My slides for radical pedagogies: a humanities teaching forum, at the University of Kent on 11 January 2018. There are notes available at http://www.richard-hall.org/2018/01/12/radical-pedagogies-dismantling-the-curriculum-in-higher-education/

1. Dismantling the curriculum in higher
education
Richard Hall ¦ @hallymk1 ¦ rhall1@dmu.ac.uk ¦ richard-hall.org
Radical Pedagogies¦ University of Kent ¦ 11 January 2018

3. bell hooks Audre Lorde
Angela Davis
Sara Motta Sarah
Amsler
Joyce Canaan
Sara Ahmed Heidi Mirza
Frantz Fanon George Ciccariello-Maher
Nick Dyer-Witheford Karl Marx
Mike Neary
Lola Olufemi Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Zhaleh Boyd

4. That learning process comes easiest to those of us who also believe that our work is not
merely to share information but to share in the intellectual and spiritual growth of our
students.
To teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students is essential if
we are to provide the necessary conditions where learning can most deeply and
intimately begin.
bell hooks. 1994. Teaching to Transgress, p. 13.

5. living a feminist life:
•does not mean adopting a set of ideals or norms of conduct;
•although it might mean asking ethical questions about how to
live better in an unjust and unequal world (in a not-feminist and
antifeminist world);
•how to create relationships with others that are more equal;
•how to find ways to support those who are not supported or are
less supported by social systems;
•how to keep coming up against histories that have become
concrete, histories that have become as solid as walls.
Ahmed, S. (2017). Living a Feminist Life. Durham: Duke University Press, p. 1.

6. The curriculum as commodity or process of a rich human life?
1.Technological and organisational forms.
2.Relations to nature and the environment.
3.Social relations between people.
4.Mental conceptions of the world.
5.Labour processes.
6.Institutional, legal and governmental arrangements.
7.The conduct of daily life that underpins social reproduction.

7. living a feminist life:
•does not mean adopting a set of ideals or norms of conduct;
•although it might mean asking ethical questions about how to live
better in an unjust and unequal world (in a not-feminist and
antifeminist world);
•how to create relationships with others that are more equal;
•how to find ways to support those who are not supported or are
less supported by social systems;
•how to keep coming up against histories that have become
concrete, histories that have become as solid as walls.
Ahmed, S. (2017). Living a Feminist Life. Durham: Duke University Press, p. 1.

8. An HE policy narrative with three pedagogic functions:
1.the fetishisation of human capital – a particular subjectivity
or mode of attention/orientation;
2.the proletarianisation of academic labour through
competition; and
3.frames the internalisation of performative responses –
against wilfulness.
A narrative that catayses academic and student ill-health or
quitting, and in particular of a rise in anxiety.

9. A competitive curriculum as cyclonic and
hegemonic (Dyer-Witheford, 2015)
Inside a policy framework:
•HM Treasury Productivity Plan (2015);
•Small Business, Enterprise and
Employability Act (DBIS 2015);
•HE and Research Act (DfE 2017);
•Consultation on OfS (DfE, 2017).

10. Moments in a process of subsumption
•no exaggeration to say that our country’s future depends more than
ever on the success of our HEIs
•we will not forget the underlying values of HE… joy and value of
knowledge pursued for its own sake; pursuit of the good, the true
and the beautiful
•uncompromising in our protection of students’ interests… insist on
value for money for the student [and] also for the taxpayer
•we will embrace both collaboration and competition.
Barber, M. (2017). Foreward, in Securing student success. Government consultation on behalf
of the Office for Students, pp. 8-9.

11. Effective competition compels providers to focus on students’ needs
and aspirations, drives up outcomes that students care about, puts
downward pressure on costs, leads to more efficient allocation of
resources between providers, and catalyses innovation.
The higher education sector in England is well suited to market
mechanisms driving continuous improvement
many of the primary benefits to the student… are spread out over their
life time. This exposes the market to distortions…
Students need to be protected as they make potentially life changing
decisions about higher education, but this cannot and will not be at the
expense of deep, trust-based higher education experiences.
Securing student success. Government consultation on behalf of the Office for Students, pp. 43-5.

13. The on-going reproduction of barriers
Competition is the completest expression of the battle of all against
all which rules in modern civil society…
Each is in the way of the other, and each seeks to crowd out all who
are in his way, and to put himself in their place.
But this competition of the workers among themselves is the worst
side of the present state of things in its effect upon the worker, the
sharpest weapon against the proletariat in the hands of the
bourgeoisie.
Hence the effort of the workers to nullify this competition by
associations
Engels, F. (1845). Condition of the Working Class in England. London: Penguin, p. 111

15. The curriculum as a process stripped back to reveal alienation
forms of oppression ¦ illness ¦ precarity ¦ objectification
market intelligence ¦ performance data ¦ governing academic life
money ¦ wealth
value/surplus-value money ¦ labour-power ¦ private property

16. The curriculum stripped back to reveal flows of alienation at the
intersections of:
self/subject and other/object reflected in it;
gender, race, (dis)ability, class reproduced through it;
adaptations to socio-environmental crises ignored in it;
disciplinary separations demanded by it.
The curriculum as a form of social wealth and a process of struggle
over our social reproduction. What is to be done?

17. The curriculum is white because it reflects the underlying logic of colonialism, which
believes the colonised do not own anything – not even their own experiences.
The role of the colonised in knowledge production mirrored their role in economic
production, where their resources were to provide raw materials that could then be
consumed in the west…
Implicit in the white curriculum is irrefutable evidence of white superiority as a matter
of truth and objectivity, while crafting a world-view that judges anything that it could
define as “non-white” or “other” as inferior.
‘Why is My Curriculum White?’ collective, 2015

18. 1. de-valuing diverse contributions
2. mainstreaming a narrower perspective on the world
3. characterizing academic thought as not ‘for’ thinkers from
other traditions
4. limiting classroom discussions
5. fostering the myth of white epistemological superiority
6. cultivating false connections between representation and
superiority/inferiority
7. silencing/alienating students that value concepts and ideas
not espoused by a white curriculum
Boyd, Z. 2014. Reflections on a #WhiteCurriculum. http://bit.ly/1MZkmAI

19. The wall is what we come up against: the sedimentation of history
into a barrier that is solid and tangible in the present, a barrier to
change as well as to the mobility of some, a barrier that remains
invisible to those who can flow into the spaces created by institutions.
Ahmed, S. (2012). On Being Included: Racism and Diversity In Institutional Life. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, p. 175.
What we can no longer ignore, however, is the fact that the
curriculum, taken as a whole, risks perpetuating institutional racism.
[content; location of books; voice/silencing; attitudes; everyday
micro-aggressions; racial battle fatigue; emotional labour]
Olufemi , L. (2017). Decolonising the English Faculty: An Open Letter

20. the lure of whiteness laid bare when starting from the point of
exploitation and the protection of privilege
empty gestures, proclamations and institutional policies… end up
serving only as (self-) legitimizing tools of deep and intersectional
gender inequalities.
To have to validate and assert one’s self constantly is exhausting.
This includes having to demonstrate belonging
the impact of TEF on minority academics is important, especially in
terms of the stress on metrics and their relationship to trust/authority,
and what legitimates curriculum
[whiteness ¦ lack of support ¦ indirect racism ¦ permanence of race ¦
Eurocentric curriculum ¦ false/double consciousness ¦ exceptionalism]

22. the real intellectual wealth of the individual depends entirely
on the wealth of his real connections. Only this will liberate the
separate individuals… Bring them into practical connection
with the production (including intellectual production) of the
whole world and make it possible for them to acquire the
capacity to enjoy this all-sided production of the whole earth
Marx, K. (1998). The German Ideology. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, p. 59

23. individuals cannot gain mastery over their own social
interconnections before they have created them… ([through]
their conscious knowing and willing).
This bond is the product. It is a historic product. It belongs to a
historic phase of their development.
The alien and independent character in which it presently exists
vis-à-vis individuals proves only that the latter are still engaged
in the creation of the conditions of their social life, and that they
have not yet begun, on the basis of these conditions, to live it.
Marx, K. (1973). Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy. London:
Penguin Books, pp. 161-62.

24. As intellectual workers we refuse the fetishised concept of the
knowledge society and engage in teaching, learning and research
only in so far as we can re-appropriate the knowledge that has
been stolen from the workers that have produced this way of
knowing (i.e. Abundance).
In the society of abundance the university as an institutional form is
dissolved, and becomes a social form or knowledge at the level of
society (i.e. The General Intellect).
It is only on this basis that we can knowingly address the global
emergencies with which we are all confronted [i.e. through
collective work/in the social factory].
The University of Utopia. n.d. Anti-Curriculum: A course of action. http://bit.ly/1qgEq8C

25. Can we reimagine the
curriculum for a different
social purpose?

26. The contested curriculum
Vygotsky argues that teaching begins from the student’s
experience in a particular social context… arranged by the
teacher so that the student teaches themselves:
‘Education should be structured so that it is not the student
that is educated, but that the student educates himself’ or, in
other words, ‘...the real secret of education lies in not teaching’
Neary, M. (2010). Student as producer: a pedagogy for the avant-garde? Learning Exchange,
1 (1), 5.

27. [To be engaged] invites us always to be in the present, to
remember that the classroom is never the same.
Traditional ways of thinking about the classroom stress the
opposite paradigm—that the classroom is always the same
even when students are different. To me, the engaged
classroom is always changing.
Yet this notion of engagement threatens the institutionalized
practices of domination. When the classroom is truly
engaged, it’s dynamic. It’s fluid. It’s always changing.
bell hooks. 1994. Teaching to Transgress, p. 158.

28. Is another world possible?
•Extend democracy into/through the curriculum.
•Uncover alienated-labour: private property; the division of
labour; and commodity exchange.
•Eliminate the social division of labour between owners and non-
owners.
•Less harmful relations of production.
•Natural science fused with philosophy – inter-disciplinarity.
•Global educational commons and critical pedagogy.

30. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License.