ABSTRACT
The radical movements in Mexico that integrated Dewey in their pedagogy of social change shared two assumptions: one, that the communities they sought to mobilize through education in order to change social conditions had been produced by historical forces; in other words, they were already existing entities. Second, that the formation of these communities had preceded the rise of social consciousness of their identities and interrelatedness in the world. Thus the schools served the crucial purpose of creating that social consciousness among the members of the community-an awareness of the values they shared-and to teach the individuals in the community how they integrated into the wider world wherein the community resided. Education closed the gap between group formation and group consciousness and in the process prepared the community to transform an unjust social world. Thus we should understand their accommodation to society in this way: social justice constituted the end of social change. By social justice, they meant the redistribution of incomes and the advocacy of equality at all levels of society in order to reverse the historical inheritance of Spanish colonialism that had produced Mexican societies.
