Abstract
It may be inappropriate to review Revolutionary Education: Theory and Practice for Socialist Organizers in the traditional and fairly isolated context of an academic journal. This is a text that is specifically meant to be read along with a group of fellow on-the-ground activists and educators first, and curious academics second. This is not to say that the collection of work edited by Nino Brown is anti- or non-intellectual. A wealth of knowledge and experience are married throughout the short 109 pages, going beyond any feel-good label of being “critically-oriented” to encourage collective action in the reader. There is a dual-purpose in this text. First, to politically educate activists and organizers around a socialist mass project. Second, to create a foundation for the subfield of revolutionary pedagogy, specifically to distinguish it from a more generic and palatable critical pedagogy that has found purchase in academia writ large. And while it cannot be said that Revolutionary Education is a definitive compendium of theory and practical accounts (beyond its ambitious title, this does not appear to be the goal of any of the contributors), what it does provide is a strong push for the future of activism, public-facing scholarship, and political education.
A collection of essays from different authors, Revolutionary Education covers an almost staggering amount of ground. A brief overview: Malott and Ford discuss the scrubbing of Marxism from education studies; Cutter, Smolarek, and Brown all focus on how a truly liberatory education is ever ongoing, political, and active in and out of the school (and being active is not solely symbolic or individualistic); González and La Riva shine a light on how mainstream journalism often places itself in a position of insular didacticism, leading to a need for alternative forms of communication where actual dialectic conversation can take place; Alves and Vaz Borges zoom out into a discussion of international militant resistance, showcasing the practicality revolutionary education has in the struggle against colonialism. This eclectic collection is capped off with two appendixes, suggesting how the reader can discuss the contents with a group and implement revolutionary education practices. This overall framing on real-world, revolutionary action is what creates difficulty in evaluating the manuscript. This is a work that can only be truly evaluated as successful or not after seeing the type of activism that comes after.
The varied content throughout Revolutionary Education is organized with a throughline of understanding the political nature of education and its capacity to build a revolutionary structure. By presenting such an eclectic collection, Revolutionary Education shows multiple angles of the Marxist education mission: theoretical, practical, local, international, and even outside the stereotypical confines of a curriculum via news media. All this edited into a small package is impressive. Each chapter still provides a brief yet thorough perspective of its topic while still being connected to what comes before and after. The mix of historical examples and personal accounts are inspiring without being overwhelming. Another asset to the text is its willingness to go beyond the American-centered canon (although the necessity of two of nine chapters being centered on Guinea-Bissau may be questionable for some). This text goes beyond what is generally accepted in the bounds of activism scholarship by being explicitly political, while still being grounded and intellectually rigorous.
Of course, critique can still be had with the text, some relevant, some less so. Obligatorily, Revolutionary Education is published by Liberation Media, which was created by the Party for Socialism and Liberation. But blind propaganda this is not. All the contributors have bodies of work that speak for themselves, and in any case, many of the concepts presented are not new but valuable in how they have been organized amongst each other. A more valid critique is the gray space in which the manuscript resides. Without going into a larger discussion on what is theory and what is practice, the eclectic nature of this short guide almost inherently means that extensive description and discussion of theory and practice is not possible. At a certain level, the veteran authors can be seen as more so presenting their reactions to theory and practices, with varying degrees of more basic context being given. The extent to which the minutiae of theory or practice is explained in an accessible manner can be at times overly dependent on each individual author. The book is aimed toward developing activists, so this is both an understandable yet important issue. Each author speaks from their own research and work expertise, and each is sure to have a different idea of the audience they are speaking to. But the issue of variability between chapters still stands. One way this issue could have been lessened while maintaining overall brevity is by including a recommended reading list at the end of each chapter, perhaps categorized by difficulty. There are of course endnotes but in the spirit of creating a more accessible text further steps could be taken.
Revolutionary Education: Theory and Practice for Socialist Organizers serves a specific niche in a field that is due for some explicitly Marxist content. It is unfair to expect such a compact work to speak for all in the fields of education, activism, and politics, even with such an ambitious title. At the same time, anyone that is particularly annoyed by the reality of what the text is, may need to reassess the reality of the moment. Where uncertainty is the most obvious characteristic of today’s world, Nino Brown and the contributors to this text put forth an optimistic manual to provide something beyond disillusionment while avoiding performativity. Obviously, it is hard to thread the needle without becoming presumptuous or spouting empty propaganda, but this book threads that needle. Revolutionary Education accomplishes what it sets out to do and leaves to its collective audience to accomplish what they believe ought to come next.
