Girls were made for housework and boys were made to fight, and the naughty pictures on Page 3 make everything all right: approaches towards teaching punk – complexities, ambiguities and profanities

The very idea of any kind of pedagogical approach towards punk, at first glance, appears paradoxical, nonsensical and just plain imprudent. If, on 6th November 1975 – the date of the Sex Pistols’ first gig at Saint Martin’s School of Art – John Lydon was told that in years to come punk would be taught in classrooms he most probably would have laughed in your face, reacting to the comment with a profanity not suitable for students’ ears. But does he have a point? Does ‘punk rock’ really have a place in lecture-halls? Is it complex and colourful enough for the classrooms? Should we really be ‘enshrining’ the music in academia, in the same way in which we’ve already done with the music of Mozart, Schubert and Mahler? Yet the Beatles are taught on the AQA A-Level syllabus, and the Gallagher brothers are transcribed within the Edexcel A-Level Music Anthology. Will ‘punk’ be on an A-Level syllabus next, taught to youngsters as they sit behind a desk, timetabled to attend pogo-ing and spitting lessons and workshops on how to upset old ladies at bus stops: a kind of armchair DiY culture gone wrong? This talk will investigate the ambiguities around punk pedagogy: how do we address punk in the lecture theatre or classroom? How do we teach such a culture that is apparently (and inherently) so anti-establishment that punk itself may not wish to be discussed by academics and students alike? Looking at the many issues involved with teaching such a complex and exciting scene, these questions will be raised, explored and perhaps even answered. And the title, about housework, fighting and page 3? It is a quote from The Subhumans’ ‘From the Cradle to the Grave’: indicative listening in preparation for the presentation.