This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Perlstein, D. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Minds Stayed on Freedom: Politics and Pedagogy in the African-American Freedom Struggle

University of California, Berkeley

To examine how analyses and visions of American society shape the appeal of progressive pedagogy, this article focuses on the evolution of political and educational ideas among African-American civil rights activists who created alternative schools for Black children in the 1960s and 1970s. Activists developed, abandoned, recreated, and again abandoned open-ended, progressive approaches to the study of social and political life. The curricular shifts mirrored sea changes in the broader African-American freedom struggle. Rarely have Americans demanded with such insistence that education serve democratic purposes. The article concludes that support for progressive pedagogy depends on the expectation that students will be able to participate fully in the promise of civic life. The history of the freedom and liberation schools developed by Black activists suggests that no curricular project can fundamentally transform knowledge and its distribution if it is not part of a process of transforming social relations as well.

Key Words: African-American education • civic education • constructivism • freedom school • progressive education • social studies

American Educational Research Journal, Vol. 39, No. 2, 249-277 (2002)
DOI: 10.3102/00028312039002249


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				B. C. Rubin Unpacking Detracking: When Progressive Pedagogy Meets Students' Social Worlds American Educational Research Journal, January 1, 2003; 40(2): 539 - 573. [Abstract] [PDF]