ABSTRACT
Too frequently, parents, teachers, and the general public portray classrooms and schools as separate from the world outside schoolhouse walls in phrases like “out there in the real world” and “wait till you get a taste of life out there.” The implication is that the world within classroom walls is somehow different from, probably easier, and perhaps even more just than the world beyond those walls. This portrait of schools as being something other than of the worlds in which they exist creates a false, problematic, and ultimately dangerous frame for imagining pedagogy. By failing to acknowledge the way classrooms are about making meaning of the word and the world (Freire, 1970), we perpetuate a pedagogy of denial that will reify inequities rather than moving society toward more symmetrical relations of power. For anyone who has ever contrasted classroom life to “the real world,” we offer the following vignettes.
