"Deschooling the Imagination: Critical Thought as Social Practice" is, first, a book that looks at what it means to be actively engaged in developing a critical/creative mindset against the prevailing ideology of our public schools. Second, it is a book about the social/cultural relationship between what and how we learn on one hand and our imaginative capacities on the other. Finally, but equally important, it is a book about how teachers can teach in the service of a revived critical/creative imaginary.
Eric J. Weiner is Associate Professor of Education at Montclair State University in New Jersey, as well as an artist and a poet. His work examines the contradictory spaces that form in the intersection of schooling and critical thought.
Prologue
Part I
1 Introduction
2 Critical Pedagogy and the Crisis of Imagination
3 The Habitus of the Hegemonic Imagination
4 Constructions of Innocence in Times of War: Breaking into the Hegemony of Peace
5 The Story of B. W. Gartenkraut and the Institute of Critical and Creative Thought: What Should Be, Could Be, But Isn't
Part II
6 Instructional Techniques: Critical Thought as Imaginative Practice
7 Conclusion: Liberating the Imagination