Born in the early part of the 20th century, Maxine Greene has always been a thinker and a writer. Although she describes her original family as one that “discouraged intellectual adventure and risk” (1998, p. 9), from the age of 7 she wrote stories on anything that would accept pencil lead or ink. In her late teens, she became politically involved aft er meeting people in Europe who were heading to Spain to fi ght against fascism, and this had a profound impact on her thinking. She returned to the United States to fi nish her undergraduate degree in 1938.