Education and Freedom in the American Experience: Critical Imagination as Pedagogy
Wendy Kohli
The problem of freedom
in 1939, Dewey questioned “what is freedom and why is it prized?”
facing the Hitler assault on democracy, freedom was no longer taken for granted.
Maxine Greene challenges us to question freedom in our present context.
The majority don't exercise their minimal rights anymore.
Freedom is taken for granted again.
Greene reminds us of those who were never privileged enough to take freedom for granted.
Stresses the need of an “education for freedom” - it demands a critical stance, a willingness to question, a commitment to search and the exercise of imagination.
Why do 2 prominent philosophers are concerned with this matter?
Freedom and reason were hoped to bring education and democracy.
With capitalism reason came to serve accumulation, it became an instrument of domination and confined freedom to the individual as a citizen and a consumer. (what is that notion of freedom? It is unclear to me)
The critical tradition challenges the use of reason as a dominating tool and its correlate notion of freedom.
Critcal reason returns as freedom's ally.
Maxine Greene is heavily influenced by these ideas, by existencial phenomenology, by critical marxism.
The individual is free in the way he chooses to intepret reality not in the way it is determined by it.
in the dialectical approach to understanding and knowing , there is constant interaction between the known and the knower.
Her search is done through dialectical analysis.
This article is a review of Greene's book “The Dialect of Freedom.”
In this book Greene:
invites readers to open themselves to a multidisciplinary quest
looks at culture and history through the lenses of freedom and democracy.
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