence enacted with the justification of self-expression. I wish that the analysis had been a bit more nuanced to explore punk’s contradictions, particularly the enactment of gatekeeping around whether or not something is really punk.
My chief critique of the book is that it is too short! In the understandable attempt to dignify learners’ narratives by presenting them as fully as possible, the opportunity to explore the three theoretical frames more deeply is lost. In addition, the contradiction that often emerges in punk—let us all be anarchists who demonstrate our refusal to follow rules by getting similar tattoos, pogoing, studding our motorbike jackets, and all giving the middle finger—is not explored. But I loved reading this book because it makes such a convincing case that the concerns of the punk community, and the tradition of community-based, oppositional adult education are clearly intertwined.