Not to be conflated with systems of accountability, this book examines responsibility as a subject of educational inquiry. The author argues that responsibility in its most radical sense is not connected to a higher authority. Rather, responsibility summons the actor to do the right thing when no one else is there to announce what is right; it involves speaking the truth in a world that is increasingly characterized by organized lying and organized irresponsibility. The search for responsibility as education is explored through a wide range of issues including: studying the ways in which the bureaucratization of the world undermine ethical consciousness; cultivating the ethical imagination in education which is not only vital to sustaining democracy, but to counteracting indifference to crimes against humanity and crimes against the planet; critiquing the imperial nationalism of a wave of education legislation requiring American schools to provide instruction on genocides and other mass atrocities that take place by 'others' and 'abroad' but not at 'home' or by 'us'; centralizing a curriculum of common sense in an era marked by a breakdown of common sense and disinformation narratives; and facing a reality that can never be experienced: the end of the world. Reimagining education as an avenue for cultivating personal responsibility and global justice, this text will be of interest to students, scholars, and researchers working in curriculum studies, philosophy of education, educational policy, and teacher education.

Devoted to and inspired by the late Maxine Greene, a champion of education and advocator of the arts, this book recognizes the importance of Greene's scholarship by revisiting her oeuvre in the context of the intellectual historicity that shaped its formation. As a scholar, Greene dialogued with philosophers, social theorists, writers, musicians, and artists. These conversations reveal the ways in which the arts, just like philosophy and science, allow for the facilitation of "wide-awakeness," a term that is central to Greene's pedagogy. Amidst contemporary trends of neoliberal, one-size-fits-all curriculum reforms in which the arts are typically squeezed out or pushed aside, Greene's work reminds us that the social imagination is stunted without the arts. Artistic ways of knowing allow for people to see beyond their own worlds and beyond "what is" into other worlds of "what was" and "what might" be some day. This volume demonstrates Maxine Greene's profound ability to illuminate the importance of the artistic world and the imaginary for development of the self in the world and for encouraging a "wide-awakeness" reflective of an emerging political awareness and a longing for a democratic world that "is not yet." This book was originally published as a Special Issue of The Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies.

Devoted to and inspired by the late Maxine Greene, a champion of education and advocator of the arts, this book recognizes the importance of Greene's scholarship by revisiting her oeuvre in the context of the intellectual historicity that shaped its formation. As a scholar, Greene dialogued with philosophers, social theorists, writers, musicians, and artists. These conversations reveal the ways in which the arts, just like philosophy and science, allow for the facilitation of "wide-awakeness," a term that is central to Greene's pedagogy. Amidst contemporary trends of neoliberal, one-size-fits-all curriculum reforms in which the arts are typically squeezed out or pushed aside, Greene's work reminds us that the social imagination is stunted without the arts. Artistic ways of knowing allow for people to see beyond their own worlds and beyond "what is" into other worlds of "what was" and "what might" be some day. This volume demonstrates Maxine Greene's profound ability to illuminate the importance of the artistic world and the imaginary for development of the self in the world and for encouraging a "wide-awakeness" reflective of an emerging political awareness and a longing for a democratic world that "is not yet." This book was originally published as a Special Issue of The Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies.