Other learning is possible

This talk offers a brief introduction to some diverse forms of higher education now being practiced around the world and considers the light these shed on the politics of education in Britain today. It asks why new imaginaries of egalitarian, autonomous, co-operative and post-capitalist education remain marginal in the ‘education debate’ here despite decades of professional opposition to the marketization of education, extensive evidence of its exclusionary consequences, and the rise of global education movements which demonstrate that other learning is possible. The talk will argue that both the mainstream education debate and institutionalized educational practice in the UK are framed within colonial logics that not only contribute to the production of social and epistemic injustice but render alternatives invisible or impossible. The aim of the talk is to explore how decolonizing these logics can create space for the emergence of educational imaginaries which support the flourishing of life rather than its domination, and which equip people to collectively embrace the real challenges of reclaiming our ecological, political and economic futures.