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Friends,
We all long to develop, to learn, to deepen our encounter with the world, or at least to seek new experiences of it.

So why are the spaces we go to for learning so terrible? Not only are they often tremendous drains on money (for individuals and families in the US and for all citizens in Europe and other places where universities are state-funded).

After attending several higher education institutions, I’ve come to understanding how much they stand in the way of us truly learning, developing our capacities, and creating a better world.

So I asked Eli Meyerhoff on to the show to talk about this conundrum.

Eli is researching at the Social Movements Lab and works as an organizer, he’s also the author of Beyond Education: Radical Studying for Another World , an excoriating look at how academia has always exploited people, and is past the point of mere reform.

This is a radical look at education – so often held as a self-evident good. I’m so happy to share it with you.

SHOW NOTES

WHAT OTHER AEWCH EPISODE YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO? An academic who is doing work I am excited for – that at once starts in a university context and leads out of it – is Phil Ford. art of the Weird Studies team, along with J.F. Martel, who works in alternative education models as well

WHAT BOOK SHOULD YOU READ? I bring up the essay “Walking out on the University” by William Irwin Thompson a few times. That essay is in a book that is difficult to find, but an easier text to find by the same author is Transforming History: A New Curriculum for a Planetary Culture. While it still has some attachments to the current system of education, it proposes a new direction for it, and a new curriculum. (BTW, I found a copy of the essay with the help of Jeremy Johnson, and his efforts are worth checking out.)

MORE ON ELI Eli’s website is very straightforward, with tons of links to interviews and other contributions… including a free download of his book! And here’s Eli’s essay – cowritten with Abigail Boggs, Nick Mitchell, and Zach Schwartz-Weinstein – that I quote at the top of the show, “Abolitionist University Studies: An Invitation“. Also, see the chart, co-created with Eli below, “A Non-Exhaustive Periodization of U.S. Universities from an Accumulation Perspective”