Out of the Ruins: The Emergence of Radical Informal Learning Spaces ed. by Robert H. Haworth and John M. Elmore

Abstract

Reviewed by: Out of the Ruins: The Emergence of Radical Informal Learning Spaces ed. by Robert H. Haworth and John M. Elmore Sarah Moon Out of the Ruins: The Emergence of Radical Informal Learning Spaces Edited by Robert H. Haworth and John M. Elmore PM Press, 2017. 288 pp. Click for larger view View full resolution When Occupy Wall Street began on September 19, 2011, I was thrilled. Just out college, September 11th had been a wake-up call for me. I began reading too much on the internet and devoured Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine, my first exposure to capitalist critique, in a couple nights. In 2007, I became involved in environmental organizing around mountain-top removal. I was drawn to the movement out of a deep-felt compassion for the people and land affected and I stayed involved for several years because of the sense of belonging the movement offered. It was the first time I had found a group of people that seemed to share the disenchantment I had experienced but who were also taking action against hegemonic powers: raising awareness, promoting legislation to end mountaintop removal, carrying out direct actions, and raising funds to bring clean drinking water to affected communities. Understanding the human cost and environmental impact of the legal crime of mountaintop removal forced me to acknowledge the extent to which our current system is not aimed at universal empowerment, health, well-being, and freedom. Out of the Ruins is based on the premise that many educators recognize the degree of harm perpetrated by the global capitalist system and believe that traditional education serves that system. The contributors to Out of the Ruins recognize traditional education as cooperating with the capitalist system to produce obedient subjects who will accept the existing system as the best possible reality and raise no challenge to it. Several of the authors throughout the text use the term "deschool," the process of helping individuals unlearn what they have been taught through traditional education, to describe the first goal of their work. But the authors in Out of the Ruins go beyond system critique to also share examples of a variety of informal learning spaces both with and without ties to the university. In the introduction, editor Richard Haworth quotes Max Haivan that living within our current system, "our ability to imagine possibilities beyond the confines of market values, especially those thoughts and ideas based in possibly futures outside our current practices is minimized or squashed" (6). Out of the Ruins [End Page 97] shows us that the work of critical pedagogy and radical informal learning spaces is to reawaken that imagination and connect with others also seeking what Deleuze and Guattari call "lines of flight." The collection moves from critiques of standard education to theoretical frameworks for alternative education and finally to depictions of radical informal learning spaces in cities across North America and the UK. Community literacy educators will find much value in this book, both on the theoretical front and in the examples of radical informal learning spaces that provide both inspiration as well as reflection on the pitfalls and limitations of such spaces. The opening chapter, "Miseducation and the Authoritarian Mind," serves as foundational for the collection by establishing the need for liberatory education to counter the rise of authoritarian thinking in education and society-at-large. John Elmore takes time to paint a picture of two authoritarian personality types, sadistic authoritarian and passive authoritarian, both plagued by fear of life's ambiguities, which drives them to seek the safety and predictability of hierarchical structure. By turns dominating those below and submitting to those above, authoritarian individuals affirm the hierarchy and thereby keep anxieties at bay. Elmore writes that traditional education has served the development of the authoritarian personality and ultimately become a "co-conspirator with despotism" (25) and calls for critical educators to "find ways to turn our classrooms into laboratories of critical consciousness" and "lead the way out of the ruins" (33). In "Don't Ask, Just Think," David Gabbard takes up the titular admonition of Slavoj Zizek and directs it at critical pedagogues. Gabbard challenges critical pedagogues to consider their potential idiocy (defined...