Maxine Greene

The Dialectic of Freedom

In this work, the author searches for a critical aesthetic to inform education. It features in the John Dewey Lecture Series.

Releasing the Imagination

Abstract In this paper, Maxine Greene illuminates the concept of an aesthetic education within her discussion of the work of New York based dance company STREB. Elizabeth Strebs daredevil, postmodern acrobatic performance piece provides this paper with the metaphor of the wall—from the glass wall through which the STREB dancers literally ‘break through’. The idea of arts education is to challenge the wall, not passively walk away—to take the risks, to ask the questions, to be willing to engage.

The Art of Being Present: Educating for Aesthetic Encounters.

At a time when persons are described as “resources,” and education becomes increasingly specialized, the kinds of changes called for in education bypass much which is essential to an understanding of alternative modes of structuring reality. Integral to this understanding is the education of feeling, perception, and imagination. This paper argues for increased attention to informed awareness of the arts in education, and to the importance of an active engagement with the arts in developing critical as well as creative thinking.

The Vision Thing: Educational Research and AERA in the 21st Century–Part 5:A Vision for Educational Research and AERA in the 21st Century

Editors note: This is the fifth in a series of mini-feature articles by former presidents of the American Educational Research Association about the future of the association and educational research in general. These commentaries and the other brief articles in this series were gathered and submitted by Jane Stallings, a former association president. They were originally presented in two symposia Dr. Stallings organized for the 1996 AERA Annual Meeting in New York City. The symposia featured presentations by presidents from 1963-1964 to 1993-I994. All but two of the original presenters agreed to have their work included in this series. The papers have been grouped topically and, in some instances, shortened by the features editor.

The Spaces of Aesthetic Education

these resources and indicating how they can be deployed would be a useful and not a particularly costly way of promoting the causes in which we all believe. Moreover, in so doing, we may well be able to work out cooperative ventures with other societies, including ones very different from ours, like Russia, China, or the Islamic world. Whatever the risks of international cooperation in other areas-and they are obviously far less than the risks of noncooperation-collaboration in arts education seems an unqualifiedly positive venture and could serve as a model for cooperation in other, more charged spheres. If there is much ground for pessimism and disappointment in the cause of arts education, then, there are also considerable grounds for optimism. Due to the efforts of committed and prescient agents like the Journal of Aesthetic Education, the cup is at least half full. Perhaps the most important challenge for the coming decades is to combine our voices and resources, so that they embody common powerful themes rather than seemingly random cacophony. Here, too, there may be a lesson to be drawn from those who carry out more militant forms of struggle. But if warriors have something to teach us, we may have something important to teach a warring society. Even as the arts have always benefitted from the sublimation of some of humanitys baser drives, so, too, the arts may serve as a kind of binding agent in our troubled and fragmented world. Would it not be appropriate if, as arts educators, we could make our contribution to lessening this strife, by offering positive models of cooperation in an enterprise which costs little, is available to everyone, and enriches the mind as well as the spirit?

Breaking through the Ordinary: The Arts and Future Possibility.

Informed and active engagements with works of art make new experimential openings visible as they turn attention to the concreteness of the world. The ordinary and the taken-for-granted must be bracketed out if a poem or a painting or a musical piece is to be achieved. Viewed within the brackets and from an unfamiliar vantage point, reality may become questionable, in need of interpretation, perhaps in need of repair. If learners are provided opportunities for understanding their part in realizing illusioned worlds, they may come to confront their contributions to the construction of their social realities. Teachers who create situations that permit this to happen will be opening up their classrooms, not only to a new sense of the totality, but to a consciousness of what might be, what is not yet. And this, in turn, may provide a ground for common action, for desired change.

Progressives and urban school reform : the Public Education Association of New York City 1895-1954

mittee confined its work to a consideration of the principal subjects constituting the curriculum and requirements for admission to college. It also expressed the need for improvement in the preparation of teachers. Sizer criticizes the Committee (and properly, in the reviewers judgment) for not enlarging the scope of its study to include an examination of the forces in society which were contributing to the confusion in secondary education.

Work, Play, and Critique: an Approach to Career Education

Times Educational Supplement, August 16, 1974, 9. Frost, D. and Jay, A. The English. New York: Avon Books, 1968. Grisdale, J. Japan: a stepping stone to status. Times Educational Supplement, August 12, 1974, 13. Hitchcock, J. The new vocationalism. Change, 1973, V, 46-50. Illich, I. The alternative to schooling. Saturday Review, June 19, 1971, 44. Moullette, J.B. New philosophies, renewed efforts, and improved strategies for career education. Speech given at the American Vocational Association Convention, Portland, Oregon, December 16, 1971. No future. Time, July 12, 1948, 37. Smith, G., A history of the United States office of education, 1867-1967. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Oklahoma, 1967. Smith, J. Compensatory education: guaranteed failure the helpful way. Myth and reality, (2d ed.) Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1975, 221-237. Smith, P. and Rost, P. Career guidance in the elementary school. Elementary School Guidance and Counseling, 1973, 8, 1, 50-53.

Literature and Visibility.

Heightening a persons visibility to himself and to others can be literatures special contribu tion. The author concentrates on how the teach ing of imaginative literature helps the student in his struggle for self-awareness.