Abstract
This essay offers a broken narrative concerning the early history of anti-oppressive practice as an approach in the U.K. to youth and community work and the struggles over this in the context of UK higher education between the 1960′s and the early 2000’s. Educating informal educators as youth and community workers in the UK has been a site of contestation. Aspects of a genealogy of that struggle are presented in ways which link publicly available histories with personal memories and narratives, through the use of a personal archive developed through collective memory work. These are chosen to illuminate the links between theory and practice: on the one hand, the conceptual field which has framed the education of youth and community workers, whose sources lie in the academic disciplines of education and sociology, and, on the other hand, the social movements which have formed the practice of informal educators. Six have been chosen: (1) The long 1968: challenging approaches to authority; (2) the group as a source of learning; (3) The personal and political: experiential learning from discontent; (4) Paolo Freire and Critical Praxis; (5) A critical break in social education and the reality of youth work spaces as defensive spaces; (6) New managerialism: ethics vs. paper trails. The approach taken, of linking memory work with present struggles, is argued to be a generative form for current critical and enlivening practice.
Highlights
This article forms a very partial account of the experience of offering professional formation in ‘anti-oppressive practice’ in youth and community work in the period from the mid-1980’s to around the turn of the twenty-first century
We aimed to explore the theoretical significance of apparently mundane and everyday moments in the marginal and conflicted space of educating youth and community workers in UK higher education
In much the same way as newly established, feminist-inspired Girls Nights were often offered on Wednesday evenings, as Wednesdays were a ‘football night’, the possibility of women meeting at Training Agencies Group (TAG) during the match was offered, requiring some women to choose between their love of football and their politics
Summary
This article forms a very partial account of the experience of offering professional formation in ‘anti-oppressive practice’ in youth and community work in the period from the mid-1980’s to around the turn of the twenty-first century. This was the report that opened up a difficult, fruitful conversation between ‘community development’ (rooted in Christian traditions of ‘overseas mission’) and ‘Youth Leadership’ ( with strong roots in Christian philanthropy and yet based ‘at home’ and newly professionalised in the formation of the National College) It opened the conversation between youth leadership ( termed youth and community work) and the development of democratic forums in formal education such as student unions. Ideas about community development as a form of activism allied to civil rights brought a sense of the politics of the time into recently established courses, which were still forging a sense of ‘professionalism’ in order to distinguish this practice from ‘old style’ philanthropy This professionalism was, in its turn, problematic in its assumptions concerning a neutral ‘expertise.’. Inherited patterns of authority had far from disappeared, and the disappointment and sometimes furious discontent caused by the ability of such apparently alternative spaces to remain deeply conventional in terms of power dynamics was persistently and acutely felt
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