ABSTRACT
Paulo Freire warned that reducing educational experience to the simple transfer of knowledge through teacher technicians was to impoverish and dehumanize its fundamental moral purpose to form human beings. Education is essentially a human endeavor of origin and purpose; it proceeds from humanity, and its goal is humanity. Education nurtures individuality and invites the flowering of community. Education is about life together. Dewey's notion of the religious and his enigmatic claim that the teacher is a "prophet of the true God" offers us a way to think differently about the aims and purposes of education situated now within the riverbeds of twenty-first-century neoliberalism. Reference to the supernatural continues to capture much personal and social political power to justify actions and sustain communal cohesion. Dewey claimed that the teacher was a prophet, positioned in such a space that profoundly shaped the social world toward democratic living.
