ABSTRACT
To build a positive case for active teacher-intervention, this chapter puts in place some of the foundations and the pillars on which that case is built. It considers first the legitimacy of ideologically-based politically committed discourse, enquiry and practice, and thus the legitimacy of offering substantive proposals for social change. The chapter then, while harking back to earlier discussion regarding the social formation of consciousness, considers the role of teachers with special regard to the relation between intervention and empowering. It also argues that people must encourage those who have established informed positions and privileged perspectives for themselves to intervene, where appropriate, in assisting the liberation and empowerment of others. The chapter promotes a version of structuralist materialism and at the same time exploiting certain tensions between the structuralism involved and the notion of schooling functioning as a liberating agency with teachers acting in part as political activists within their schools.
