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.