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This review has been accessed times since November 11, 2005

Ayers, W. (2004). Teaching Toward Freedom: Moral Commitment and Ethical Action in the Classroom. Boston: Beacon Press.

Pp. 168
ISBN 0-8070-3268-9

Reviewed by Ramin Farahmandpur
Portland State University

November 10, 2005

(For a second review of this book, see the review by Barbara Slater Stern.)

The discourses of democracy that permeate our contemporary public sphere have shifted so far to the right that moral and ethical debates not directly linked to the Manichean struggle between good and evil have been effectively sidelined, if not permanently excluded; where corporations relentlessly seek the highest margins of profits on their investments without any consideration for the welfare of the millions of the working poor; where education, synchronized to the pulse of Wall Street, is forcing millions of students in public schools to compete against one another by taking high-stakes standardized tests; and where the Bush gang and its corporate junta are pouring billions of dollars into Iraq, hoping to cement U.S. military presence in the region and to extend the reach of the U.S. Empire to the Middle East in the name of ‘democracy’ and the ‘war on terrorism.’ Back in the Homeland, where the banner of free market democracy flies the highest, millions of Americans experience chronic homelessness and unemployment. Much like the recent devastation caused by hurricane Katrina in the South, especially in New Orleans, where many of its victims have suffered from discriminatory racist policies and practices, capitalism is ratcheting up the brutality of its deployment, creating a disposable contingent workforce of the proletariat, but on a grander scale. Amidst the prevailing mood of hopelessness and despair, William Ayers’s new book offers some measure of hope and encouragement to teachers and teacher educators who are determined to partake in democratic teaching and learning practices.

In Teaching toward freedom: Moral commitment and ethical action in the classroom, William Ayers explores the existing dialectical tensions within the politics of education. The book, as the title suggests, examines the purpose of education and schooling by drawing upon a wide range of sources including literature and films. One of the topics Ayers discusses is the notion that education is a humanizing endeavor. For Ayers, the aim of education is to foster, develop and expand our capacities as human beings. Education, as Ayers points out, has the potential to empower and to enable us to gain a deeper awareness, or in the words of Paulo Freire develop a “critical consciousness,” of our humanity. Ayers believes that education can guide us to become more “fully human” and “self-conscious.” Education can also “enlighten” us to better serve the interest of the “human community.” Ayers maintains that the role of education should be to “open doors” to new possibilities to transform the world.

In chapter one, Ayers discusses several recent films including: the Rabbit-proof Fence, Magdalene Sisters, and the Return of the Navajo Boy. These films serve as examples of the challenges and struggles of human beings when faced with dehumanizing, conformist and oppressive forms of education that work toward maintaining and reproducing relations of domination and subordination. Recognizing the dialectical tensions and contradictions inherent within education, Ayers notes that education can work toward either the liberation or the oppression. Ayers also discusses the dehumanizing forms of institutionalized education in novels like Hard Times by Charles Dickens, and he further criticizes “authoritarian” models of education that rely on the ‘banking model,’ which he identifies to be “one-dimensional” and “unidirectional.”

For Ayers, “education is always for something and against something else” (p. 11). Ayers writes that teaching involves making moral and ethical choices. Ayers argues that because education is intricately embedded within the social, political, and cultural infrastructure of society, it cannot remain neutral or indifferent to the existing social inequities. For Ayers, education is always a site of contestation among various social, political, cultural forces in society. Drawing upon the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, the French existentialist, who argued that we are all free to make choices in our lives, Ayers notes that education similarly involves making ethical and moral choices.

Moreover, Ayers suggests that schools have historically emphasized the importance of classroom management, student discipline, staff development, and lesson planning. Yet little attention has been paid to education as a practice of freedom. Ayers believes that the institutionalization of schooling and education has effectively disconnected and severed the ties between thought and action, and action and reflection. In the end, Ayers raises an important question: “What are we teaching for and against?”

Ayers responds to this question by arguing that education should work toward ending exploitation, oppression, social injustices and inequities. A recurring theme that runs through most of his book is that the goal of education should be to help us gain a deeper awareness of ourselves and of our society, and to work toward developing what the Dalai Lama has identified as a “radical reorientation” toward the world. This includes developing attitudes and dispositions such as compassion, generosity, courage and love in our relationship with the world. Ayers does not limit his criticism to the “one-dimensional” and “uni-direction” characteristics of institutionalized forms of education but extends it to graduate schools of education and research institutions which engage in the objectification of the teaching profession by offering teachers pre-packaged curricula. Ayers identifies this as the “teaching as science” approach to education. Equally problematic is the notion of “teaching as salvation,” which uses concepts and markers like “cultural deprivation” and “at-risk” to identify and classify marginalized and oppressed students.

“Real” education, Ayers contests, entails “self-education” as opposed to banking models of education in which students are viewed as passive recipients of knowledge. Rather than consuming dominant forms of knowledge that work toward reproducing and maintaining asymmetrical relations of power and privilege, Ayers maintains that students should produce new forms of being and knowing that is productive, empowering, and liberating. In addition, Ayers suggests that teachers should become students of their students. Following Marx’s dictum: “Who will educate the educators?” Ayers believes in the reciprocity of teaching and learning. In other words, teachers can learn from their students’ life experiences, and the marginalized narratives and stories they bring with them to classrooms. Ayers’s humanistic approach to education can be best summed up in the following quote:

The aim of the teacher who teaches toward freedom, again, is to recognize that all children are unruly sparks of meaning-making energy, always dynamic, constantly in motion, and forever on a journey. Who in the world am I? You are an entire universe, and you one part of the great sea that is all of us. We do well to remember, as well, our own quests and journeys, our own meaning making. Our first commitment, then, is this: to recognize and call out the humanity in each out our students, we become students of our students. We take their side. (Pp. 65-66)

Ayers raises other equally important questions including: “What does it mean to be human?” He suggests that being human means becoming a “voyager” in the journey through life. It involves reflecting on our relationship with the world and our position in the world, and acting towards transforming the world. Education, as Ayers contends, entails hope, struggle, and the possibility of creating a more egalitarian and humane world. Ayers explains that his vision of an emancipatory education is one that,

…opposes fear, ignorance, and helplessness by strengthening knowledge and ability. It enables people to question, to wonder, and to look critically. It can be both the process by which people discover and develop various capacities as they locate themselves historically and the vehicle for moving forward and breaking through limitations. Its singular value is that it is education for freedom. (p. 79)

In chapter three, Ayers cites Freedom Schools in the South in the 1960s, during the Civil Rights movement, as an example of how education can be used in the service of community empowerment. Freedom Schools, Ayers explains, “were created as an alternative to the oppressive schools black children attended in Mississippi” (p. 82). Unlike mainstream schooling that is generally authoritarian and oppressive in nature, Freedom Schools were able to develop and practice humanistic forms of education that encouraged students to reflect upon, and to think critically about their experiences and social circumstances in the world. Ayers believes that Freedom Schools as a movement continues to have relevancy even today, and can serve as a model for teachers and educators who wish to apply and put into practice democratic education in their classrooms.

Ayers advocates a school curriculum that is “grounded in reality,” “engaging,” and “participatory.” It involves students engaging in analyzing, interpreting, deconstructing, and reconstructing the multiple meanings of texts. It also includes an active engagement with one’s own learning and unlearning. Ayers writes:

We are in search of a pedagogy of experience and participation, a pedagogy both situated in and stretching beyond itself, a critical pedagogy capable of questioning, rethinking, re-imagining. We are looking for teaching that is alive and dynamic, teaching that helps students grapple with the question “Where is my place in the world?” (p. 84)

Ayers reminds us that developing democratic forms of education requires students and teachers to actively participate in dialogue. Authentic dialogue, as Ayers envisions, is “unrehearsed,” “participatory,” “collaborative,” and “filled with contention and conflict.” In dialogue, there is the possibility of making “mistakes” and forming “misperception(s)” about others. But in dialogue, we also have the opportunity to speak, to listen, to understand and be understood by others.

In Chapter four, Ayers advocates a critical pedagogy impregnated with hope and possibility, as well as imbued with conflict and contention. The emancipatory pedagogy Ayers is inviting teachers to embrace begins with a firm commitment to students. It involves expanding the notion of democratic education by encouraging the development of what Ayers refers to as the “republic of many voices.” In essence, Ayers wants teachers to recognize that education involves making moral and ethical decisions. Moving education toward freedom means recognizing, identifying and naming “obstacles” and barriers that prevent the development of our human capacities.

But perhaps a more crucial question Ayers raises is: How do we connect and move education closer toward the practice freedom? Ayers believes this can be accomplished by the participation of students and teachers in “activism.” For Ayers, activists are those who take a “particular stance in the world” (p. 109). Activists act upon their convictions, values and beliefs. They “engage, participate, contribute, stand up, sit in, initiate, move…. They question received wisdom, they wonder what could be but is not yet, and then they act” (p. 109). Activists, as Ayers envisions, act against social injustices, and make moral and ethical decisions. Ayers, in my view, is correct to argue that activism is a “pedagogical event.” In other words, activism and education are intimately linked to one another. Ayers suggests that we cannot think of ethics in abstract terms. Rather we need to envision it in concrete and practical terms. This requires us to develop what Ayers identifies as “practical ethics.” Practical ethics involves an ethics of “feeling” and “action.” It also requires, I believe, an ethics of caring and compassion.

Ayers further examines the intrusion of “market fundamentalism” in schools. He raises a number of fundamental questions worth considering: What purpose do schools serve? Whose purpose do schools serve? Do schools serve the interests of the public or the private sector? In the wake of the increasing commercialization and corporatization of public schools and institutions of higher education (see McLaren & Farahmandpur, 2005), Ayers’s concern over the growing privatization of public education takes a greater sense of urgency. Consider McDonald’s recent adoption of a new strategy to promote its products in the highly profitable market that is dominated by children. This comes after the much highly publicized libel suit now famously referred to as the McLibel Case, and the recent film, Super Size Me, which raised ethical and moral questions regarding McDonald’s food processing and preparing practices that many believe has significantly contributed to the increasing obesity and other health risks among children. Nancy Hellmich (2005) reports that in an effort to restore its much-tarnished public image as the family-friendly fast-food chain, and to further protect its market shares, McDonald’s has decided to capitalize on physical education programs in public schools. Over seven million students in 31,000 public schools have agreed to participate in McDonald’s “Passport to Play” program. The program consists of a number of multicultural physical education activities including “boomerang golf” from Australia, “Mr. Daruma Fell Down” from Japan, and Holland’s “Korfball.” Students who complete each of these activities receive a stamp in their passport issued by McDonald’s. According to Bill Lama, McDonald’s chief marketing officer, the objective of the Passport to Play program is to educate students on the “importance of eating right” and “staying active.” Such a strategically calculated move allows McDonald’s not only to restore much of the negative publicity it has received in the past few years, but it also helps McDonald’s to gain more presence and visibility in public schools.

Also in chapter four, Ayers calls upon educators to develop and to introduce students to pedagogical tools and practices that would help to unmask and uncover the sources of power and privilege in society. This would include helping students to develop a ‘language critique’ and a ‘language of possibility’ that would enable them to question and to critique the meaning of concepts like democracy and freedom. Ayers’s philosophical inquiry is an open invitation for educators to recapture and redefine the way in which we understand and practice freedom. For Ayers, freedom involves the development of critical consciousness, participation in collective action, active engagement in social agency, and finally, the willingness to imagine a more just and humane world.

Ayers’s aim is to radically redefine and reconnect the link between education and freedom. To that end, Ayers’s proposal is an invitation for educators to rethink the relationship between education and freedom. For Ayers, teaching toward freedom involves an epistemological and ontological investigation of “what could be, what ought to be, and what is not yet.” In sum, Ayers encourages educators to view education not only as a moral and an ethical activity, but also as a political activity linked to the project of changing and transforming the world.

Ayers’s book is an excellent introductory text for those interested in examining moral and ethical issues in education. For students enrolled in teacher education programs, Ayers offers important insights and raises serious questions about the role and the purpose of education in society. Students in graduate schools of education would equally benefit from reading this text.

References

Hellmich, N. (2005). McDonald’s kicks off school PE program. USA Today, September 12.

McLaren, P. and Farahmandpur, R. (2005). Teaching against Global Capitalism and the New Imperialism: A Critical Pedagogy. Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield.

About the Reviewer

Ramin Farahmandpur is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Policy, Foundations and Administrative Studies at Portland State University. His interests include critical pedagogy and multicultural education. He is the co-author of Teaching against Global Capitalism and the New Imperialism: A Critical Pedagogy. Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield, (2005).

Copyright is retained by the first or sole author, who grants right of first publication to the Education Review.

Editors: Gene V Glass, Kate Corby, Gustavo Fischman

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