Education Philosophy

Education Philosophy

Greene's Theory of Education and Freedom

Maxine Greene (1988) relates the notion of spaces for freedom and possibility to the goal of education itself: “Progressive education is and will be education for reflective practice and for awakening and for social concern. It will be carving out wider and wider spaces for freedom and the bite of possibility” (p18). Maxine Greene asks: “What does it mean to be a citizen of the free world?” She concludes that it is “having the capacity to choose, the power to act to attain one's purposes, and the ability to help transform a world lived in common with others” (p32).

Key to phenomenological inquiry, as Greene (1973) explained, has been the concept of consciousness, referring to an experienced context or life world. The phenomenologist postulates his or her life world as central to all that he or she does—including research and teaching—and as a consequence focuses upon the biographic situation of each individual. Often the individual is unaware of his or her life world; he or she is submerged in it. In this state, one adopts the natural attitude, taking for granted the reality and legitimacy of daily, practical life. The edges and boundaries of this attitude constitute the sites of self-reflexivity where one may bracket the taken-for-granted. As Greene (1973) has observed, ordinary perception has to be suspended for questions to be posed. The individual may have to be shocked into awareness of his or her own perception.

Adler, Dewey, & Iliich Responses To Greene's Philosophy

Illich (1970) erroneously suggests that a inspired scholar can mechanically, without guidance in the direction of evolving insights, “master in a couple of months…equally of exceptional dialects, for example algebra…” as if he, himself, needed the information of numbers he required to make this philosophical contention compelling—a major carrying demonstration ...