This paper explores some of the ideas expressed in or associated with the work of Don Lorenzo Milani and the School of Barbiana and discusses them in the light of the teachings of the gospels. It draws out the implications of these ideas for a critical education in the Christian spirit. The focus throughout is on Christian education for social…

Paulo Freire's notion that education is politics is well known to readers involved in areas of critical education, and thus a detailed rehearsal of the burgeoning literature illustrating and elaborating on this view is not necessary. After all, this view has a very long, albeit repressed, history, which anticipates Freire and those who took up the…

This paper provides a critical exposition and analysis of the work of an acclaimed Italian educator, Lorenzo Milani, and ideas that emerged from his experiences in two Tuscan localities. His work is well known in Italy and many parts of southern Europe. Despite the translations of his works into English and Spanish, in the early 1970s, and their…

This article pays tribute to one of Europe's foremost critical pedagogues, the Tuscan Don Lorenzo Milani, on the ninetieth anniversary of his birth. It highlights the key moments in his life as priest and educator as well as his pedagogical approach directed at challenging the class-conditioned status quo in Italian society and at achieving…

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of Henry Giroux's contribution over the years to critical thinking in education and beyond. It focuses primarily on Giroux's recent works concerning the changing nature of the State (from the social to the carceral and neoliberal state), the war against youth and children, the culture of militarisation,…

The sites of adult education practice are multiple, and museums feature regularly among these sites (Chadwick and Stannett, 1995, 2000). This chapter explores the potential of museums as sites for critical "public pedagogy." It foregrounds the role of adult educators as co-interrogators with adult learners of what is generally perceived…

Paulo Freire and Lorenzo Milani are considered as key figures in a number of Southern European countries for providing signposts for a critical approach to education. In this paper I will view their ideas and biographical trajectories comparatively to glean some important insights for a critical pedagogy. The common theme throughout this…

Explores elements for a theoretical framework for radical adult education, based primarily on ideas of Gramsci and Freire. Discusses commitment of adult educators to social transformation, consciousness raising related to power relations and global capitalism, emancipatory adult education as part of social movements, role of the adult educator,…

This essay critically highlights the main features of a study that attaches importance to the concepts of time and optimism and their effects on the achievement and goals of high and low achievers in a North American and a Brazilian context. The focus on the time factor that serves as a leitmotif throughout the study gives this work its…