encouraging revolt, freedom, and passion in the classroom

8/14/2019 Encouraging revolt, freedom, and passion in the classroom

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Confronting the Absurd:

Encouraging revolt, freedom and passion in the classroom

Brianna Williams

Western Washington University

Woodring College of EducationSecondary 691

Spring 2008

Abstract. Sisyphus is a figure in Greek mythology who is condemned to an eternity of

meaningless labor. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus contends that the fate of Sisyphus

illuminates the plight of all humanity. This relationship forms the basis for his philosophy of the

absurd. He maintains that Sisyphus is happy, and that his happiness is the product of three

responses to the absurdity of his situation: revolt, freedom, and passion. In my paper I will

examine how his thesis relates to education, and use it as a lens to examine the absurdities

present within. I will then present ways in which teachers can confront these absurdities and

encourage revolt, freedom, and the pursuit of passion in the lives of their students. Furthermore, I

will argue that these actions are necessary for students to develop praxis and find meaning in the

solidarity of the struggle against the absurd.


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Confronting the Absurd 2

Introduction

Sisyphus is a king in Greek mythology who angers Zeus by revealing his secrets to other

gods. As a punishment for his trickery, Sisyphus was compelled to roll a huge rock up a steep

hill. Before he could reach the top of the hill, the rock would always roll back down, forcing him

to begin again. Sisyphus overstepped his bounds by considering himself a peer of the gods,

someone who could rightfully report their indiscretions. As a result, Zeus tried to reassert his

power by binding Sisyphus to an eternity of frustration.

In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus contends that the fate of Sisyphus illuminates the

plight of all humanity. This relationship forms the basis of his philosophy of the absurd: man's

futile search for meaning, unity and clarity in the face of an unintelligible world. Camus reads

Sisyphus as a figure who follows the path necessary to confront the absurd. Sisyphus refuses a

life of subjugation and oppression at the hands of dominant powers, and instead chooses to

revolt. He refuses to accept the absurdity of his situation. Then Sisyphus embraces the freedoms

his life contains, the freedom of thought and the freedom to act. No longer damned to push the

rock, he chooses to throw himself into his task; he makes it his (Soloman, 2004). Finally,

Sisyphus makes the task his passion. He learns to admire the various crevices on the rocks

surface, the way it moves across the surface of the hill, the sound of the scraping, and the sights

of the sky and summit above. In the moment of stillness at the crest of the hill, Sisyphus

contemplates his life, and, according to Camus, he is happy.

Students, like Sisyphus, are confronted with the absurd. They are dehumanized by

confinement and surveillance. They are subjected to the greed of corporations and are disciplined

to the needs of the state. They are stripped of their identity and silenced. They are compelled to


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forever suffer meaningless tasks in schools. They are made anonymous through regimented

alienation from their peers.

How can students learn to persist in the face of absurdity? How can they subvert their

situation to reclaim agency? How can the struggle itself become a source of joy? Camus

maintains that no one is alone in their struggle against the absurd. It is through solidarity in revolt

and solidarity in actions against common oppressors that people can achieve transformations of

the world.

In my paper I will use Camus philosophy of the absurd as a lens for examining the

educational system. I will ague that we, as educators, must align ourselves with students to

confront the absurd. Yet we must also recognize that we are part of the absurd. Our position as

educators grants us power over our students. And in order to provide students with the

opportunity to confront the absurd, we must seek to actively dismantle our power and the

educational apparatus. These actions our necessary so that students may develop praxis and take

control of their lives. By working together to confront the absurd, both students and teachers can

find meaning in life.

The Panopticon

The physical layout of schools contributes to the absurd. Visit any school in the nation,

and one is likely to see similar arrangements. Walk through the front doors, which are locked

before and after school, and one enters a foyer filled with identical cafeteria table benches. This

is where the students are corralled for meals. Each year, more and more are crammed into the

same size space (Harber, 2002). The tables are locked in place as are the chairs, and they are

arranged in straight lines across the space, confining the walking space to a single file line. To

the left of the cafeteria are offices where administrators sit in plush offices and secretaries take


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note of the student body count and location. To the right of the cafeteria is the gym where student

bodies are made to run through drills, conditioned into desired forms, and organized to move in

the desired manner. Up the stairs from the cafeteria are the classrooms. Each classroom door is

locked until the teacher arrives, and they sit behind a desk in a plush chair. The walls of the

classroom are also an extension of the teachers space, and are dominated with pictures and

artifacts in accordance with h/er tastes. A placard states the rules to be followed. The student

desks, with attached immobile seats, are arranged in rows, facing the front of the classroom. The

students desk is not their own, but one they are allowed to inhabit for an allotted amount of time

each day. Each student faces the board, imprinted with the schedule of their daily actions, as

dictated by the teacher. When a bell sounds, all students are to be seated and their body is

counted as present. The teacher dictates the lesson to be learned. During the lesson silence and

stillness are required of the students, unless the teacher demands a particular response or action.

A second bell rings and students have a few minutes to move to the next location of detainment.

It should be no surprise to the observer that schools resemble prisons. According to

Foucault, as institutions they are one and the same. Both are manifestations of the same need for

control and surveillance, in an effort to maintain the control of a majority population by an elite

minority. He referred to these oppressive structures as panopticons (1984), named after the

architectural design by Jeremy Bentham. The concept of the design is to allow an observer to

observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell whether they are

being watched. This design creates a sense of anxiety and paranoia which helps to further

alienate prisoners (students) from one another, as each may see the other as a potential informant,

and to increase compliance with the demands of those in power.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Benthamhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Bentham


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Students have devised methods to revolt against the daily jailing in school prisons by

skipping classes and staging disruptions to pierce the quiet order. It is in these ways that they

break free from confinement. They scratch their names onto desks and walls within the school,

spray paint the exterior of the building, and litter the halls and walkways. It is in these ways that

they reclaim the space as their own.

In what ways can educators help student to revolt against the panopticon? How can the

revolt be channeled to actions which result in positive transformations of the educational setting?

One possible answer is presented in the case study conducted by Comber, Nixon,

Ashmore, Loo, & Cook (2006). Teachers at an elementary school serving an Aboriginal housing

project recruited architects and architecture students from a nearby university to pair up with

elementary school children, to work together to design an outdoor space. The architects taught

the school children the technical vocabulary needed to articulate space and design features

through a series of lectures and activities. For instance in one activity, the children identified the

spaces they move through daily, and drew up plans in which they re-designed them to be more

conducive to their needs. This challenged the students to examine the many layers of public and

personal spaces, and helped them to recognize the different effects design can have on the

function and usefulness of a space. The lessons and activities culminate with the children

drawing up designs for a school garden, a belonging space, which the architects used to plan

and execute construction of the space. When the researchers interviewed the children the

following year, the majority inquired as to when the garden would be completed and expressed

an interest in continuing involvement in the project. Many reported a desire in the future to go to

where the architecture students were (university), and some even said they were thinking of

becoming architects.


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Pawns

In a society where corporate interests dictate public concern, even students become

pawns, moved around to benefit corporate greed. As China and India grew into increasingly

developed countries, the news media chose to highlight these standard of living improvements as

an economic threat to Americans. Books predicting an economic doomsday, such as The World is

Flat, topped staff development reading lists. Pearson Education, Inc., looking for a new market

for its products, saw profit glittering within the media fear mongering campaign. They

capitalized on the narrative by constructing an assortment of tests, marketed as a measurement

for student achievement (http://www.pearsonschool.com). Then the government, ever a friend to

big business, made the adoption of these tests mandatory through the passing of the No Child

Left Behind Act (http://www.ed.gov/nclb/landing.jhtml). This corporate welfare act was

rationalized by the need to manufacture students who were more competitive in the global free

markets.

Suddenly schools were held accountable for student performance on Pearson

standardized tests, including the Developmental Reading Assessment administered in elementary

schools, and the Washington Assessment of Student Learning administered in high school. Each

school was to make adequate year progress in test performance, or they would lose federal

funding. These tests measured the ability of students to interpret reading passages completely

decontextualized, navigate answers with apparent cultural bias, and write according to an

unnatural formula. The tests were scored using scantrons, developed and owned by Pearson

Education, Inc.

It is no surprise that the first batch of students to submit to these tests did not perform

well; the tests were designed for students to fail, because fail meant profit (Mahiri, 2008). School


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do this by presenting an opportunity for students to critically read the world around them (Freire,

1993). They can do what the educators in the case study did and lead students through an

examination of the texts available in the school, challenging them to determine their value.

Alternatively, teachers can present issues of local interest in the form of current events study, and

encourage students to get involved with issues they connect to.

Revolt against the economic system of capitalism is another way to reduce school

adoption of standardized tests and materials. Since the primary reason for this violation of

students is the accumulation of profit, teachers must work to abolish the for profit system. To

work towards these ends, teachers can organize and participate in mass strikes [and] workers

councils, and, if they are truly radical, act to form a revolutionary party for the overthrow of

the state (Mclaren and Rikowski, 2001, pg. 29). It is in this way that educators can attempt to

paint a new landscape for education, one in which the individual is not valued solely for the

wealth they produce for an elite minority.

Recruits

Hand in hand with federal-corporate sweetheart deals, is the neo-liberal experiment of

school privatization. In response to the failure of traditional public schools, with failure

defined as low standardized test scores, companies formed to analyze the school system. A report

of one such company, The Commercial Club of Chicago, found that the failure of schools was

not due to the CEOs or district superintendents. Instead, the report argues, the problem is that

public education is a monopoly. It goes on to argue for a market-driven system: Competition

which is the engine of American productivity generallyis the key to improved performance

of our public schools (Commercial Club, 2003). This agenda was supported by claims like

J.F.K.s, a rising tide floats all boats, the capitalist ideal of the free markets leading to


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improved living conditions for all parties involved. Essentially, economists were seeking to

justify a failing free market system with a replication of the system within the educational sector.

Schools jumped on the school choice bandwagon across the country, with programs

concentrated in areas with a mixture of high poverty and affluence. Program implementation

resulted in a revolving door of school policies, staff, and administers. Teachers were compelled

to instruct with curriculum they had little or no training in. This resulted in mismanaged funds,

mass exodus of quality educators, and parent dissatisfaction. Social justice, ironically, was often

the rationale for the implementation of the programs, as they were purported to increase

academic rigor and possibility for scholastic achievement in minority populations. Yet the actual

consequence of the programs was city gentrification and the dispersal of racial minority students

from school campuses (Lipman and Haines, 2007). The school choice initiative, like the

assessment initiatives it accompanied, resulted in failure.

Many of the choice schools around today specialize in math, science, engineering, and

computer programming. According to global testing, American students lagged behind in those

subjects, and experts projected that this would lead to the toppling of the United States as a

global power. By sorting students into educational tracts, economists believed schools could

produce a more competitive work force. For another possible reading of school specialization

one can look to Samir Amins theory of monopolies (1999). He argues that ascent and decline is

determined by the monopoly of technology, supported by military expenditures of the dominant

nations, the monopoly of control over global finances and a strong position in the hierarchy of

current account balances, and the monopoly of the military means of mass destruction. Thus, the

specialization of schools can be attributed to the need to maintain an American monopoly in

those categories.


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This second reading is highlighted by the physical presence of the military on high school

campuses. Students as young as fourteen are able to sign up for training with the Junior Reserve

Officers Training Corp (JROTC) and receive credit towards graduation. The courses they attend

are taught by military officers who are not required to be certified like other school teachers, and

who sometimes have no more than a high school degree (American Friends Service Committee).

These instructors are selected for their past success in youth recruitment, as well as a desire to

develop respect for and an understanding of the need for the constituted authoritypromote

habits of orderliness and precision[and]promote patriotism in students (Naval Junior

Reserve Officers Training Corps). Students are able to choose from a list of classes such as

History of the Military, Your American Citizenship, and Career Opportunities. Curriculum

taught in these classes does not have to undergo approval from the local school board, but is

instead dictated by the Federal Government. The biases inherent in the content of these classes

cannot be more obvious (Lutz & Barlett, 1995). From a student perspective, learning American

history from the military would be akin to learning environmental science from Green Peace.

Some students sign up for JROTC, but some are forced into it. In districts where budget

cuts result in reduced spots available for physical education classes, some students are pushed in

JROTC to meet state mandated P.E. requirements. Upon entering JROTC, students swear a

loyalty oath, which includes a morality clause. From then on, they are subjected to weekly

uniform inspection, daily conditioning drills, and pressure to enlist following high school

completion.

While the government insists that JROTC is not a recruitment program, 45% of all cadets

who successfully complete JROTC enlist in a branch of the US armed forces (Stodgill, 2002).

Most of the students enlist as privates, the lowest rank in the military. It is often difficult for new


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recruits to access the benefits promised to them, such as educational scholarships, and they are

faced with low pay and report frequent harassment (Project on Youth and Non-Military

Opportunities, 2006). Women and people of racial, religious, ethnic, and sexual minorities suffer

the most in their career in the military as they are more likely the victims of violent assault and

rape.

In what ways can educators help student to revolt against militarism in schools? How can

the revolt be channeled to actions which result in positive transformations of the educational

setting?

Shawn Ginwright and Julio Cammarota present a model for youth development that

serves as an alternative to the military agenda (2002). They propose youth have the potential to

be radical agents of social change. In their research they found that while young people are

influenced by oppressive social forces, they still have the capacity to respond to forms of social

control (Ginwright and Cammarota, 2002, pg. 86). The researchers found that urban youth and

those in poverty have to navigate even more societal constraints than their peers.

To support youth, educators must make into account the structural constraints placed on

youth, without discounting the creative and resourceful ways they respond to them. Critical

consciousness, or the awareness of how institutional, historical, and systemic forces limit and

promote the life opportunities for particular groups, is central to youth action (Ginwright and

Cammarota, 2002, pg. 87). It is this critical consciousness that helps people to see that the

realities of their day-to-day lives are fixed (Freire, 1993). At the same time, people are only truly

convinced of the malleability of their world when they engage in effecting the conditions that

shape their lives. Freire calls this interdependence between critical consciousness and social

actionpraxis (1993).


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students to recognize that their actions have an impact greater than that which is perceived in

their local communities. Teachers can encourage global awareness by connecting the local action

projects of the students to similar projects around the globe. For instance, a group that forms to

clean up pollution in a local stream can be given information about problems with pollution

elsewhere in the world and ways that people in those nations have worked together to address

those problems. Then students can begin to see their place alongside the many in the struggle to

make the world a better place.

By progressing through the three levels of awareness, students can revolt against the

militarization of schools. First they will become aware of their identity as a youth with little

political power, who may be constrained by conditions of poverty and prejudice. They will grow

to understand how the JROTC manipulates these aspects of their identity to assert its power. This

will help students to resist the military propaganda that promises power and prestige to youth

who join the program. Then students will learn to recognize the forces that drive military

presence in the schools and see it for its economic incentives. Finally, students who achieve

global awareness may become critical of the JROTC and the role it plays in the global political

environment.

Student passion can increase engagement in action against militarization as there are

many issues contained within the JROTC that student groups can form around. The gay-straight

alliance in high schools, for instance, can easily align with the cause to oust the JROTC, as the

military is an institution that enforces prejudicial practices towards GLBTQ individuals and turns

a blind eye towards acts of violence perpetuated against these individuals. This stance is

obviously contrary to the goals of schools to provide a safe space for all students. Student peace


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results of their investigation and endeavor, and share their movie with their classmates. These

tasks will help students to be more resilient to the spectacle as well as show them ways they can

twist the media to inform the public and effect social change.

The Meaningless Task

Everyday students enter the school workforce. During their work day they fill out

worksheets, listen to endless lectures, take notes, and try to guess answers to closed ended

questions. The majority of tasks are driven by the assumption that there is a body of knowledge

that must be memorized for the success of our society, that there is a chain of events, and a

correct way to color their happenings, that determined the current state of our great nation.

Students of color, those of religious and ethnic minorities, and women dont see themselves in

the account presented, yet are forced to accept this history as their own. The real lives of

students, their experiences, do not sway the instructor into changing the narrative. In fact,

individuals in their entirety do not really matter; they are told to remain silent as they work. It is

the job of the students to assimilate the cultural cannon.

All in all, they submit to a total six hours of unpaid labor. What does all of this labor

amount to? As far as the students are concerned, nothing.

Students perceive the information they receive in school as useless because it is

completely disconnected from the lives that they lead. Figures are presented in isolation from the

history they arise from, and events are related only on a timeline. The instructor hurdles students

across time and space towards an unknown future, on a train of information, without ever

stopping to allow reflection on the details or reason behind the train or the movement itself. No

student is allowed to question the validity of the information presented. Foucault argues that


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knowledge is disseminated in this teleological manner as an exercise of domination and control

(1984).

In addition to the barrage of facts students are trained to memorize, they are also forced

to write in response to inauthentic assignments. The instructor removes the interaction between

reader and writer, by requiring the writer to comment only on the words contained within the

text, ignoring the various meanings the words convey, both socially and politically. Readers are

also taught to respond to texts dispassionately, and to divorce their analyses from personal

response. While students are taught to write for multiple audiences, the only real audience is the

instructor, who is both the creator and arbitrator of knowledge. Student responses are graded

according to inflexible rubrics emphasizing execution and diction over substance.

Also absent from curriculum are emotional, cognitive, and social goals. No where in the

standards does it say that students should be taught compassion. In fact, students are encouraged

to be competitive and cruel in an effort to set the curve or gain the teachers attention. Nor do

the standards say that students should be taught to question authority. Actually, students are

taught daily that it is not acceptable to question as they are dulled by endless repetition and

routine. There is also no standard which states that students should learn to look out for one

another, as the reality is that teachers reward students who snitch.

Why is school curriculum full of such absurdities? Foucault would argue that school

teachers are the enforcers of passivity in lower and middle class populations (1984). By

reminding students that they havent yet grasped all of the facts necessary for success and true

adulthood, teachers render students perpetually unprepared for action. This inferiority complex

also leads them to the unproductive pursuit of university degrees and professional development,


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growths shooting out from the main body. This is to say that it is unnatural for events to be

shown in causal relation, as many events may result from a similar origin. Also, the theory of the

rhizome illustrates the interconnectedness of ideas and presents the dynamic character of thought

and inquiry.

Embracing the rhizome as an education paradigm would cause educators to focus on

authentic questions, as they search to find roots leading to outgrowths and discovery. Since in

life students are led to act by curiosity, so should students be led to knowledge. The rhizome also

presents an argument for integrated studies, as it demonstrates how a single question can lead to

many avenues of study, and to limit the study to one discipline would stunt the development of

the answer. Since student experiences are not compartmentalized, it makes sense that their

acquisition of knowledge should be continuous as well.

In The Body Without Organs, Deluze explains his philosophy of creative assemblages.

He purposes that in order for human beings to have transformative experiences, in order for them

to grow as individuals, they must make new alliances with others and with information, to form

structures without organization. One such example of a body without organs is a discussion

where several student voices merge to create the landscape of a possible reality. The body

without organs is powerful because is not constrained by past or future limitations; it creates is

own ever changing boundaries.

To create a body without organs in the classroom would be to allow students to assemble

and share information in innovative fashions, enabling them to try on many ideas, concepts, and

identities. This would be best accomplished by allowing students to direct curriculum, to tailor

curriculum, and to alter the path of assignments as they moved towards their completion. A

classroom body without organs would have no assignments as each new task would lead to


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infinite others, each new piece of information leading to a new path. Such a classroom non-

management might be difficult to initiate at first, but as students created questions to investigate,

formed bodies of knowledge and experienced answers, it would be just as difficult to stop. To

encourage the body without organs is to encourage students to be lifelong learners who learn

passionately.

Power

Since school is a venue for socialization, political and personal, which aims to equip

individuals with the skills needed to survive the larger world, it is not surprising that elaborate

hierarchies of power are established to maintain submission and control. The chain of command

in a school ends with violence inflicted upon students through the form of district, school, and

classroom rules, and detention, suspension, and expulsion for behaviors which fail to conform to

the rules. Students are forced to ask permission to move from place to place, to drink and eat, to

use the bathroom. They are even required to ask permission to speak.

If one of the goals of the educational institution is the production of citizens who can

participate in a democratic society, why are schools so oppressive and undemocratic? Why are

students denied the rights of free speech and organization? Why dont they have a say in the

rules which govern their every action?

Students revolt to these absurdities everyday by acting out in classrooms, fighting at

school, creating exclusive cliques, and bullying other students. They also opt out of classroom

participation, and sometimes opt out of school all together. It is in this way that students attempt

to reassert their power, even if it is only the power to self destruct.


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To create Carnival in the classroom means to create situations when the power imbalance is

disrupted, norms are discarded, and the roles of students and teacher are reversed. This could

manifest in students moving from the desks to the front of the room to lead others in discussion

and activities. Or a Carnival might lead to an opportunity for new ideas and perspectives to be

explored, to be acted out in the classroom. Drama, student performances, and simulations all

invoke Carnival. And while after Carnival norms return, things are never exactly the same. Once

a different reality is experienced, the normative experience is viewed as a transparency

superimposed across many other possibilities.

Perhaps the most important prerogative of teachers as they aid students in the revolt

against non-representation in schools is to teach students to engage in dialogue. Fecho and

Botzakis stated that their reading of Bakhtin implies that the world must be answered

authorship is not a choice, and that Bakhtin himself posited that for the word there is nothing

more terrible than a lack of response (2007). Bakhtin argued that each new perspective begs the

need for other perspectives, and that each utterance is accompanied in a stream of other

utterances. Thus the very act of living requires an individual to speak, to respond to that which

surrounds them, to those they interact with.

Freire argues that the goal of dialogue should be more than a chorus of utterances, but

that dialogue should culminate in action (1993). One method for initiating dialogue is presenting

students with what Freire calls limit-experiences (1993). A limit experience is represented by a

combination of two images, one image depicting the life experience of the person viewing the

images, and another image depicting the life experience of a person with power over the viewer.

For instance, when working for the liberation of the peasant class, Freire showed the peasants he

was teaching a picture of a peasant stooped over in front of a dirty hut, paired with an image of a


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wealthy aristocrat lounging in a luxurious villa (1993). Freire then asked the people viewing the

images questions related to the differences in the experiences of the subjects depicted. The goal

of these questions was to lead people to a critical consciousness of their immediate situation in

society.

Teachers can create limit experiences in the classroom by inviting students to bring in

pictures of the houses and neighborhoods they live in. They can instruct students to examine

their personal images alongside images of the mansions and neighborhoods of the wealthy elite.

Then teachers can ask students a variety of questions, challenging them to determine the societal

conditions that produce such disparities in quality of life. Students are sure to engage in this

discussion, as it allows them to articulate their frustrations as well as their silenced dreams. This

limit-experience could also lead to a discussion of unequal participation in a society where

access to power and avenues for expression is so disparate between upper and majority class

citizens. Hopefully such discussions will spur students to action against the institutions that

create inequities in America.

To be productive, Freire also argued that dialogue must occur in ideal speech situations,

where dialogue is horizontal and power hierarchies are flattened. While some scholars interpret

this to mean that teachers must become passive facilitators of discussion, others argue that to let

discussion stray to unrevolutionary conclusions would be negligent (Freedman, 2007). To ask

students to read the world critically in order to transform it in a way that will foster

humanization is, after all, prescriptive (McLaren & Rikowski, 2001, pg. 28). So while students

should be encouraged to take hold of dialogue and make it their own, teachers should contribute

to discussion in a way that leads students to deconstruct hegemony.


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It is also important for educators to challenge students to seek evidence to support or

refute their beliefs. That way, students can participate in democratic exchanges in the fashion of

political debate where positions are supported by warrants (Freedman, 2007). This leads students

to a more complete understanding of the issue in discussion, and also arms them against

indoctrination. In addition to seeking out evidence, students should be taught multiple ways to

analyze the information they find. For instance, teachers could present a text and lead the class

through a Derridian, feminist, new critical, historical, or Marxist reading of the text. When

students combine evidence with the ability to view it through several lenses, they are more likely

to reach truths in classroom discussions.

Conclusion

If the school represents a microcosm of the larger society, than the absurd is omnipresent.

It permeates every aspect of the human condition. It is the human condition.

Currently, schools train students to be complacent in their own oppression, and to

conform to the desires of those in power. If this indoctrination takes, students grow up to lead

unquestioning lives of suffering. They will suffer, but never come to know the cause of their

suffering as they have forgotten how to be reflective. They will wander from job to job, place to

place, person to person, feeling unsatisfied yet unable to determine their wants and desires.

This is no life for a human being. It is the life of a slave.

That is why teachers must teach students to recognize the absurd, to revolt against

absurdity, and to act with passion and conviction. If they do not learn how to speak, how to

organize, and how to push back in schools, where else will they learn? If students are not given

the space to practice dialogue and the resources to act for social justice in schools, will they ever

have the chance to do either?


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encouraging revolt, freedom, and passion in the classroom

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