ABSTRACT
Since this chapter is committed to controversy, if not by its title then by the outlook of its author, it is important to define early what is at issue. The author do not regard schools as truly educational but, more nearly, as an institutional perversion of education. Schools not only prevent true education from occurring, they actually miseducate, in my opinion. They teach not what is relevant and true but what is irrelevant and untrue to the interests of their students. They do this, however, in the service of a society of which they are a central institution and a major bulwark. The author define education as the conscious use of resources to increase people’s awareness of the relevant facts of their lives, and to increase people’s abilities to act in their own true interests. Paulo Freire’s philosophy and method is the most completely worked out and generally most satisfactory approach to education in the modern world.
