Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of part eight of this book. The book builds on the earlier work of Sam Bowles, Henry Levin, Francis Piven, and late historian Michael Katz to critique the contradictory nature of capitalist schooling in the United States. It offers a new vision for a critical pedagogy in school settings and, most importantly, a pedagogy that is linked to a broader struggle for democratic rights—a liberatory education. The book outlines three pedagogical approaches to a critical education and pedagogical praxis: Rupture, Project, and Conversation. It argues that it is not necessary to reform or reimagine schools, but the desire to abolish them. Reform for them suggests that people want change but believe that progress is made incrementally. The book also offers a set of principles that is required to rebuild education/schools based on the ethics of radical joy, radical trust, radical imagination, and radical disruption.