Teacher as Stranger

Teacher as Stranger: Educational Philosophy for the Modern Age was published in 1973, and it remains one of the most inspiring and powerful of [Page 847]Maxine Greene's numerous writings. Greene, one of the preeminent philosophers in the worldwide field of education, directs this book to those who teach in classrooms settings. She challenges all teachers to “do philosophy”to think philosophically about what they are doingso they will become “self-conscious” about political, personal, social, and cultural influences on constructions of teacher roles and identities as well as of conceptions and enactments of curriculum.

Greene argues that all teachers as well as educational philosophers should be posing moral and political questions in relation to the purposes of education. Teacher as Stranger invites all educators to consider what Greene sees as necessary considerations of what constitutes freedom, choice, and acts of responsibility within classrooms that are situated in often unjust and inhumane larger worlds.

Greene writes as an educational philosopher who identifies herself as an existential phenome-nologist. She explicates assumptions and perspectives of such a positioning by articulating the daily need to awaken from habitual ways of being and doing in the world, to hold oneself accountable for one's choices, to be an informed and active participant in the public world. Greene investigates a variety of historical influences and philosophical orientations that could be applicable for teachers who wish to act on their commitments and, at the same time, to set others free to be. Greene wishes, through her numerous analyses of cultural phenomena, especially in the arts, to arouse teachers to wide-awakeness. Through such analyses and, in particular, through her positing of the arts as offering possibilities for self-confrontation and self-identification, she urges teachers to become critically conscious of the need to break out of a one-dimensional view of themselves as well as their limited realities to attend to all that is involved in the complex processes of teaching and learning.

Thus, Greene weaves her metaphor of “teacher as stranger” through myriad examples of pedagogical and curricular decisions that teachers must consider. Greene provides sophisticated assessment of historical influences on and philosophical considerations of the nature of man (Greene later has written about her embarrassment at her exclusive use of “man” and “he” in her early writings), of his being and learning, of various approaches to beliefs and truths, and of attempts to choose “the right.” By so doing, Greene provides teachers with understandings that might enable them to take a stranger's vantage point on everyday life to look inquiringly and wonderingly on the world in which they and their students live.

Greene situates her argument for “doing philosophy” within a contemporary framework by employing then-current examples from literature, media, the arts and political movements, including the protests against the war in Vietnam as well as the civil rights and women's rights movements, for example. Greene does so to support her contention that teachers must consider a pluralist U.S. society and recognize the necessity, in both classroom situations and curriculum constructions, of honoring multiple ways of seeing the world.

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