Argues that the conscience that the colonialists brought into the period of slavery required the assumption that the slave learner was somehow different from other learners. This is a concept that still has great currency in education. Much of the struggle for freedom now is a struggle to overcome this concept. (Author/JM)

Traces the development of critical scholarship in the sociology of education, focusing on its attempts to explain failure for low-income youth. The author also examines contemporary theoretical work in "critical" literacy and three historical instances of when critical literacy was practiced. It is argued that helping at-risk students…