








































Aisthesis      Volume 7,  20161

Education, Oppression, and Democracy: A Philosophical 
Approach to Educational Inequity

by Benjamin Davis

 Technology, some say, is the great equalizer 
in education.1 That is, technologists suggest 
computer-based learning generates the proverbial 
level playing field in public school classrooms, 
such that each student has access to the same tools 
and, in this sense, the same academic resources for 
social advancement. When schools invest in tablets 
(such as iPads), computers, and software, then, all 
students—no matter their background—have the 
opportunity to learn with the same cutting-edge, 
adaptive devices. In turn, the argument goes, teachers 
and administrators can track each student’s progress, 
because the software continually collects data on 
the student and adapts to the student’s progress, 
thereby allowing teachers to provide personalized, 
differentiated instruction to each student.2 In effect, 
the technologists conclude, computer-based learning 
is the best way to close the achievement gap.3 And 
yet, I remain skeptical. Equality in the classroom, 
I argue, includes more than parity in measured 
academic performance; indeed, it includes the idea 
of equality of opportunity in other social contexts, 
where every person has the possibility to contribute 
to the community in meaningful ways. In this light, 
a few questions emerge: Could technology in the 
classroom provide the means to a more egalitarian 
society?4 Does closing the achievement gap address 
the major arguments linking public education with 
democracy and democratic processes? John Dewey 
writes: “What the best and wisest parent wants for 
his own child, that must the community want for 
all of its children. Any other ideal for our schools 
is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our 
democracy.”5  My reflections on the educational 
philosophies of John Dewey and Paulo Freire shed 
light on the issues of educational (in)equality and 
the achievement gap in public education, and on 
genuine social (in)equality, of which educational (in)
equality is one part.6 

 As debates about No Child Left Behind and the 
Common Core suggest, education reformers today 

are asking numerous questions: What is the best way 
to close the achievement gap? (How) can teacher 
performance be tied to student learning? What is the 
value of a standardized curriculum?  What schools 
are worth pursuing as alternatives to traditional (and 
often overwhelmed) public schools? Many attempts 
to answer these questions assume the need for 
various assessment measures, and as a result, they 
reduce the thinking about educational reform to 
quantitative analyses. Such narrow measures (and the 
presuppositions upon which they are based) would 
have horrified earlier reformers such as Dewey, who, 
as I will explain below, rejected the idea of education 
as a fixed—and thus quantifiable—end.7 And while 
think tanks, consultants, teachers, and politicians 
have answered all of the aforementioned questions, 
they do so rarely (and certainly not prominently) 
in light of a humanistic educational philosophy. 
For example, in the midst of the Chicago teacher’s 
strike in 2012, the Heritage Foundation cited the 
importance of attempting to quantify teacher ac-
countability by arguing: “A good teacher can get 1.5 
years of learning growth; a bad teacher gets 0.5 years 
of learning growth.”8 I find these quantifications 
overly simplistic and thus problematic. That is, they 
overlook the eclectic educational experiences of 
students and distill them into meaningless terms 
such as “learning growth.” They also misconstrue 
(or neglect) the broader purposes of education 
within a democracy. This quantitative approach, 
I argue, reflects a narrow and myopic vision of 
education that is also represented in the framing of 
educational inequality as “achievement gaps,” and in 
the associated popularity of pedagogical strategies 
that rely upon technologies in the classroom. This 
framing of the problem, and therefore the solutions 
posed and the pedagogies implemented, has suffered 
from limitations in grasping the meaning and real 
potential of education within a democratic context. 
 In this essay, I challenge the ideology that 
education for democratic processes can be 



Education, Oppression, and Democracy: A Philosophical Approach to Education Inequity     

Aisthesis      Volume 7,  20162

quantified, by turning instead to philosophical 
inquiry—that is, I move away from numerical 
data and the frameworks that would produce it, 
and toward theoretical-practical, philosophically 
inspired policy reforms in public education. What 
does it mean, I ask, to be educated in order to be a 
democratic citizen and thus to share in the equality 
of opportunity for contributing to the community? 
This question has been neglected in the majority of 
contemporary educational debates, and answering 
it necessitates taking seriously the ideas and obser-
vations of philosophers of education. I contend that 
democratic education ought to be approached and 
understood philosophically so that we are clear 
about the foundations of our educational proposals, 
policies, and practices and have a lucid vision of our 
aims and purposes. Furthermore, I argue that this 
philosophical understanding of education displaces 
the simplifications of technology-based, data-driven 
metrics, and reveals them to be pseudo-solutions. 
Instead, it embraces the complexity—the potential 
for meaningful contribution to society—of each 
student as an individual and as a human being. Firstly, 
I critique the current framing of and responses to 
inequality in public education. Secondly, in view of 
educating democratic citizens, I closely examine the 
insights of John Dewey and Paulo Freire in regard to 
the virtues and ailments of public education today. 
Thirdly, in light of these philosophical insights, I 
provide a more comprehensive diagnosis of the 
crises facing the American school systems, and I 
suggest that a shifting of frameworks for analyzing 
the crises in education is required.9 Finally, I outline 
Deweyan/Freirean policy reforms that, I argue, 
would inspire reflection on, re-conceptualization 
of, and democratic participation in the primary and 
secondary public schools, as well as the society more 
broadly, of the United States. 

The Problem of Framing
 The contemporary framing of problems regarding 
educational equity as the “achievement gap” starts 
researchers, reformers, and politicians off on the 
wrong foot, as it were. According to this rhetoric, 
closing the gap would involve African-American and 
Hispanic students scoring just as well as their non-
Hispanic white peers according to current academic 
measures.10 That is, when the above framing is 

adopted, a solution requires a data-driven answer 
that is related to measurement in some way: grades, 
tests, scores, completion rates, etc. This logic—and 
the reformers, politicians, and technologists who use 
it—implies both that education is something that 
can be measured and that it is simple. Education, 
according to this view, is defined by terms such as 
“learning growth” and “academic performance.” 
There is also a second fundamental problem. The 
rhetoric of “the achievement gap,” drawing on data 
from measurements to demonstrate this gap, renders 
“achievement” already understood in a certain sense: 
high grades, scores, and rates. In other words, in light 
of such framing, achievement in education is viewed 
as a fixed end—and, therefore, not as a process. In 
sum, the frame of the “achievement gap” leads to 
data-driven solutions based on the assumption that 
success in education is a static achievement. This 
framework inherently precludes education from 
being understood as a process; and, by defining 
educational equality as equality in measurements, it 
does not emphasize other aspects of equality, such 
as those related to teachers, school culture, and the 
larger community in which education takes place. 
Solutions oriented around closing the achievement 
gap—such as technologizing the classroom—can, 
then, only be pseudo-solutions. In this light, I argue 
that we need to reframe the problem of education in 
a democracy so as to avoid misguided “solutions.” In 
doing so, I will first examine John Dewey’s insights 
on democracy and education.

Process, Reform, and Democracy: Insights of 
Dewey
 For Dewey, education is not an achievement, 
but a process that organizes, gives meaning to, 
and directs experience.11 By noting that education 
relates to subsequent experience, Dewey suggests 
that education is not fixed or completed, but rather 
“a constant reorganizing” of experience.12 The con-
stancy and activity of education are important; one 
ought to always be learning actively, for “education 
is a process of living and not preparing for future 
living.”13 These notions of education were affirmed 
in Dewey’s later thought. Indeed, in Experience and 
Education, which he wrote in light of critiques of 
his progressive schools and more than twenty years 
after Democracy and Education, he still describes 



Education, Oppression, and Democracy: A Philosophical Approach to Education Inequity

Aisthesis      Volume 7,  20163

education as “an ever-present process.”14 Deweyan 
education, therefore, cannot be achieved. To learn, 
rather, is to be actively and continuously participating 
in the process of further growth. Put differently, the 
end of learning is more learning; of growth, more 
growth; of education, more education. 
      Importantly, Deweyan education is not only a 
process, but also “a social process.”15 That is, it 
integrates the young into the society, and thus 
introduces them to the “social consciousness.”16 

Accordingly, a crucial (but not the only) purpose 
of education involves the enculturation into the 
aims, habits, and practices of society.17 For Dewey, 
there is hope in this process, because it can serve to 
liberate the young from the past, rather than leading 
them to recapitulate its errors. In this sense, I argue, 
Deweyan education is progressive. Dewey claims, 
moreover, that the direction (and thus the future) 
of society depends on the education it provides its 
youth. For that reason, he asserts that “education 
is the fundamental method of social progress and 
reform.”18 As such, education is not only a social 
process, but it is also a socializing and reforming 
process. 
 Dewey’s notion of education has important po-
litical implications, viz., that those being educated 
have a voice in what occurs in their society. In 
other words, and as he admits, Dewey is describing 
education in “a democratic community.”19 Indeed, 
the above definition of education concluded that the 
object of education is continued growth; and, if all 
members of society are to grow as such, the nature of 
society must be democratic.20 In this light, I will now 
turn to Dewey’s notion of democracy. 
 For Dewey, the process of education, the social 
function of education, and democracy are mutually 
reinforcing. That is, continual integration into society 
promotes communal life. “[D]emocracy,” he writes, 
“is not an alternative to other principles of associated 
life. It is the idea of community life itself.”21 Thus, the 
community defines the democracy.22 Importantly, and 
as aforementioned, Deweyan democratic education 
applies to all. This, I suggest, is a radical position; it 
implies that in a democratic society, everyone must 
have the opportunity for one’s capacity to continually 
grow. “Democracy,” Dewey elaborates, “cannot 
flourish where the chief influences in selecting subject 
matter of instruction are utilitarian ends conceived 

for the masses, and, for the higher education of the 
few, the traditions of a specialized cultivated class.”23 
Instead, the opportunity for personal growth must be 
afforded to all and a social return be demanded from 
all.24 There are, indeed, no exceptions. And yet, if 
majority rule characterizes constitutional dem-ocracy 
in the United States, then what, I ask, of the ruled-
over minorities?25 According to Dewey, they ought 
to receive opportunities equal to those of the majority. 
To continue this philosophical investigation, I inquire: 
What would democratic education that purposefully 
and deliberately accounts for the marginalized look 
like? To answer, I turn to the educational thought of 
Paulo Freire. 

Oppression, Dialogue, and Solidarity: Insights of 
Freire 
 Like Dewey, Freire views education as a 
progressive and democratic force. Indeed, Freire is 
a proponent of a democracy that pursues solidarity 
and equality.26 But modern democracy, I hasten 
to add, is only pursuing equality—there is not yet 
parity in, for instance, wealth, political rights, 
or education. In addition, democracy requires 
freedom, which, like Dewey, Freire argues must 
be sought constantly.27 Taken in conjunction, the 
inequality within a democracy and the freedom it 
requires suggest that certain groups—especially, 
where majority-rule is present, minority groups—are 
at a disadvantage. Freire calls these disadvantaged 
groups “the oppressed”—who, he notes, have in-
ternalized oppressive structures and are thus fearful 
of freedom, even within a democracy.28 Importantly, 
it is the oppressors who initiate the oppressive stru-
cture, because they fail to see others as human 
beings. The result is a violent structure: i.e., the 
relationship of oppression is inherently violent.29 
But before seeing the possibility for change that lies 
within this oppression, Freire contends that one 
must understand one’s historical and political reality. 
With that in mind, I will now further examine the 
oppressor-oppressed relationship. 
 The relationship between the oppressor and 
oppressed is one of subject and object.30 Hence, and 
as outlined above, the oppressors’ orientation toward 
those they oppress is one of violence and exploitation. 
They also, however, frame themselves as saviors of 
those they in fact exploit and divide.31 Freire labels 



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Aisthesis      Volume 7,  20164

this paradoxical presentation “false generosity”—an 
“attempt to ‘soften’ the power of the oppressor in 
deference to the weakness of the oppressed.”32 In reality, 
however, this false generosity—this “messianism”—
of the oppressor manifests his sense of guilt: the 
oppressor wants both to perpetuate an unjust social 
structure and to “buy” internal peace for himself.33 
True generosity, by contrast, consists instead of 
destroying the unjust social structure; after all, peace 
cannot be bought; it is experienced in loving acts of 
solidarity, viz. radical praxis that addresses structural 
problems, the causes of oppression.34 In this light 
Freire writes, “The solution is not to ‘integrate [the 
oppressed] into the structure of oppression, but to 
transform that structure so that they can become 
‘beings for themselves.’”35 But how to transform an 
oppressive society? Freire’s solution lies in radical 
education.  
 Freire asserts that people are conditioned in—but 
not determined by—their circumstances, and that, 
if it reflects on these political, social, and economic 
circumstances, education can liberate people of their 
conditions. Again, I argue that this transformative 
education is progressive, insofar as it recognizes the 
autonomy of students and promotes an audacious 
and critical curiosity, such that a re-construction 
of knowledge is possible. Thus, Freirean education 
assumes the capacity—not the ignorance—of the 
student, and it fosters a critical perspective toward 
the growth—the becoming possibilities—of both the 
world and the self. Like Dewey, then, Freire contends 
that education “should be ongoing.”36 More than 
Dewey, however, Freire specifically emphasizes the 
education of the oppressed. 
 Because the relation of the oppressor-oppressed 
is one of subject-object, Freire orients his educational 
philosophy around subject-subject interaction: 
dialogue. “Dialogue,” he writes, “is the encounter 
between men [sic], mediated by the world, in order 
to name the world,” and it is, furthermore, “the 
essence of revolutionary action.”37 In dialogue, the 
actors direct themselves upon an object (e.g., their 
political reality) with the goal of transforming that 
reality; and by naming the world, by re-constructing 
knowledge, dialogue is itself a world-transformative 
action.38 Thus, Freirean (dialogical) education is a 
humanizing, subject-ifying, and world-changing 
process, and it is based on the political hope that, 

if implemented, the oppressed can liberate both 
themselves and their oppressors.39 Either that, or 
the oppressed are integrated into the current, violent 
society; neutrality is an impossibility in education.40 
To confront oppression in our society, therefore, I 
contend that we must be both active and partial—
we must be subjective observers to those who are 
suffering; they are, ultimately, our fellow human 
beings and dialogical subjects. 

A Theory of Responsible Hope
 I have suggested that democratic education 
be conceptualized, approached, and understood 
philosophically. I argue not only that this philo-
sophical orientation promotes clarity of educational 
foundations, aims, and purposes (and in turn 
proposals, policies, and practices), but also that 
it refutes the simplistic notions of data-driven, 
technology-based measurements, proving that they 
are instead pseudo-solutions. Furthermore, I contend 
that such metrics attempt to quantify phenomena 
that cannot be measured.41 As such, I suggest an 
embrace of the latent and indeed oppressed potential 
of every human being to be a co-learner, a partner 
in dialogue, and a fellow citizen. It is of no surprise, 
then, that educate relates in etymology to educe, 
to “direct the flow or course of; to lead or conduct 
in a particular direction,” and to “bring out, elicit, 
or develop from a state of latent rudimentary, or 
potential existence.”42  That is, to educate is not to 
measure or to impose, but to guide the growth of 
the student. But what would this philosophically 
informed education look like in practice? 
 I have found that the framing of “the achieve-
ment gap” is itself problematic, because requiring 
the demonstration of a “gap” through some measure-
ment (e.g., standardized test scores) presupposes 
that education can be measured. When this is 
presupposed, “solutions” try to “close” the “gap,” such 
that both larger contexts (e.g., economic inequality) 
are avoided and greater potential for democratic 
education goes unseen. For John Dewey, this wider 
potential lies in the fact that education is a social 
process, and thus an engine for progress and reform. 
But, crucially, for Dewey education functions as a 
driver for democratic social change only when it is 
afforded to all. Here the concern for the oppressed 
and marginalized enters. In response, as we have 



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Aisthesis      Volume 7,  20165

seen, Paulo Freire argues for a dialogical education, 
based on a pedagogy that respects the student as a 
co-learner and critical actor in the effort to transform 
a violent society into a humanizing one rooted in 
solidarity with others. To do so, both Dewey and 
Freire suggest the importance of education and, 
therein, a pedagogical orientation that recognizes 
and references the capacity and experience of each 
student. As such, the student is not seen as passive, 
but rather as socially and politically active. 
      These conclusions have radical implications in 
regard to contemporary discussions of education in 
the United States. If education is an unquantifiable 
process, then teachers ought not attempt to quantify 
student growth. If teachers thus re-orientated their 
aims and praxis, then technological and adaptive 
“solutions” to “achievement gaps” would be eschewed. 
(In fact, teachers would no longer conceptualize 
learning as such, but instead be open to the idea of 
the student as a social actor to be lead and drawn 
forth.) In turn, school districts would not have data 
on the “learning growth” of students, states would 
not be able to mine this data, and the Department of 
Education would not be able to make prescriptions 
based on these metrics. This, some would correctly 
say, would complicate things.43 Indeed it would. 
It would force us, as citizens in a democracy, to 
think of social equality beyond the indices of test 
scores. It would prevent us from believing that 
computers and their programs can redress social 
ills. It would make us reflect more often and more 
deeply on what it means to have a community of 
learning; no longer would quantifications speak 
to “successes” or “failures.” Here I am guided by 
the philosopher of education Maxine Greene, who 
cites Søren Kierkegaard living in an age where the 
“benefactors” tried to assist others “by making life 
easier and easier.”44 Kierkegaard decided, Greene 
writes, “to make things harder, ‘to create difficulties 
everywhere.’”45 In doing so, Kierkegaard, as I am 
doing here, was responding to the de-humanization of 
technologization. More specifically, Kierkegaard “saw 
the individual subsumed under abstractions like ‘the 
Public,’ lost in the anonymity of ‘the Crowd.’”46 In 
response to this reality, Greene prescribes awakening 
others to their freedom by communicating to them 
both their radical freedom as individuals and their 
existence in a world with others; these are the con-

ditions in which we must act.47 Indeed, the social 
and educational structures of our world are unjust; 
yet, we also have a responsibility to others, perhaps 
especially to the minorities, the marginalized, and 
the oppressed. And in responding—asking difficult 
questions, challenging entrenched paradigms, chan-
ging public policies, and living in solidarity with 
others—we work toward the democratic freedom of 
all. 

Philosophical Reform in Practice
 At the outset of this section, I want to make 
clear that a truly Freirean change in the American 
educational (and thus social) structure implies a 
revolutionary structural shift in public education. 
Though I am sympathetic to this radical position, 
I want to here articulate a vision of pragmatic 
education policy reform in light of the Dewey’s and 
Freire’s philosophies of education. While not per se 
revolutionary, these pragmatic measures include 
elements of Freirean radicalism in, for instance, new, 
alternative schools and curricula imagined by those 
who were previously excluded and silenced—students 
who Walter Benjamin calls “the great transformers,” 
whose tasks include “cautious and precise but daring 
applications of new methodologies.”48 Ultimately, I 
contend that pragmatic policy reform is necessary 
on three individual levels: citizen, teacher, and 
student, and that praxis on these levels be realized 
in steps of reflection, re-conceptualization, and 
participation. Through these steps, a theoretical-
practical alternative in public education emerges. 
      As citizens in a democracy, we must reflect on 
our own narratives through questioning: What is 
our relationship to the unjust, positivistic structures 
of education in the United States? Do we see 
ourselves as saviors who in fact are attempting to 
buy “peace” for ourselves? Do we see education as 
a way of perpetuating the traditions (and thus the 
epistemologies, prejudices, and errors of) the past 
or as a way to liberate the young from our previous 
limitations? And do we learn from, advocate for, 
and work with non-citizens, oppressed groups, and 
the (often-coddled) youth within our democracy, 
such that educational, economic, and political 
opportunity is afforded to all?49 As a result of this 
reflective questioning, I suggest that we will come 
to name the world in a way that sees society itself 



Education, Oppression, and Democracy: A Philosophical Approach to Education Inequity

Aisthesis      Volume 7,  20166

in process—that the way we frame society and our 
position therein informs and shapes society itself. 
The next step, then, is to re-conceptualize our own 
place as citizens in our society. In this step, we must 
frame our ontological position as a (non-neutral) 
being with others; this places us with the oppressed 
and against their oppressors—both personal and 
structural. For those who benefit from the status 
quo, this involves a kind of “breaking” with one’s 
social class: a “break” that will re-cognize our current 
educational practices (e.g., looking to technology as a 
solution, testing students in a way that neglects social 
and environmental factors, privatizing schools) in 
a way that attends to them phenomenologically, 
allowing them to reveal themselves as unjust and 
un-democratic. Here it is important to acknowledge 
that there is personal risk involved in this “break” 
of the individual—yet this is exactly the “hazardous 
self-dedication to learning” that, Benjamin maintains, 
moves away from “a socially conceived individuality,” 
away from a violent status quo and toward, I 
furthermore argue, a being-with-others individuality 
that sees others as human beings, thus creating 
difficulties for and “breaks” in oppressive structures 
of positivism and capitalism.50 Indeed, from this 
re-conceptualization, this re-naming of our world, 
we citizens will then change our participation in 
our society. In education, this is a move from a 
technologizing and positivistic social inertia to 
theoretical-practical action (itself informed by our 
reflection and re-conceptualization). The result—
seen, for instance, in reformatory measures such as 
affirmative action and in schools’ hosting community 
discussions on racism, gender discrimination, and 
poverty—presents a challenge to the structures of 
oppression. Thus, and more specifically, the tenor of 
our national discussion on education policy would 
change.51 In both primary and secondary education, 
we as citizens would enact an end to standardized 
tests, a refutation of the narrative that we live in a 
meritocracy, an elimination of vouchers and tax 
exemptions for private schools, and legislation that 
prohibits for-profit (charter and other) schools.52 
Here, by opposing public-private partnerships in 
public education—including, for example, those 
made with charter schools by the Walton Family 
Foundation and other philanthropic organizations 
characterized by what Freire would call “false 

generosity”—I place myself outside of mainstream 
education reform that favors “school choice” in the 
United States.53 
      Public schools teachers also must reflect on their 
role in shaping the Great Community. To begin, they 
ought to consider their own love for and knowledge 
of their subject matter, as well as how they conceive 
of their relation to their students. What I am calling 
for, through these reflections, is that teachers re-
conceptualize their role to one of non-neutral 
dialogical activists: that teachers, as educators, seek 
to educe the inherent potential in all of their student-
citizens in a way that challenges the errors of the past 
as well as the unjust structures of the present, and 
to do so in a way that presents themselves as co-
learners in the process of social progress. In turn, 
this re-conceptualization would inform teachers’ 
participation in society. They would move away 
from technological “solutions” in their classrooms, 
opt-out of standardized tests, pursue their own 
robust intellectual lives, and, crucially, they would be 
advocates for the reform of the education of teachers 
in their own states. It is in this latter point, by calling 
for structural reform in the education of teachers, that 
I again separate myself from mainstream education 
reform. Indeed, through reform at the state level, I 
argue that teachers and other citizens could shift the 
way public school teachers are educated. In order 
to promote the intellectual lives of our teachers, 
through advocacy and referenda, citizens could 
change the nature of teacher’s colleges in each state. 
For example, in regard to curricula, students desiring 
to be primary and secondary school teachers could 
be required to study not “education,” but a discipline 
(e.g., Mathematics, English). Furthermore, I suggest 
that the requirements for would-be teachers to pass 
in their discipline be strengthened: by graduation, 
public schools teachers ought to publish two articles 
in undergraduate journals, attend two conferences 
in their discipline, and pass comprehensive exams 
based on reading lists similar to (though with 
less rigor than) those in graduate school.54 These 
structural reforms would improve the teachers’ 
ability to name the world, and thus to participate in a 
broader process of opportunity for their students. In 
addition, it would redress some of the disparity that is 
caused by elite private schools’ employing of teachers 
with graduate degrees from prestigious colleges and 



Education, Oppression, and Democracy: A Philosophical Approach to Education Inequity

Aisthesis      Volume 7,  20167

universities while public schools employ teachers 
from local, state-funded schools.55 
 Finally, I contend that students, too—as citizens 
and dialogical subjects—can direct outcomes in 
education. Here, too, by including the students 
themselves as reformatory actors, I diverge from the 
education reform mainstream that focuses almost 
exclusively on voters, policy makers, and teachers. 
Through reflection, I argue, students notice that 
their experiences and perspectives are relevant to the 
process of (Deweyan/Freiran) dialogical education, 
and that they are indeed capable contributors to 
this process. In turn, I argue, students begin to re-
conceptualize their role in the classroom—from 
receptacles of information to drivers of social change 
informed by their personal growth and continued 
learning. Consequently, the practice of students 
will change: seeing their education as connected to 
their experience, they will abolish the dichotomy 
that suggests curricular and extra-curricular 
learning; they will demand access to teachers who 
view students as subjects in a world-transformative 
dialogue, and who can interweave their own mastery 
of subject matter with the experiences of the student. 
As such, students will participate in their society as 
citizens, supporting reforms that move policies away 
from positivistic metrics, technologized practice, and 
myopic pseudo-solutions, and calling for rhetoric 
to match reality in a way that addresses their own 
social, economic, and political opportunities. It is in 
this dialogical and subjective social participation of 
the students, I argue, that the lines between citizen, 
student, and teacher blur, and that we begin to see 
the emergence of a democratic society for all in our 
country. 

References 
1 E.g., the Kathy Wyer writes, “Technology, both 
high and low, has become a great equalizer.” “The 
Great Equalizer,” Teaching Tolerance, December 8, 
2014 http://www.tolerance.org/magazine/number-
19-spring-2001/feature/great-equalizer. 
2 This is known as “adaptive learning,” defined as 
“data-driven tools that can help [teachers] mold 
coursework around individual students’ abilities.” 
Paul Fain, “Intel on Adaptive Learning,” Inside 
Higher Education, December 7, 2014, https://
www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/04/04/gates-

foundation-helps-colleges-keep-tabs-adaptive-
learning-technology.
3 According to the K-12 education newspaper of record 
Education Week, “The ‘achievement gap’ in education 
refers to the disparity in academic performance 
between groups of students. The achievement gap 
shows up in grades, standardized-test scores, course 
selection, dropout rates, and college-completion 
rates, among other success measures. It is most often 
used to describe the troubling performance gaps 
between African-American and Hispanic students, 
at the lower end of the performance scale, and their 
non-Hispanic white peers, and the similar academic 
disparity between students from low-income families 
and those who are better off.” “Editorial Projects in 
Education Research Center. (2011, July 7). Issues 
A-Z: Achievement Gap. Education Week. Retrieved 
December 7, 2014 from http://www.edweek.org/ew/
issues/achievement-gap/. Emphasis mine.)
4 Martin Luther King Jr. called this more equal and 
thus more just society the “beloved community”; 
and, in contrast to the idea that a solution could be 
imposed, he thought the community’s realization 
must be internally driven, requiring “a qualitative 
change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in 
our lives.” James M. Washington, ed., A Testament of 
Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin 
Luther King Jr. (New York: HarperOne, 1986), 58.
5 John Dewey, The School and Society, (Chicago: The 
University of Chicago Press, 1900), 3. Henceforth 
TSS. It is worth noting that numerous executives of 
technology companies send their children to schools 
with limited uses of technology. See Matt Richtel, 
“A Silicon Valley School that Doesn’t Compute,” The 
New York Times, December 10, 2014, http://www.
nytimes.com/2011/10/23/technology/at-waldorf-
school-in-silicon-valley-technology-can-wait.
html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
6 Furthermore, there has been much recent scholarship 
suggesting that social inequality in the United States 
has reached such a level that it threatens democracy. 
In citing a number of books on this topic, a recent 
article in The New Yorker comments, “[T]oday’s 
left doesn’t engage in dissent; it engages in consent, 
urging solutions that align with neoliberalism, 
technological determinism, and global capitalism: 



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‘Environmental despoiling arouses righteous eating; 
cultural decay inspires charter schools…the cri de 
coeur against alienation surrenders to the triumph 
of the solitary; the marriage of political and cultural 
radicalism ends in divorce.’” Jill Lepore, “Richer and 
Poorer,” New Yorker, March 16, 2015, 31. In this light, 
the insights of Paulo Freire, as we will see below, are 
especially important. 
7 In a reflection on his ideas about education reform, 
Dewey writes: “The lesson for progressive education 
is that it requires in an urgent degree, a degree 
more pressing than was incumbent upon former 
innovators, a philosophy of education based upon a 
philosophy of experience.” John Dewey, Experience 
and Education (New York: Touchstone, 1938), 29. 
Henceforth abbreviated EE. (Emphasis mine.) 
8 Lindsey Burke, “Chicago Teachers: All About 
Avoiding Accountability,” The Heritage Foun-
dation , http://www.heritage.org/research/
commentary/2012/09/chicago-teachers-all-about-
avoiding-accountability. 
9 As a recent article in The New York Review of Books 
(Jonathan Zimmerman, “Why Is American Teaching 
So Bad?”) indicates, these crises include the lack of 
intellectual pursuits, in general, of public school 
teachers. Additionally, Paula Freire writes, “Teachers 
who do not take their own education seriously, who 
do not study, who make little effort to keep abreast 
of events have no moral authority to coordinate the 
activities of the classroom.” Pedagogy of Freedom 
(Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 
1998), 85. Henceforth abbreviated PF.  
10 An obvious problem with this argument is that, 
strictly speaking, the achievement gap could be 
closed if the scores of non-Hispanic white students 
decreased. 
11 John Dewey, Democracy and Education (New York: 
The Free Press, 1916), 76. Henceforth abbreviated 
DE. 
12 Ibid., 76. 
13 Larry A. Hickman and Thomas M. Alexander, 
eds., The Essential Dewey, Volume 1: Pragmatism, 
Education, Democracy (Bloomington: Indiana 
University Press, 1998), 230. Henceforth abbreviated 
TED.

14 EE 50. 
15 DE 99. This phrase is also used to describe 
education in TED, p. 230. 
16 DE 3.  
17 Ibid.   
18 TED 234.  
19 DE 100. 
20 Ibid.  
21 TED 295. 
22 Dewey elaborates on this idea in “Search for 
the Great Community,” from The Public and Its 
Problems. He outlines two principle conditions: first, 
that one’s intelligence must allow one “to engage in 
political affairs”; second, that there must be “general 
suffrage, frequent elections of officials, and majority 
rule.” TED 298. The potential tension between the 
political engagement of all and majority rule is of 
special interest to this thesis vis-à-vis the work of 
Paulo Freire (see below). 
23 DE 192. 
24 Ibid., 122.  
25 This was an important question to James Madison: 
“When a majority is included in a faction, the form 
of popular government, on the other hand, enables it 
to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the 
public good and the rights of other citizens.” How, 
then, to render the majority “unable to concert and 
carry into effect schemes of oppression”? In contrast 
to Dewey, Madison called for a republic and not a 
democracy. The Federalist Papers (New York: Signet 
Classics, 2003), 75. Henceforth abbreviated TFP.
26 PF 99. 
27 Paulo Freire, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New 
York: Penguin Putnam Inc., 1993), 29. Henceforth 
abbreviated PO.
28 Ibid., 29, 55. Freire writes, “[T]he oppressed are 
not ‘marginals,’ are not people living ‘outside’ society. 
They have always been ‘inside’—inside the structure 
which made them ‘beings for others.’”
29 Ibid., 37. 



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30 Similarly, Lenin offered “Who? Whom?” as 
a definition of political science, meaning that 
someone (subject) will dominate another (object). 
“Politics,” Oxford Reference, December 12, 2014, 
http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/
acref/9780191735240.001.0001/q-oro-00008442. 
31 PO 126. Although beyond the scope of this 
thesis, this notion of “saviorism,” or what Freire 
calls “messianism,” is relevant in contemporary 
discussions on education in humanitarian and 
“development” work. (See, e.g., William Easterly, The 
White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid 
the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good. 
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.) 
32 Ibid., 26. 
33 Ibid., 126. 
34 Ibid., 27, 127. 
35 Ibid., 55. 
36 Ibid., 30. 
37 PO 69.
38 Ibid., 68, 69. Freire writes, “There is no true word 
that is not at the same time a praxis. Thus, to speak a 
true word is to transform the world.”
39 Importantly, Freire argues that the oppressors 
cannot be liberating. See PO 26. 
40 Ibid., 16. “What is my neutrality,” Freire asks us 
all, “if not a comfortable and perhaps hypocritical 
way of avoiding any choice or even hiding my fear of 
denouncing injustice. To wash my hands in the face 
of oppression” (PF 101).
41 Here I point to a recent essay by Leon Wieseltier 
in The New York Times. “[T]he discussion of culture,” 
Wieseltier writes, “is being steadily absorbed into 
the discussion of business. There are “metrics” for 
phenomena that cannot be metrically measured. 
Numerical values are assigned to things that cannot 
be captured by numbers. Economic concepts 
go rampaging through noneconomic realms: 
Economists are our experts on happiness! Where 
wisdom once was, quantification will now be. 
Quantification is the most overwhelming influence 
upon the contemporary American understanding 
of, well, everything. It is enabled by the idolatry 

of data, which has itself been enabled by the almost 
unimaginable data-generating capabilities of the new 
technology. The distinction between knowledge and 
information is a thing of the past, and there is no 
greater disgrace than to be a thing of the past.” “Among 
the Disrupted,” The New York Times, January 7, 2015, 
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/18/books/review/
among-the-disrupted.html. 
42 “educate, v.”. OED Online. March 2015. Oxford 
University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/ 
43 The French mystic and philosopher Simone Weil 
writes, “Nothing is so clear and so simple as a row 
of figures.” Simone Weil, The Need for Roots, trans. 
Arthur Wills (London: Routledge, 2002), 44.
44 Maxine Greene, Landscapes of Learning (New 
York: Teachers College Press, 1978), 161. Also, in 
regard to “benefactors,” see note 52 below. 
45 Ibid. 
46 Ibid. 
47 For Freire’s ontology, see PF 58. Our being, he 
reminds us, is a “being with.” That is, we are with 
others.
48 Walter Benjamin, “The Life of Students,” in 
Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, vol. 1, 1913-
1926 (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard 
University Press, 2004), 41. Henceforth abbreviated 
TLS. 
49 As a recent article in The Atlantic points 
out, American youth are being sheltered from 
purportedly dangerous ideas well into college. See 
“The Coddling of the American Mind,” The Atlantic, 
September 2015, http://www.theatlantic.com/
magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-
american-mind/399356/. 
50 TLS, 42, 38. 
51 “[T]he fundamental problem,” William 
Deresiewicz writes, is that “we no longer believe in 
public solutions.” See his excellent “The Neoliberal 
Arts: How college sold its soul to the market,” 
Harper’s Magazine, September 2015 http://harpers.
org/archive/2015/09/the-neoliberal-arts/?single=1. 
52 For a refutation of the illusion that we live in a 
meritocracy, see The Economist’s “An hereditary 



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Aisthesis      Volume 7,  201610

meritocracy” and “America’s new aristocracy,” both 
from January 24, 2015 (http://www.economist.
com/news/briefing/21640316-children-rich-and-
powerful-are-increasingly-well-suited-earning-
wealth-and-power and http://www.economist.com/
news/leaders/21640331-importance-intellectual-
capital-grows-privilege-has-become-increasingly). 

53 According to its website, in 2014 alone the Walton 
Family Foundation invested more than $200 million 
in K-12 education in the United States. In addition, 
student-populated and so-called progressive groups 
that favor school choice, such as Democrats for 
Education Reform (DFER), turn out to be more 
right-of-center than their names imply; in the case 
of DFER, this includes beings partially funded 
by Wall Street hedge fund managers (see former 
Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch’s 
comments on DFER in her post “Texas: How to 
Buy Education Policy” at http://dianeravitch.net/
category/democrats-for-education-reform/). 
54 As the president of Bard College writes, “No…
teacher who does not experience criticism and 
evaluation by peers of his or her own written work 
deserves the right to assign a paper to a student.” 
Leon Botstein, “The Love of Learning,” http://www.
bard.edu/about/loveoflearning/. 
55 See Richard C. Sha and Eliza Woolf, “The Private 
High School Option,” Inside Higher Education, 
January 17, 2011, https://www.insidehighered.com/
advice/on_the_fence/woolf_on_careers_in_private_
schools. 


