Free Schools, Free People
Education and Democracy After the 1960s
by Ron Miller
Free Schools, Free People is the first comprehensive history of the radical democratic critique of education that grew out of the social movements and counterculture of the 1960s and early 1970s. Miller explains why thousands of educators, parents and young people, inspired by the writings of John Holt, A. S. Neill, Paul Goodman, George Dennison, Ivan Illich, and several other popular authors of the time, agitated for substantial change in public education, created hundreds of totally independent "free" schools, and eventually sought even greater educational freedom by "deschooling" entirely.
This radical literature, which has been largely ignored for the past thirty years, reflected a deep concern for the increasing centralization of economic, political and cultural authority in mass industrial society. Those involved in the free school movement passionately advocated for young people's intellectual and psychological freedom, for their autonomy and individuality--for their existential authenticity--in a society they saw becoming increasingly standardized and corporately managed. Miller argues that this critique is especially relevant to the educational conditions of the present time--to issues such as the standards movement, high stakes testing, school violence and its suppression, and corporate influence over the curriculum.
Miller writes that the appearance of hundreds of small, independent schools across the United States dedicated to a radical democratic educational vision marked a turning point in American education. Homeschooling, charter schools, voucher plans, alternative schools and other trends toward educational choice received their impetus, to an extent rarely acknowledged, from the now forgotten grassroots movement of the 1960s.
"Free Schools, Free People is about the ongoing struggle for the freedom to teach and learn; the clash between technocratic systems of education that rely on bureaucratic and disciplinary authority to achieve standardization and efficiency and those people in pursuit of humane, holistic, and non-authoritarian approaches to education." (E. Wayne Ross, editor of The Social Studies Curriculum)
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