"The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation" by Paulo Freire is approached as a focus for radical pedagogy's search for a critical language that stresses the primacy of a politics of emancipation. (MT)

Perhaps one of the most taken-for-granted features of contemporary social theory is the ritual and increasingly generic critique of Marxism in terms of its alleged failure to address forms of oppression other than that of "class." Marxism is considered to be theoretically bankrupt and intellectually passe, and class analysis is often savagely…

This essay is a response to a review by Peter Gronn of the author's book "Schooling as a Ritual Performance." It addresses general issues raised by Gronn in order to situate the review in the larger context that addresses the failure of Gronn's mode of analysis. (TE)

Pepi Leistyna's book "Presence of Mind" discusses how schools of education deter teachers from understanding the world's complex political, historical, social, and economic realities. Educators must develop what C. Wright Mills called the "sociological imagination." Developing critical consciousness and varied, multicultural…

Constructing an arch of social dreaming means developing a politics of difference that actively contests the devaluation of persons relegated as "others." In this connection, features of critical pedagogy, the role it plays in the struggle against current neoconservatism, and the importance of language are considered. (SLD)