[Review] Gareth Dylan Smith, Mike Dines, and Tom Parkinson (eds) (2017) Punk Pedagogies: music, culture and learning

This is a useful and timely book. On the one hand, the academy has seen a growth in the teaching of content relating to popular culture, youth culture, (post)subcultures, countercultures, DIY cultures and resistance studies. On the other hand, university teaching is being quantified and weaponised in numerous agendas. In the UK context these agendas are simultaneously related to ‘value for money’, ‘transferable skills’ and ‘slipping standards’, while at the same time reflecting state-led initiatives such as Prevent (The Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015) or the Teaching Excellence Framework. Here is a collection that helps us think about the implications of each for the other, which raises important discussions about the relationship between what it is we teach, how we teach it and the institutional contexts in which we teach. This is not a simple ‘how to teach punk’ toolkit. It is an engaged and engaging series of analyses, drawing out the complexity of ways, subjects and institutions in which we work.