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The Deschooling Movement
“Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school,”
- Albert Einstein
Ivan Illich & Deschooling
Deschooling Society:
The Deschooling movement identifies institutions, particularly the institution of education, as the focal point for many of society’s problems. In his book, Deschooling Society, Ivan Illich (1971) explains that forcing mandatory schooling on all children unnaturally separates academic learning from life. In effect, “education becomes unworldly and the world becomes noneducational” (p. 24). This contributes to a bureaucratic view of the world, where we learn to rely on experts and technology to solve our problems. Illich (1971) states “Once we learn to need school, all activites take the shape of client relationships” (p. 39). Our minds become habituated, or indoctrinated, to a mindset where we accept institutional planning in every facet of our lives. This is inherently disempowering and anti-democratic, as the resulting growth of bureaucratic institutions reinforces further reliance on specialized experts. Decisions are made further and further from the people who are affected by them. In his analysis, Illich does not use the word neoliberalism, though he clearly and forcefully articulates the societal problems that we now identify with this phenomenon. Illich (1971) implicates the structure of schools as contributing to positivistic, technocratic ways of thinking, stating “school initiates young people into a world where everything can be measured” (p. 40). Once people are schooled to believe that values can be produced and measured institutionally, they are willing to accept all kinds of rankings and hierarchies.
The hidden curriculum, embedded within the ritual of schooling, adds to division within our society, and compounds the privileged status of the elite. Universal schooling promises to equalize society and help the poor, but in reality family income determines one’s quality and amount of education. Illich (1971) states “the poverty program produces more poor, the war in Asia more Vietcong, technical assistance more underdevelopment” (p. 116). Today, we can add that the “war on Terrorism” produces more “terrorists,” and the “war on drugs” makes drugs more scarce, and hence, more of a valuable commodity for those willing to take the risks of smuggling and distributing them, guaranteeing a “war” without end. In this analysis, Illich demonstrates the persistently ineffective attempts our society makes to solve problems using bureaucratic measures. Institutionalized education blinds us to this reality, with the result being ever-increasing institutional problems, requiring ever-more invasive and draconian institutional solutions. The underlying assumptions of schooling include:
Built into this rationale, yet also ignored by educational analysts, is the vested interest professional educators have in institutionalizing social problems. In her book, Escaping Education, Madhu Prakash states “As with the medical establishment, there is prestige for every new disease discovered and treated: community destruction can be cured by communitarian education; low self-esteem can be raised by empowering education; racism can be cured by antiracist pedagogies; fragmentation can be fixed by interdisciplinary or holistic education; regimentation can be reversed by pedagogies for play; environmental damage can be healed by environmental education.” “The required or recommended course readings for these fixes not only nourish the publication industry; they fatten the curriculum vitae of every new educational reformer who first identifies the mysterious ill that prohibits the desired learning; and then finds a pedagogical and curricular cure for it” (p. 14). Educators fail to understand that true learning is a personal activity and can never be transmitted by professional ministrations, no matter how well-intentioned.
Deschooling Yourself - How to Recover from Traditional Education
Growing Without School Magazine
HOW EDUCATION REPRODUCES CONSUMERISM & THE DESTRUCTION OF THE ECOSYSTEM
“We cannot go beyond the consumer society unless we first understand that obligatory public schools inevitably reproduce such a society, no matter what is taught in them” - Ivan Illich “The educational system – starting with the school – was the first industrial enterprise that recognized no frontiers; the first ‘global’ corporation, pioneering the reorganization of society to concentrate more and more ‘labor power’ in the creation of consumption ‘needs’ that only highly capitalized corporations can satisfy.” - Madhu Prakash
Ivan Illich recognized that the formally educated, both in the United States and around the world, create the greatest demands for the conveniences of modern society. Through the institutional paradigm students “learn that anything worthwhile is standardized, certified, and can be purchased” (Gintis, 1972, p. 56). It has become the job of education to provide a trained work force for global capitalism. In this respect, education assumes its place with technological “progress” as a major engine of economic growth. The most schooled within the society are the ones most likely to define their lives by the quality of their possessions.
In this analysis, he saw the connection between schooling, and the ever greater commodification of the world’s commons. Schools, according to deschooling advocates, must be viewed as an industry that prepares students to engage in the production of ever-greater demands. This way of thinking is systematically destroying the nature world in order to meet the creature comforts of the educated class. Illich (1971) states “a desirable future depends on our deliberately choosing a life of action over a life of consumption, on our engendering a life style which will enable us to be spontaneous, independent, yet related to each other, rather than maintaining a life style which only allows us to make and unmake, produce and consume – a style of life which is merely a way station on the road to depletion and pollution of the environment” (p. 52). As long as society continues to be blind to the reality that schools are intimately connected to shaping consumerism, the destruction of what is left of the natural ecosystems of the planet will continue unabated.
DESCHOOLING’S DIVERGENCE FROM CRITICAL PEDAGOGY
"The social majorities need no saviors, no conscientization, no empowerment. They are impressively skillful in saving their worlds. They have been able to do so for five hundred years. The newly minted expert as well as the established scholar have much to learn about living well from the uneducated and the illiterate - if they can give up the arrogance of their expertise." - Madhu Prakash
Illich and his disciples are aligned with critical pedagogues in their criticism of traditional education. Deschooling advocates, like critical pedagogues, want to end the forced indoctrination of students to institutional values and assumptions. However, Deschooling advocates believe that all schooling, even democratic models, replicate the dominant societal paradigm.
Ivan Illich and Paulo Freire were close friends and colleagues until the late 1960s, when Illich began to criticize Freire’s conscientization model of empowerment. Illich (1971) argued that students resist education not because of the authoritarian styles of teaching, but because of the framework common to all schools, (including free or democratic schools) where “one person’s judgment should determine what and when another person must learn” (p. 41). School, according to Illich, prepares one for passivity and alienation by teaching the need to be taught. Illich (1971) argues that the democratic school movement confuses discipline with indoctrination (p. 65). This model is attractive to some educators who view traditional education as inhibiting. However, these schools and their supporters, however well-intentioned, ultimately operate in support of the conventional ideology of schooling because they still want to make “all valuable learning the result of professional teaching” (Illich, 1971, p. 67). Illich (1971) details his criticism of radical teaching approaches, stating “even the seemingly radical critics of the school system are not willing to abandon the idea that they have an obligation to the young, especially to the poor, an obligation to process them, whether by love or by fear into a society which needs disciplined specialization as much from its producers as from its consumers and also their also their full commitment to the ideology which puts economic growth first” (p. 67).
In the article “From a Pedagogy for Liberation to Liberation From Pedagogy” Esteva, Stuchul, and Prakash offer a similar criticism of Freire, referring to him as a “colonizer” (Esteva et al., 2004, p. 13). Freire envisioned his core concept of conscientization, possessed only by critical educators and other intellectuals, as being universalized using the tenets of critical pedagogy. Esteva et al. (2004) criticize this top-down approach to liberation, stating that it “serves the purpose of legitimizing the right of intervention in the lives of others” (p. 16). This intervention requires a reorientation of others cultures to a Western way of thinking, so they can practice Freire’s model of liberation based on critical reflection. The book “Re-Thinking Freire,” which includes the article by Esteva et al., contains detailed examples of cultures that attempted to employ the Freireian framework, only to find their sustainable living practices and traditions were being severely undermined. But the model of conscientization has negative consequences within the framework of American school as well. Freire failed to grasp that his model to liberate the oppressed actually transformed people into “clients, beneficiaries, and customers” with teachers providing the service of liberation (Esteva et al., 2004, p. 19). Thus the institutional, bureaucratic tendencies of education are reinforced through this framework, while the oppressed learn to perceive themselves as victims in need of salvation from without.
LEARNING IN A DESCHOOLED SOCIETY
“We can depend on self-motivated learning instead of employing teachers to bribe or compel the student to find the time and the will to learn..we can provide the learner with new links to the world instead of continuing to funnel all educational programs through the teacher.” – Ivan Illich
According to Illich (1971), a good educational system should have three purposes: 1) Should provide all who want to learn with the proper resources 2) Empower all who want to share what they know with those who want to learn from them 3) Furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known (p. 75) Illich (1971) states, “an individual with a schooled mind conceives of the world as a pyramid of classified packages accessible only to those who carry the proper tag. New institutions…should be channels to which the learner would have access without credentials or pedigree” (p. 76). These purposes include more than merely ending formal schooling, they entail a democratization of media and other institutions as well.
The 4 Approaches for Gaining Educational Resources: 1) Reference Services to Educational Objects – facilitate access to things or process used for learning. This could include some things to be stored with libraries or museums. Others could be utilized within factories, airports, or farms and could be made available to apprentices and other interested learners 2) Skill Exchanges – people can list skills and conditions under which they would serve as mentors 3) Peer-Matching – communication networks which permit people to describe the learning activitiy in which they wish to engage, in hope of finding partners or mentors 4) Reference Services to Education-at-Large – Directory of people who claim to have desired skills – could be chosen by polls or references from former clients
These approaches are derived from Illich’s (1971) belief that the processes and artifacts of real-life should be available to children for their exploration. He also believed that child labor laws should be changed to allow children to perform limited work in a real-world setting – making their education literally a real-life experience. Illich felt there was a vast potential of educational resources within the industrial plants and equipment of society (Illich, 1971, pp. 83-86).
DESCHOOLING, UNSCHOOLING, HOMESCHOOLING – WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?
Illich and Prakash identify homeschooling as problematic because it is implies, just as traditional schooling does, some sort of treatment. Prakash (1998) states “educational treatments at home are a nightmare, more poisonous and dangerous than public schooling; transmogrifying parents into pseudoprofessional teachers; contaminating the natural life of the family” (p. 98). Those that are homeschooled are still stuck in the mindset of traditional schooling. Deschooling speaks to a break with the very idea of schooling and all the prejudices that go with it. Unschooling refers to a particular type of homeschooling, introduced by a disciple of Illich named John Holt. Unschooling represents a child-centered version of homeschooling, where, as Holt describes, “the whole world is your child’s classroom.” This form of homeschooling claims to represent about 10 to 15 percent of students that are being homeschooled in the United States.
The Unschooling Handbook
5 Steps to Unschooling
REFERENCES
Esteva et al (2004). From a Pedagogy for Liberation to Liberation From Pedagogy. In C.A. Bowers & Fredrique Apffel-Marglin (Eds.), Re-Thinking Freire (pp. 13-30). Lawrence Erlbaum Publications.
Gintis, H. (1972). Toward a Political Economy of Education: A Radical Critique of Ivan Illich's Deschooling Society. In Gartner et al (Eds.), After Deschooling, What? (pp. 29-76). New York: Harper & Row.
Illich, I. (1971). Deschooling Society. New York: Harper & Row.
Prakash M.S. & Gustavo Esteva (1998). Escaping Education. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
- Albert Einstein
Ivan Illich & Deschooling Deschooling Society:
"Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby 'schooled' to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is 'schooled' to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work. Health, learning, dignity, independence, and creative endeavor are defined as little more than the performance of the institutions which claim to serve those ends, and their improvement is made to depend on allocating more resources to the management of hospitals, schools, and other agencies in question."PROBLEMS WITH INSTITUTIONALIZED EDUCATION
The following sections describe the basic tenets of Deschooling. They can be found in sequence below:
· Problems with institutionalized education
· How education reproduces consumerism & the destruction of the ecosystem
· Deschooling’s divergence from critical pedagogy
· Learning in a Deschooled Society
· Deschooling, Unschooling, Homeschooling – What’s the Difference?
The Deschooling movement identifies institutions, particularly the institution of education, as the focal point for many of society’s problems. In his book, Deschooling Society, Ivan Illich (1971) explains that forcing mandatory schooling on all children unnaturally separates academic learning from life. In effect, “education becomes unworldly and the world becomes noneducational” (p. 24). This contributes to a bureaucratic view of the world, where we learn to rely on experts and technology to solve our problems. Illich (1971) states “Once we learn to need school, all activites take the shape of client relationships” (p. 39). Our minds become habituated, or indoctrinated, to a mindset where we accept institutional planning in every facet of our lives. This is inherently disempowering and anti-democratic, as the resulting growth of bureaucratic institutions reinforces further reliance on specialized experts. Decisions are made further and further from the people who are affected by them. In his analysis, Illich does not use the word neoliberalism, though he clearly and forcefully articulates the societal problems that we now identify with this phenomenon. Illich (1971) implicates the structure of schools as contributing to positivistic, technocratic ways of thinking, stating “school initiates young people into a world where everything can be measured” (p. 40). Once people are schooled to believe that values can be produced and measured institutionally, they are willing to accept all kinds of rankings and hierarchies.
The hidden curriculum, embedded within the ritual of schooling, adds to division within our society, and compounds the privileged status of the elite. Universal schooling promises to equalize society and help the poor, but in reality family income determines one’s quality and amount of education. Illich (1971) states “the poverty program produces more poor, the war in Asia more Vietcong, technical assistance more underdevelopment” (p. 116). Today, we can add that the “war on Terrorism” produces more “terrorists,” and the “war on drugs” makes drugs more scarce, and hence, more of a valuable commodity for those willing to take the risks of smuggling and distributing them, guaranteeing a “war” without end. In this analysis, Illich demonstrates the persistently ineffective attempts our society makes to solve problems using bureaucratic measures. Institutionalized education blinds us to this reality, with the result being ever-increasing institutional problems, requiring ever-more invasive and draconian institutional solutions. The underlying assumptions of schooling include:
- The shared belief that behavior acquired within the presence of a teacher is of special value to both the pupil and the society
- Social man is born only in adolescence only if he matures within the bounds of the “school-womb”
- Changes in society must be brought about by the young, who must transform society, but only after they leave school (Ilich, 1971, p. 67)
- To value “Institutional commodities above the nonprofessional ministrations of a neighbor”
- “Initiates citizen to the myth that bureaucracies guided by scientific knowledge are efficient and benevolent”
- “Increased production will provide a better life” (Illich, 1971, p. 74)
Built into this rationale, yet also ignored by educational analysts, is the vested interest professional educators have in institutionalizing social problems. In her book, Escaping Education, Madhu Prakash states “As with the medical establishment, there is prestige for every new disease discovered and treated: community destruction can be cured by communitarian education; low self-esteem can be raised by empowering education; racism can be cured by antiracist pedagogies; fragmentation can be fixed by interdisciplinary or holistic education; regimentation can be reversed by pedagogies for play; environmental damage can be healed by environmental education.” “The required or recommended course readings for these fixes not only nourish the publication industry; they fatten the curriculum vitae of every new educational reformer who first identifies the mysterious ill that prohibits the desired learning; and then finds a pedagogical and curricular cure for it” (p. 14). Educators fail to understand that true learning is a personal activity and can never be transmitted by professional ministrations, no matter how well-intentioned.
Deschooling Yourself - How to Recover from Traditional Education
Growing Without School Magazine
HOW EDUCATION REPRODUCES CONSUMERISM & THE DESTRUCTION OF THE ECOSYSTEM
“We cannot go beyond the consumer society unless we first understand that obligatory public schools inevitably reproduce such a society, no matter what is taught in them” - Ivan Illich “The educational system – starting with the school – was the first industrial enterprise that recognized no frontiers; the first ‘global’ corporation, pioneering the reorganization of society to concentrate more and more ‘labor power’ in the creation of consumption ‘needs’ that only highly capitalized corporations can satisfy.” - Madhu Prakash
Ivan Illich recognized that the formally educated, both in the United States and around the world, create the greatest demands for the conveniences of modern society. Through the institutional paradigm students “learn that anything worthwhile is standardized, certified, and can be purchased” (Gintis, 1972, p. 56). It has become the job of education to provide a trained work force for global capitalism. In this respect, education assumes its place with technological “progress” as a major engine of economic growth. The most schooled within the society are the ones most likely to define their lives by the quality of their possessions.
In this analysis, he saw the connection between schooling, and the ever greater commodification of the world’s commons. Schools, according to deschooling advocates, must be viewed as an industry that prepares students to engage in the production of ever-greater demands. This way of thinking is systematically destroying the nature world in order to meet the creature comforts of the educated class. Illich (1971) states “a desirable future depends on our deliberately choosing a life of action over a life of consumption, on our engendering a life style which will enable us to be spontaneous, independent, yet related to each other, rather than maintaining a life style which only allows us to make and unmake, produce and consume – a style of life which is merely a way station on the road to depletion and pollution of the environment” (p. 52). As long as society continues to be blind to the reality that schools are intimately connected to shaping consumerism, the destruction of what is left of the natural ecosystems of the planet will continue unabated.
DESCHOOLING’S DIVERGENCE FROM CRITICAL PEDAGOGY
"The social majorities need no saviors, no conscientization, no empowerment. They are impressively skillful in saving their worlds. They have been able to do so for five hundred years. The newly minted expert as well as the established scholar have much to learn about living well from the uneducated and the illiterate - if they can give up the arrogance of their expertise." - Madhu Prakash
Illich and his disciples are aligned with critical pedagogues in their criticism of traditional education. Deschooling advocates, like critical pedagogues, want to end the forced indoctrination of students to institutional values and assumptions. However, Deschooling advocates believe that all schooling, even democratic models, replicate the dominant societal paradigm.
Ivan Illich and Paulo Freire were close friends and colleagues until the late 1960s, when Illich began to criticize Freire’s conscientization model of empowerment. Illich (1971) argued that students resist education not because of the authoritarian styles of teaching, but because of the framework common to all schools, (including free or democratic schools) where “one person’s judgment should determine what and when another person must learn” (p. 41). School, according to Illich, prepares one for passivity and alienation by teaching the need to be taught. Illich (1971) argues that the democratic school movement confuses discipline with indoctrination (p. 65). This model is attractive to some educators who view traditional education as inhibiting. However, these schools and their supporters, however well-intentioned, ultimately operate in support of the conventional ideology of schooling because they still want to make “all valuable learning the result of professional teaching” (Illich, 1971, p. 67). Illich (1971) details his criticism of radical teaching approaches, stating “even the seemingly radical critics of the school system are not willing to abandon the idea that they have an obligation to the young, especially to the poor, an obligation to process them, whether by love or by fear into a society which needs disciplined specialization as much from its producers as from its consumers and also their also their full commitment to the ideology which puts economic growth first” (p. 67).
In the article “From a Pedagogy for Liberation to Liberation From Pedagogy” Esteva, Stuchul, and Prakash offer a similar criticism of Freire, referring to him as a “colonizer” (Esteva et al., 2004, p. 13). Freire envisioned his core concept of conscientization, possessed only by critical educators and other intellectuals, as being universalized using the tenets of critical pedagogy. Esteva et al. (2004) criticize this top-down approach to liberation, stating that it “serves the purpose of legitimizing the right of intervention in the lives of others” (p. 16). This intervention requires a reorientation of others cultures to a Western way of thinking, so they can practice Freire’s model of liberation based on critical reflection. The book “Re-Thinking Freire,” which includes the article by Esteva et al., contains detailed examples of cultures that attempted to employ the Freireian framework, only to find their sustainable living practices and traditions were being severely undermined. But the model of conscientization has negative consequences within the framework of American school as well. Freire failed to grasp that his model to liberate the oppressed actually transformed people into “clients, beneficiaries, and customers” with teachers providing the service of liberation (Esteva et al., 2004, p. 19). Thus the institutional, bureaucratic tendencies of education are reinforced through this framework, while the oppressed learn to perceive themselves as victims in need of salvation from without.
LEARNING IN A DESCHOOLED SOCIETY
“We can depend on self-motivated learning instead of employing teachers to bribe or compel the student to find the time and the will to learn..we can provide the learner with new links to the world instead of continuing to funnel all educational programs through the teacher.” – Ivan Illich
According to Illich (1971), a good educational system should have three purposes: 1) Should provide all who want to learn with the proper resources 2) Empower all who want to share what they know with those who want to learn from them 3) Furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known (p. 75) Illich (1971) states, “an individual with a schooled mind conceives of the world as a pyramid of classified packages accessible only to those who carry the proper tag. New institutions…should be channels to which the learner would have access without credentials or pedigree” (p. 76). These purposes include more than merely ending formal schooling, they entail a democratization of media and other institutions as well.
The 4 Approaches for Gaining Educational Resources: 1) Reference Services to Educational Objects – facilitate access to things or process used for learning. This could include some things to be stored with libraries or museums. Others could be utilized within factories, airports, or farms and could be made available to apprentices and other interested learners 2) Skill Exchanges – people can list skills and conditions under which they would serve as mentors 3) Peer-Matching – communication networks which permit people to describe the learning activitiy in which they wish to engage, in hope of finding partners or mentors 4) Reference Services to Education-at-Large – Directory of people who claim to have desired skills – could be chosen by polls or references from former clients
These approaches are derived from Illich’s (1971) belief that the processes and artifacts of real-life should be available to children for their exploration. He also believed that child labor laws should be changed to allow children to perform limited work in a real-world setting – making their education literally a real-life experience. Illich felt there was a vast potential of educational resources within the industrial plants and equipment of society (Illich, 1971, pp. 83-86).
DESCHOOLING, UNSCHOOLING, HOMESCHOOLING – WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?
Illich and Prakash identify homeschooling as problematic because it is implies, just as traditional schooling does, some sort of treatment. Prakash (1998) states “educational treatments at home are a nightmare, more poisonous and dangerous than public schooling; transmogrifying parents into pseudoprofessional teachers; contaminating the natural life of the family” (p. 98). Those that are homeschooled are still stuck in the mindset of traditional schooling. Deschooling speaks to a break with the very idea of schooling and all the prejudices that go with it. Unschooling refers to a particular type of homeschooling, introduced by a disciple of Illich named John Holt. Unschooling represents a child-centered version of homeschooling, where, as Holt describes, “the whole world is your child’s classroom.” This form of homeschooling claims to represent about 10 to 15 percent of students that are being homeschooled in the United States.
The Unschooling Handbook
5 Steps to Unschooling
REFERENCES
Esteva et al (2004). From a Pedagogy for Liberation to Liberation From Pedagogy. In C.A. Bowers & Fredrique Apffel-Marglin (Eds.), Re-Thinking Freire (pp. 13-30). Lawrence Erlbaum Publications.
Gintis, H. (1972). Toward a Political Economy of Education: A Radical Critique of Ivan Illich's Deschooling Society. In Gartner et al (Eds.), After Deschooling, What? (pp. 29-76). New York: Harper & Row.
Illich, I. (1971). Deschooling Society. New York: Harper & Row.
Prakash M.S. & Gustavo Esteva (1998). Escaping Education. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
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| amf324 | Deschooling | 0 | Nov 1 2009, 8:17 PM EST by amf324 | ||
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Thread started: Nov 1 2009, 8:17 PM EST
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I have to admit the concept of deschooling is new to me and hadn't heard of it until you brought it up. Your site is full of information that helped me understand this movement, especially your last section. The title was exactly what I was thinking what is the difference? So this last section was very useful to me to help me understand what is deschooling.
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| grv108 | Madhu Prakash | 0 | Oct 30 2009, 10:10 PM EDT by grv108 | ||
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Thread started: Oct 30 2009, 10:10 PM EDT
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Lance, I really enjoyed learning more about Ivan Illich through your site. I was first introduced to his work in Madhu's Philosophy of Education class here at Penn State. (The one I talked about earlier in the semester.) I remember vividly reading an assignment, similar in sentiment to what you have posted here, where Illich argued that the term "education" is not the same as "learning" and that sort of thing. I remember a light bulb going off then because I had never really thought of that.
If I recall correctly, Madhu shares a story of meeting Illich for the first time. Initially she was turned off but this gradually grew into a profound respect. The way she describes it is funny. I'm not doing it justice here but if you ever take her class I'm sure you'll hear about it.
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| Lmason2 | Neolibs... | 0 | Oct 25 2009, 9:54 PM EDT by Lmason2 | ||
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Thread started: Oct 25 2009, 9:54 PM EDT
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Thanks Stephanie, I don't think neoliberalism has appropriated words in any direct sense. I traced the routes of neoliberalism in my master's thesis and it seems that liberal notions of progress, as well as organizing society around economic ends have been with the United States since it's founding, with the heavy influence John Locke, whose ideas of an individually-centered world was the stuff of wet dreams for Federalists like James Madison and Alexander Hamilton.
These socially destructive ideas prevailed until the Great Depression brought them into question. Unfortunately, people's memories are short (particularly in a society that doesn't value intergenerational knowledge), so it didn't take long for the Keynesian disruption of these ideas to be shrugged aside. Much of the research I have been doing in ecojustice education suggests that if we hope to address neoliberalism, we must change the way we use the words "liberal" and "conservative" to denote their original intentions. Bowers (and others) asserts that embedded in the ideas of liberal thinkers is the notion of perpetual change (think Dewey, Freire, Giroux, etc) and the challenge of traditions that unhinges people from their cultural foundations, leaving them easy prey to absorb the shallow values of modern consumer culture. The word conservative has also been warped to be identified with reactionary thinkers. What gets left out of the debate is a term for those that believe the way to fight for social justice is not only to fight injustice, but preserve cultural values that are not controlled by market logic. The decimation of these cultural values, at home and around the world, needs to be a top concern for those interested in promoting social justice, and (this ties in points I have tried to make before) is being pushed by a "liberal" president and a "liberal" congress. Sad, but it must be faced.
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