ABSTRACT
Teachers should become transformative intellectuals if they are to educate students to be active, critical citizens. Central to the category of transformative intellectual is the necessity of making the pedagogical more political and the political more pedagogical. Making the pedagogical more political means inserting schooling more directly into the political sphere by arguing that school represents both a struggle to define meaning and a struggle over power relations. A step beyond being an ally is serving as an advocate. In terms of social issues, an advocate may be someone who speaks about issues but does not take the same level of action as an activist. Activists also are targets of more severe attacks that threaten their lives and their loved ones. So, although we are encouraging activism to mobilize for change in education, we are aware of the reality and risk taking involved in taking such a stance.
