Here is a book of classroom practice influenced by the late Paulo Freire, who urged educators to teach critically from the bottom up against the myths and inequities imposed from the top down. In a Freirean approach, critical teaching means inviting students to examine all subject matters in depth, not to swallow facts passively. Critical teaching asks students to question the status quo, to connect academic learning to their personal context and the larger social context. To Freire, critical thinking was a social inquiry into the historical and personal meaning of any knowledge. Thus, in memory of Paulo Freire, the essays in this collection report critical practices by teachers committed to transformation in and beyond the classroom.

These teachers' ingenuity produced cross-cultural stories of what can be done with some risk and experimentation. Perhaps most of all, they show culturally diverse educators constructively taking sides and refusing to fit students or themselves quietly into the status quo. Honoring the legacy of Paulo Freire, these teacher-authors carry forward Freire's dream of making the world less cruel, and transforming education into cultural action for freedom, bringing the future to life in what we do today.