Youth work pedagogy in higher education and the importance of not-knowing

Within education, we often encounter the urgent need to recruit teachers who possess subject-specific knowledges and who can pedagogically teach the students the right things. In this article, I turn to youth work and the statement “I have a plan to not have plan” to put forward another view of pedagogical work—one that views knowledge also as non-knowledge and signifies an unmaking of normative defined notions of education, and by doing so creates situations of mutual learning, motion, and trust. Working with Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy of immanence the discussion centers on the relation between knowledge and thinking. Although pedagogical approaches with predetermined activities that provide a clear return have for a long time been part of the language through which we discuss the content and practices of most educations, I argue that established knowledges can just as well work against learning, motion, and trust, while acting as teachers but not as knowledgeable experts may provoke thinking and enable standing side-by-side with students. And this is important. Not only in higher education but also in the society at large. Due to the experience of problems without visible solutions, young peoples’ trust in violence to influence society is increasing.