when i think the words ph.d., professor, academic, and scholar

then i see older, white, middle-upper middle class, dressed in a blazer or sweater sets in my mind, my imagination.

Over time I have become curious about how some graduate students, who are exposed to various approaches to research, gravitate to critical educational research. At this stage in my teaching I believe that I can guess what students will be most comfortable with quantitative, qualitative, or critical research [It is important we hold on to our illusions].

“We are bombarded, thousands of times a day, with the emotional simplicity and terrible beauty of lies,” writes Chris Hedges (I Don’t Believe in Atheists, p. 177). As we, Nita and Paul, welcome you to this blog about critical literacy, the humanizing and empowering gift of language when all of us have a critical lens; that is our best defense against “the emotional simplicity and terrible beauty of lies.” We are indebted to Joe Kincheloe more than we can express, but we are driven here by his compassion and by the gifts afforded us in the praxis and words of Paulo Freire.