Education as Freedom is a groundbreaking edited text that documents and reexamines African-American empirical, methodological, and theoretical contributions to knowledge-making, teaching, and learning and American education from the nineteenth through the twenty-first century, a dynamic period of African-American educational thought and activism. Education as Freedom is a long awaited text that historicizes the current racial achievement gap as well as illuminates the myriad of African American voices and actions to define the purpose of education and to push the limits of the democratic experiment in the United States.

Created in 1964 as part of the Mississippi Freedom Summer, the Mississippi Freedom Schools were launched by educators and activists to provide an alternative education for African American students that would facilitate student activism and participatory democracy. The schools, as Jon N. Hale demonstrates, had a crucial role in the civil rights movement and a major impact on the development of progressive education throughout the nation. Designed and run by African American and white educators and activists, the Freedom Schools counteracted segregationist policies that inhibited opportunities for black youth. Providing high-quality, progressive education that addressed issues of social justice, the schools prepared African American students to fight for freedom on all fronts. Forming a political network, the Freedom Schools taught students how, when, and where to engage politically, shaping activists who trained others to challenge inequality. Based on dozens of first-time interviews with former Freedom School students and teachers and on rich archival materials, this remarkable social history of the Mississippi Freedom Schools is told from the perspective of those frequently left out of civil rights narratives that focus on national leadership or college protestors. Hale reveals the role that school-age students played in the civil rights movement and the crucial contribution made by grassroots activists on the local level. He also examines the challenges confronted by Freedom School activists and teachers, such as intimidation by racist Mississippians and race relations between blacks and whites within the schools. In tracing the stories of Freedom School students into adulthood, this book reveals the ways in which these individuals turned training into decades of activism. Former students and teachers speak eloquently about the principles that informed their practice and the influence that the Freedom School curriculum has had on education. They also offer key strategies for further integrating the American school system and politically engaging today's youth.

Cultural Writing. Education. Anarchism. Elizabeth Byrne Ferm (1857-1944) was principal of the Modern School at Stelton, a utopian-anarchist colony in New Jersey. Stating that "Education, free from outer interference, would flow as normally through human life as the sun, moon and stars move on their way and so fulfill their use and destiny," Ferm proposes an educative practice distinct from pedagogy, one where the task of the educator is to get out of the way of the self-directed child. If at first this book seems addressed only to young teachers or parents, consider the first sentence: "If human life had been left free to reveal itself, there would be no need to consider the question of education."

This book offers a prescription for reform that includes freedom of choice among public and private schools.

First published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.