[SSC] 'popular' and 'proletarian' universities

[Terry Wassall]

Dear all

The bootleg copy of Gramsci's 29 December 1916 Avanti article on Popular Universities is now available. I'm hesitant to send it to the whole list as I don't know how big it is any in any case not everyone might want to get it. If you send your email to t.wassall at leeds.ac.uk I will send it to you.

Best wishes

Terry

Dr. Terry Wassall
Principal Teaching Fellow
School of Sociology and Social Policy
University of Leeds
________________________________________
From: Terry Wassall [T.Wassall at leeds.ac.uk]
Sent: 10 February 2011 13:33
To: 'ssc at lists.aktivix.org'
Subject: [SSC] 'popular' and 'proletarian' universities

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 univers!
 ities. He has some interesting observations on how teaching/learning could/should take place in popular universities.

Best wishes

Terry

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