In the current Neoliberal climate of educational reform, the enlightenment project in education is more susceptible than ever to the machinations of historical amnesia. The notion that education can be transformative in a positive sense represents a moral ideal that teachers in the foundations of education find increasingly difficult to integrate…

This essay revisits an iconic yet now languishing phrase in United States political culture--"Forty Acres and a Mule"--to clarify the meaning of freedom and to assess the contemporary meaning of its betrayal by the U.S. government immediately after the Civil War. Among the few citizens for whom the phrase still retains a semblance of…