Learning Beyond the State: An Autoethnographic Inquiry into Anarchist Pedagogy and Educational Resistance

This thesis investigates anarchist pedagogy as both a radical educational theory and a lived practice of resistance against hierarchical and neoliberal models of schooling. Drawing from historical precedents such as Francisco Ferrer's Modern Schools and contemporary experiments like the Paideia Free School, it explores how anarchist education reimagines learning as collective, voluntary, and emancipatory. The study situates anarchist pedagogy within broader educational discourses, critically engaging with liberal, critical, and feminist pedagogies to highlight intersections, tensions, and transformative possibilities. Using autoethnography as a primary methodological approach, it reflects on the contradictions of pursuing anarchist ideals within capitalist academic structures. The work contends that the value of anarchist pedagogy lies not in offering a fixed model but in fostering a continual, prefigurative process of educational experimentation grounded in mutual aid, freedom, and autonomy. In doing so, it contributes to the rethinking of education as a site of political struggle and imaginative potential.