Doing pedagogy publicly: Asserting the right to the city to rethink the university

Abstract

In recent times the Occupy! movements globally have asserted the right to the city as a learning space, with teach-outs and public speeches. In Occupy! London, in particular, alongside new social relations, occupiers experimented with new ways of publicly educating. This article argues that a popular, critical education, such as the one experimented with in Occupy!, can take up this mantel of doing pedagogy publicly. This way of enacting a radical public pedagogy would involve making connections between the civic agora, the 'right to the city' and a public and inclusive education, reconnecting people and places to form new learning spaces in the urban landscape, thus rendering the university a problematic space in need of rethinking. The article concludes that the project may be simultaneous - in terms of the development of new education agora alongside the reclamation of older forms of education agora - providing, of course, there is enough left to fight for.