Marking the fiftieth anniversary of two of the most influential books in modern educational and social theory, Rethinking Freire and Illich introduces readers to the results of the symposium of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Ivan Illich’s Deschooling Society. The collection uniquely analyses Freire and Illich together, although not in a comparative way. It acknowledges that both Freire and Illich led in different ways to a new approach to perceiving and understanding the concept of liberation as a human condition, while also presenting current criticisms of their work from a gendered perspective and by Indigenous scholars in the US and Canada.

Drawing on contributions from historians of education, theologians, digital experts, and philosophers of education, the book offers a historical analysis using extensive primary sources and an originality of topics. It introduces the ways in which the current generation reads the overall works of Freire and Illich in the search for a reconstructed democratic education. As a result, Rethinking Freire and Illich presents Freire and Illich in light of contemporary issues in this generation, and offers renewed searches for a good and just life and a reconstructed democratic education.