ABSTRACT

The conference titled “Freire and Beyond” was held at Smith College and the University of Massachusetts (Amherst campus) in the fall of 2000, the same year the scientific community reached consensus that human behavior was a major contributor to global warming. Frédérique Apffel-Marglin, an anthropologist at Smith College, invited activists who had attempted to utilize Freire’s pedagogy in Third World cultures, along with several others whose experience with non-Western cultures enabled them to recognize the Western assumptions that are the basis of Freire’s ideas. The conference was organized partly in support of Third World efforts to resist further Western colonization in this era of ecological decline, and partly out of a concern with the way colleges of education in North America promote the different genres of liberal thinking that underlie current efforts to globalize a consumerdependent lifestyle that is ecologically unsustainable. That Freire’s followers represent him as a critic of these traditions of educational liberalism, whereas more thoughtful observers consider his ideas as supportive of core liberal assumptions, makes it especially important at this time to examine the assumptions that his followers have taken for granted.