The fate of public education and therefore the future of our democracy
is at risk. Powerful forces are eroding commitment to public schools and
weakening democratic resolve. Yet even in deeply troubling times, it is
possible to broaden social imagination and empower efforts toward
systemic progressive reform. This book is an invitation for widespread
participation in a complex process-re-envisioning education and
democracy. To reenvision- to envision and then envision again-is to join
with others in imagining new possibilities and bringing these into
existence. Re-envisioning is a radically social process. Although
distinct and varied individual contributions are required,
transformative visions cannot be advanced through the agency of one
charismatic person, or bound by one influential perspective. The process
of re-envisioning, like all forms of democratic living and learning,
draws energy and insight when connection and communion are sustained
across dimensions of difference. Re-envisioning is an intensely creative
and exploratory process. It is not accomplished through careful
construction of "best laid plans" aimed at attaining certainty and
control. Re-envisioning is instead experienced and evolved by preparing
for, and then acting on, informed and strategic glimpses. These brief
and fleeting impressions-multimodal and multi-sensory, incomplete and
ambiguous, always in motion-offer potentials, but no definitive answers.
Re-envisioning is a profoundly ethical and aesthetic process, centered
in prospects for social justice, compassion, reform, and renewal. Social
movements are rarely motivated by commitments to narrow objectives aimed
at solving specific problems. Across time and cultures we are drawn to
persons and processes, to ideas and images, that call us back to
remember our highest principles, and move us forward to respond with
acts of integrity and grace. Recurrent themes of beauty and power-here
mirrored in chapter titles-inspire, guide, and liberate collective
vision and principled action. Re-envisioning, although accessible to
all, remains largely undeveloped and underutilized. Our collective
ability to realize progressive aspirations for education and democracy
can be significantly enhanced by integrating the process of
re-envisioning with other, more familiar, educational and political
reform strategies.
