ABSTRACT
To varying degrees and in different ways, the Golden Key project, the Sudbury Valley School, and the Barbara Taylor School challenge the glorification of knowledge production and acquisition that is the officially sanctioned raison d'etre of schools. This chapter explores a major source of their failure. The benefits of a performative approach to education have been argued by Pineau. In 'Teaching is Performance: Reconceptualizing a Problematic Metaphor', she drew connections between critical pedagogy and performance studies, concluding that a performance-centered approach is 'inherently, and exhilaratingly, countercultural at both the pedagogical and theoretical levels'. Thus, Pineau's ideas, although confined to the topic of teaching as performance, are both consistent and inconsistent with the analysis and illustrations on learning as performance and performance as developmental activity. Seeing the teaching and learning process as performance potentially allows one to see and create new things, including performatory pedagogy.
