Abstract

In this anthology of his work spanning the past 20 years, Dr Benne considers the place of a reoriented education and re-education in ameliorating today's crises. For Benne, the term crisis does not refer to an unfortunate emergency, a temporary upset of established practices and aspirations to which life will return after the emergency has been handled. Rather crisis denotes a turning point in human history, an axial period marked by the crumbling of traditional assumptions, and the dissolution of outmoded orthodoxies. Four distinctive themes are woven throughout the essays - learning as experiential, dialogic, participative, and oriented toward social as well as individual change; the centrality of personhood in education, and the need for exposing and criticizing views of the self as passive and determined, rather than creative and emerging; the need to extend the clientele of education from children and young people to alienated persons of all ages who are in need of renewal and empowerment; the need for a morality of hope in an age of deepening human despair.