The Dialectic of Freedom

In The Dialect of Freedom Maxine Greene argues that freedom can only be obtained through the processes of resistance to oppression and all the forces that limit true expression of the person. She draws from the varied fields of philosophy, the arts, and history in order to accurately portray the actual struggles of women, immigrants, and minority groups. She provides a historical perspective on American concepts of freedom from the time of Jefferson to the present, integrating these ideas with what is needed in education to preserve freedom for individuals and groups in America. It is the thesis of this critical analysis that Greene believes that the primary ways to freedom are through resistance to oppression and expression through the arts.

The thesis of freedom through resistance to oppression appears in Greene's thoughts concerning inundation by the media and the relentless pressures of a consumer society. Because the airwaves are constantly filled with all kinds of messages and directives, the individual tends to withdraw and retreat in silence (Greene, 1988, p.2). The news is so negative and alarmist that people tend to tune out and just do the best they can with daily existence. No one can deal on a daily basis with mad cow disease, the war in Iraq, school shootings, and global warming. The average person quietly retreats, when the opposite action would be an act of freedom, to protest media conglomerates and sensatio

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membership in unions. They have had to fight patriarchal oppression in terms of stereotyped roles and sexual oppression. For example the character Anna in Miller's The Good Mother loses custody of her daughter, Molly, because of an open relationship with a lover, even though she is divorced (Greene, 1988, p.58). She breaks the shackles of her generation oppression in terms of how women can live, but Molly and the court agree that the home of her ex-husband and the new wife would probably be a better environment for the child. Grimke wrote about the plantation pressures for white women to be pretty toys for the men instead of thinking beings. Education for women, when there was any, focused on the domestic arts instead of making available a wide array of real career choices. Gays, lesbians, and bisexuals also fight oppression, gradually achieving rights to spousal insurance benefits and the right to be named next of kin when the significant other is hospitalized. Recently there has been much in the news about the rights for gays and lesbians to marry and whether such marriages are legal. They continue to fight for adequate research on the disease of AIDS, and a cure for it. This segment of the population has been oppresse
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Approximate Word count = 2647
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)

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