[SSC] 'popular' and 'proletarian' universities

[Terry Wassall]

Dear All

There is a history of 'popular' and 'proletarian' universities that might be worth looking at, some mentioned in the popular education article in Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_education. Surprisingly there is no mention of Gramsci's critique of Popular Universities. He wrote a short article on this but I cannot find an on-line version. If I can get it typed up and if anyone is interested I will send it round. Gramsci came from an uneducated peasant background and draws on his own experience of university in his critique, as well as his subsequent experiences with workers' political and 'liberal' education within the Italian communist movement. His main problems with the popular universities of his day are that the curriculum and teaching style, rather than take into account and engaging with the starting point, conditions and existing culture/knowledge of the students, mainly reproduced the curriculum and teaching style of the orthodox middle class universities. He has some interesting observations on how teaching/learning could/should take place in popular universities.

Best wishes

Terry