In 1977, Tony Moon had a page to fill. He had just started a new punk fanzine — a cheaply produced magazine — and so he picked up a thick black pen and drew out three guitar chords. “This is a chord,” he wrote, “This is another, This is a Third, Now form a band.”
This act succinctly captured the punk era and its ethos. Tired of the pretentious rock music of the time — eight minute drum solos and pseudo-mystical lyrics — the punks yearned for something more visceral and present. They wanted loud, brash music that was down the pub and in your face. And they realised they would have to build it themselves.
Punk became a label for uncompromising DIY music, fashion and culture. Instead of sitting back and waiting for publishers, designers and record executives to create a product to sell them, punks did the creating themselves. And in short order, the publishers, designers and record executives jumped in, with punks who collaborated in this commercialisation process mocked as sell-outs. In these circumstances, punk culture soon consumed itself and as quickly as they appeared, the punks had fragmented and exited the sticky, broken glass strewn stage, even if the striking punk look persisted well into the 1980s and beyond.
I guess that in the 1990s, I was a post-punk or something. We would listen to The Levellers:
“I grew up, learned to love and laugh
Circled A's on the underpass
But the noise we thought would never stop
Died a death as the punks grew up”
And we formed our own bands. I remember wishing that I had been there and seen it myself. I was born in 1976, when it all kicked off, so I was born too late.
Nevertheless, some of the most worthwhile adventures of my adult life have been punk, in the wider sense of the word.
This newsletter, for instance, is a DIY effort. I have no editor — yes, I know that an editor would probably improve it. It is facilitated by a corporation, Substack, but they have no editorial control.
And when I first decided to write a book, I just wrote one. It was the poorly titled, Ouroboros — now unavailable — that I sold through a website that enabled paid pdf downloads. On the back of that, I was contacted by an editor at a publishing company and since then have written three conventional books.
I have also been involved in the ground-up, how-will-we-pay-for-the-lunch researchED movement in Australia. Again, punk.
But despite appearances, this isn’t intended to be a narcissistic post. There is a more fundamental point to make.
I am interested in education because I am interested in human agency. I want to equip students with the tools they need to go on the adventures they choose. These adventures may be vocational — the way many view the purpose of education — but they may also be intellectual, philosophical or even spiritual. In a sense, it is futile for me to try to anticipate labels for these adventures because I cannot know what future humans equipped with the superpower of cultural curated knowledge will embark upon. That’s why education is exciting.
And yet so much of the current milieu emphasises the lack of agency of young people. They are at the mercy of the patriarchy or systematic oppression or intractable climate problems or a mental health crisis.
I am not disputing that there are issues to face. I am asserting that all is not hopeless and that humans have choices to make that matter.
Young people need a new punk movement. And it’s not just young people. We all need to be more punk.