Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.

The conscious desire for the realm of freedom can only mean consciously taking the steps that will really lead to it.

Philosophically it is not important to determine the time needed by the ‘ought’ in order to reorganise what ‘is’. The task is to discover the principles by means of which it becomes possible in the first place for an ‘ought’ to modify existence. And it is just this that the theory rules out from the start by establishing the mechanics of nature as an unchangeable fact of existence, by setting up a strict dualism of ‘ought’ and ‘is’, and by creating the rigidity with which ‘is’ and ‘ought’ confront each other - a rigidity which this point of view can (...)

The groundwork for building the bridge between the “ought“ and the “is,“ between theory and practice, is laid within theory itself. Knowledge is transcendent (toward the object world, toward reality) not only in an epistemological sense - as against repressive forms of life - it is political.

Freedom is liberation, a specific historical process in theory and practice, and as such it has its right and wrong, its truth and falsehood.

Encouraging women to strive for education, to develop their intellects, should be a primary goal of feminist movement. Education as “the practice of freedom“ (to use another Freire phrase) will be a reality for women only when we develop an educational methodology that addresses the needs of all women. This is an important feminist agenda.

Fundamental to the principles that inform critical pedagogy is the conviction that schooling for self- and social empowerment is ethically prior to questions of epistemology or to a mastery of technical or social skills that are primarily tied to the logic of the marketplace.

Critical pedagogy is more than a desacralization of the grand narratives of modernity, but seeks to establish new moral and political frontiers of emancipatory and collective struggle, where both subjugated narratives and new narratives can be written and voiced in the arena of democracy. These new - sometimes outré - narratives are not unified by objective and regulative moral principles but by a common ethos of solidarity and struggle for the realization of a deeper democracy and civic participation.

The exercise of hope and possibility that we are advocating as part of a critical pedagogical praxis bears a significant comparison with, and indebtedness to, new developments in liberation theology, political theology, and feminist theology.

I cannot permit myself to be a mere spectator. On the contrary, I must demand my place in the process of change. So the dramatic tension between the past and the future, death and life, being and non being, is no longer a kind of dead end for me; I can see it for what it really is: a permanent challenge to which I must respond. And my response can be none other than my historical praxis-in other words, revolutionary praxis

Marx had understood and described the proletariat’s struggle for freedom in terms of the dialectical unity of theory and practice.

The unity of theory and practice exists not only in theory but also for practice.

In the interplay of theory and practice, true and false solutions become distinguishable never with the evidence of necessity, never as the positive, only with the certainty of a reasoned and reasonable chance, and with the persuasive force of the negative.

And of course I am afraid, because the transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation, and that always seems fraught with danger.

Unlike some academic disciplines, critical race theory contains an activist dimension. It tires not only to understand our social situation but to change it, setting out not only to ascertain how society organizes itself along racial lines and hierarchies but to transform it for the better.

The critical race theory (CRT) movement is a collection of activists and scholars interested in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism, and power. The movement considers many of the same issues that conventional civil rights and ethnic studies discourses take up, but places them in a broader perspective that includes economics, history, context, group- and self-interest, and even feelings and the unconscious. Unlike traditional civil rights, which embraces incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional la

We call this blend of understanding and action critical social justice literacy.

Indeed, a great deal of scholarship in social justice studies is focused on the gap between the ideals of social justice and the practices of social justice.

Radicals need to develop theories of practice rather than theories for practice. If they do, theory will not be reduced to a technical instrument for change, an instant set of radical recipes for social action; instead, it will begin with a dialectical reflection on the experiences and problems of excluded majorities. If this is kept in mind, theory becomes a guide for practice rather than a force that dominates it. Of course, I do not want to underestimate the material and ideological forces which isolate and threaten radical educators, forces that limit their political effectiveness or, even worse, incorporate them (...)

Using decidedly religious terminology, Freire calls for those seeking justice through education to “incarnate justice, through communion with the people.” Another predominant motif in Freire’s work, which is complimentary to the views of Che Guevara, explains that “communion with the people must be more than mere theory; it must be integral to the life of the revolutionary.” Education is expressed not only by words but through actions and the visible, tangible decisions of lifestyles and identifications.

Educational theory and historical struggle may be woven together so that just as theory is served and dialectically informed by practice, theory can also place itself at the service of pressing political goals within the public sphere of everyday human struggle. In this way the language of hope and possibility may avoid excessive indebtedness to pre-established standards and self-generating theoretical formulations that exist outside the crucible of concrete human struggle and historical inquiry. Such a language must acknowledge its role in the construction of subjectivity. In so doing, the language of hope must de-authorize and challenge the master narratives of (...)

All social life is essentially practical. All the mysteries which lead theory towards mysticism find their rational solution in human praxis and in the comprehension of this praxis.

What remained theoretically inadequate in Hegel and Marx became part of historical praxis; that is why it is to be theoretically reflected upon anew, instead of the thought bowing irrationally to the primacy of praxis;

The new sensibility has become, by this very token, praxis: it emerges in the struggle against violence and exploitation where this struggle is waged for essentially new ways and forms of life: negation of the entire Establishment, its morality, culture;

Focusing on feminism as political commitment, we resist the emphasis on individual identity and lifestyle. (This should not be confused with the very real need to unite theory and practice.) Such resistance engages us in revolutionary praxis. The ethics of Western society informed by imperialism and capitalism are personal rather than social. They teach us that the individual good is more important than the collective good, and consequently that individual change is of greater significance than collective change. This particular form of cultural imperialism has been reproduced in feminist movement in the form of individual women equating the fact that (...)

While drag has some conventions, it ultimately has no rules - its defining quality is often to break as many rules as possible! Thus, drag can be thought of as a kind of queer praxis that may be especially well-suited to early childhood education, not because of any qualities essential to young children, and instead because early education is one of the few remaining school settings that encourages play.

Pedagogy for liberation works outside the inviolable boundaries of order, in the rift between a subversive praxis and a concrete utopia.

A critical pedagogy dedicated to a critical multiculturalism needs to be formulated within a goal-oriented social praxis.

To help create and guide a liberating praxis, critical pedagogy must seize a concept of resistance that will allow teachers to construct pedagogical practices that resonate with their students’ experiences without romanticizing them or affirming what might constitute racist, sexist, or otherwise oppressive ideologies and practices. Teachers would do well to tap the hidden utopian desire in those resistances

We cannot afford only to temporarily disengage students from the doxa - the language of common sense. If we want to recruit students to a transformative praxis, students must not only be encouraged to choose a language of analysis that is undergirded by a project of liberation, but must affectively invest in it.