ABSTRACT
Systematic attempts to free people of false consciousness and instill in them true consciousness have not been limited to communist countries. Today, in the educational system of the Federal Republic of Germany, from elementary school through the university, one can find practices that aim at just such proposed enlightenment, variously called “emancipatory pedagogy,” or “critical social science.” Some of the practitioners of this philosophy of education are orthodox Marxists; others owe their emancipatory concerns to the neo-Marxist Critical Theory of the Frankfurt school developed by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno and later continued by Jürgen Habermas. The political spectrum is wide and includes communists, noncommunist Marxists, members of what in the 1960s was known as the “New Left,” as well as left-of-center liberals.
