Curriculum as public space can be thought of as an attempt to broaden the sense of education in a way such that every member of society can develop and use all of his or her capacities and powers without [Page 191]infringing upon the basic conditions or rights of others. The classroom—society itself—becomes an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

In 1963, a young civil rights worker proposed to create a network of Freedom Schools across the South as a way to re-energize and refocus the civil rights movement. He noted that although Black people had been denied many things—decent facilities, fully trained teachers, forward-looking curriculum—the fundamental injury was a denial of the right to think ...