Punk & Education: A Personal Narrative and Call for Contributors

Am I a punk? Who gets to decide? When does a feeling of identity make something true, regardless of anyone else’s perceptions?

These are questions I often ask myself while listening to Poly Styrene’s discordant vocals on X-Ray Spex’s “Identity.” The saxophone and Poly’s bright, highlighter-colored clothing stood in stark contrast to the rapidly forming punk sound of the late ’70s. In retrospect, X-Ray Spex serve as a reminder that authenticity defines who you are, not anyone else.

I’m not an “expert,” whatever that means, on punk. I didn’t form a band in high school. I don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of record labels. But punk speaks to me, and it turns out it always has.

I discovered music under Walmart’s fluorescent lights in the summer of 1995. At eleven years old, I used my birthday money to purchase my first compact disc, 311’s self-titled third album. For the first time in my life, I discovered music that was mine, separate from my parents’ tastes, or lack thereof, for that matter. Sorry, Dad.

That summer was a big one for me. I also picked up Green Day’s Insomniac, which sent me down an adolescent path of pop punk.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I listened to the music history podcast No Dogs in Space, which began with a series exploring punk through ten bands that influenced the genre. Something I loved about the series was that it didn’t simply cover the ten most well-known punk bands. There were classics such as The Stooges and Dead Kennedys, but also bands that were new to me, including The Slits, The Cramps, Suicide, and The Screamers. They completely blew me away.

I rediscovered my love for punk, and it felt like the summer of ’95 all over again.

3 Ways of Thinking About Punk

Punk eludes a formal definition, and many punk scholars believe it is foolish to try imposing one. Punk can mean different things to different people, depending on their experiences and interpretations of their encounters with it.

I have come to think about punk in three ways.

First, punk is a deep, rich, and broad musical genre. Before my re-education in punk, I thought primarily of classic bands such as The Clash, Ramones, and Black Flag. I later learned more about bands featuring members from marginalized communities, and the enormous influence they have had on the genre, including Death, Bad Brains, Spitboy, Los Crudos, ? and the Mysterians, and Dead Pioneers, to name only a few. I also discovered the seemingly hundreds of subgenres that fall under punk’s broad umbrella.

Second, punk can be found in acts of resistance against normative narratives and in speaking truth to power. Recent examples include Chappell Roan calling out exploitative labor practices in the music industry during her Grammy acceptance speech for Best New Artist, and Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime performance, which was filled with subtext about the political climate, racial injustice, and corporate power. These artists may not be associated with punk music, but their acts of resistance belong to punk culture.

Third, punk is an ethos that can encompass anti-capitalism, opposition to corporate and institutional power, anti-authoritarianism, nonconformity, environmental justice, human rights, and many other principles.

For the remainder of this essay, I want to focus on how DIY influences my career in education.

DIY in Education: Go Baby Go

I’m a university professor, and a DIY ethos informs both my scholarship and teaching. Since 2012, I have worked on a project known as Go Baby Go, which was started by Dr. Cole Galloway.

While he was not the first person to explore the potential of battery-operated ride-on toy cars as mobility devices, Cole took the idea to a new level. The basic concept is simple: take ride-on toy cars and modify them to make them more accessible.

These adaptations include removing the activation switch, often a foot pedal that can be difficult for young children with developmental disabilities to press, and replacing it with a large, easy-to-press switch installed on the steering wheel. A custom seating and support system is also built for each child using low-cost, readily available materials such as Velcro and pool noodles.

With about $200 and some basic tools, a customized mobility device can be created in a couple of hours, allowing a young child with developmental disabilities to explore and play. This stands in stark contrast to the thousands of dollars, long waiting periods, and routine insurance denials families often face when trying to obtain a traditional powered mobility device such as a motorized wheelchair.

The Go Baby Go program is fun and impactful, but it is important to remember that DIY projects often emerge because something essential is missing. In this case, the need for modified ride-on toy cars highlights a systemic failure in healthcare. Young children with developmental disabilities are not being provided with adequate mobility devices, services, or evidence-driven rehabilitation interventions.

From Critical Pedagogy to Punk Pedagogy

I discovered punk pedagogy around 2022. Before that, I had taught several sections of a seminar I developed titled Toy-Based Technology for Children with Disabilities.

The seminar was offered through my university’s Honors College, where classes are small, with a maximum of 14 students, and open to honors students from any year or academic discipline. Students learned about the science behind Go Baby Go and then went into my workshop space to modify cars throughout the term.

I loved the course, but for obvious reasons, it became difficult to deliver during the height of the pandemic. I asked myself a simple question: If I could develop a new course for the Honors College, what would it be?

Punk. Definitely punk.

I proposed a Punk 101 seminar, and it was approved. While considering the details of the course, I discovered punk pedagogy, an approach heavily influenced by critical pedagogy.

Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, published in 1970, describes critical pedagogy as an approach to education that encourages critical thinking, active participation in democratic society, and the co-creation of knowledge. It seeks to break down the traditional division between teachers as “experts” and students as passive “learners.”

Punk pedagogy is an extension of critical pedagogy. It is difficult to identify exactly when punk pedagogy emerged as its own distinct approach to education. For me, however, the most important artifact bridging critical and punk pedagogies is the compilation LP Critical Pedagogy: A Compilation of Teachers in Punk Bands, released by Six Weeks Records in 2000 and put together by Athena Kautsch.

The liner notes contain short essays by members of the bands featured on the compilation, reflecting on how punk influences their roles as educators. I wrote an essay for i have that on vinyl that looks more closely at how Critical Pedagogy influenced my own approach to teaching.

Putting Punk Pedagogy into Practice

When I taught Punk 101, I tried to embody three central principles of punk pedagogy: the co-creation of knowledge; diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice; and a DIY ethos.

I used these principles to organize my teaching after reading formative works such as Punk Pedagogies in Practice, Punk Pedagogies: Music, Culture and Learning, and Hardcore Research: Punk, Practice, Politics.

For Punk 101, I viewed my role as that of a facilitator rather than an instructor. There were no lectures. I wore jeans and a band T-shirt. On the first day, I made it clear that I was not an expert on punk and that we were going to learn from one another throughout the seminar.

I created a playlist, and we listened to around 30 songs each week. I made a point of including bands from a wide range of backgrounds. In class, we discussed which songs students liked or disliked, explored the cultural contexts in which the bands were active and the songs were released, and watched videos of live performances.

Every class also included open creative time during which students could work on their final projects: designing and printing a zine on any subject they chose.

After the seminar, we interviewed the students and published a qualitative study. The results indicated that the seminar was successful. Several central themes emerged from the students’ experiences:

• Punk created community and connection both inside and outside the classroom.
• Students experienced personal growth through punk and DIY.
• The principles of punk pedagogy became meaningful through practice.

Students also reported having a positive experience with zine-making. The absence of rigid rules about what a zine should look like pushed them to think more creatively about their projects. Although they initially found this lack of structure frustrating, they finished the seminar with completed zines and a greater appreciation of the creative process.

There is considerable overlap between critical and punk pedagogies. I believe punk’s most direct contribution to pedagogy is its DIY ethos, which is closely connected to experiential learning. A valuable resource on this subject is Rebekah Cordova’s DIY Punk as Education.

What Does a DIY Ethos Mean in Education?

I have started thinking more deeply about what a DIY ethos means to me within an educational context.

For instructors, it means making educational experiences inclusive and accessible to all learners. It means designing course materials, including readings, videos, and examples, that represent diverse and multicultural perspectives.

Instructors should model an authenticity that remains true to their educational values while creating opportunities for students to express their own individuality. Students must also take ownership of their learning and embrace their autonomy and authority within the educational process.

Creative projects are foundational to this approach. Students acquire knowledge and skills, while also experiencing personal growth, by making creative artifacts such as zines, songs, dioramas, visual essays, fiction, and other forms of art.

DIY Against Generative AI

I propose that a DIY ethos, from a punk perspective, is in direct conflict with the use of generative AI, particularly large language models such as ChatGPT, in education and the creative arts. Author Rae Wilde’s Instagram offers consistently excellent critiques of generative AI.

I don’t have the space or eloquence to articulate every way in which generative AI is a trash technology. A few reasons include its environmental impact, inherent biases, exploitative labor practices involved in its development, copyright infringement, adverse effects on mental health, plagiarism, and the replacement of human jobs.

Then there are the billions of dollars being invested in generative AI that could instead support any number of causes directly benefiting people, including healthcare, housing, and universal basic income.

I have not used and will never use generative AI in the classroom or for any creative pursuit, or likely for anything else. This choice aligns with my personal and professional values as an educator and fiction writer.

The analogy has been made elsewhere, but an anti-generative AI position can be compared to “AI veganism,” in which abstention is based on an ethical opposition to exploitation and harm.

For a vegan, it does not matter whether animals are supposedly “ethically treated” before being killed for consumption. A dead chicken is a dead chicken. I know this is a reductive description of veganism, but I hope it makes the point. To me, there is simply no ethical use of generative AI, based on how it was developed and the ongoing injustices associated with its use.

Just as veganism has a storied history within straight edge, I hope punk culture develops a strand of straight edge that abstains from generative AI.

I love Minor Threat. Although “Straight Edge” was not intended to spark a movement, but rather to articulate a lifestyle built around conscious choices to abstain from drugs, alcohol, and promiscuous sex, its message can be adapted to modern issues such as generative AI.

Some people may ask whether taking a straight edge position against generative AI could be divisive. It is not my responsibility to make anyone else feel a certain way about their own behavior. I am confident in the reasoning behind my choices. In my mind, there is no way to use generative AI ethically while remaining aligned with punk principles, and certainly not with a DIY ethos.

The Ultimate Teaching Machine

I recently watched the film Class of 1999. It is about warring adolescent gangs in a Seattle high school. The school introduces android teachers in an attempt to regain control and educate the students.

The androids soon go off the rails and embark on their own violent rampages, but the corporation behind them refuses to shut them down because doing so would threaten its profits.

Sound familiar?

The film poster’s tagline is “The Ultimate Teaching Machine… Out of Control.” I can’t help thinking about the parallels with generative AI and its rapid adoption in the name of education, while institutions turn a blind eye to the technology’s harmful aspects, many of which were there from the beginning.

Are you a punk and an educator? Do you have something to say about how punk influences your approach to education? If so, please read the call for contributors below. We would love to hear from you.