Revolutionary Education

Book excerpt: Revolutionary Education, Theory and Practice for Socialist Organizers Promoting socialist consciousness is one of the central tasks of building a revolutionary movement in the U.S. This requires the organized and intentional efforts of an expansive base of militant organizers equipped to intervene in a variety of campaigns and movements. Such organizers are not only activists but also educators. Revolutionary Education will help facilitate the training of such revolutionary organizers and educators. The chapters in this book address a range of themes in Marxist educational praxis, touch on diverse historical movements and provide examples of how they can inform our own practices today in pre-revolutionary times. Two appendices provide a series of tactics for facilitating the study, discussion and teaching of revolutionary ideas. Teachers and organizers strike a common stance: one foot grounded in the mud and the muck of the world as it is, the other foot striding toward a world that could be, but is not yet. When we knock on a door, organize a meeting or encounter our students, we see, not a collection of deficits and deficiencies, but sparks of meaning-making energy, agents with the power and the potential not only to understand the world, but, if they choose, to collectively transform it. Revolutionary Education - part credo and manifesto, part road map, part strategy and tactics - connects the dots. An indispensable text. - Bill Ayers, author of "Demand the Impossible," "Public Enemy" and "Teaching Toward Freedom" Revolutionary Education is an incredible book for activists and educators alike, especially those looking for concrete tools to organize in classrooms, community centers and shop floors. In pulling together this book, Liberation School has done a great service for the socialist movement. - Wayne Au, Professor, University of Washington Bothell; Editor, "Rethinking Schools"