Leaving Safe Harbors: Toward a New Progressivism in American Education and Public Life

To rise to the challenges of postmodern culture, Carlson argues, progressives will need to leave the safe harbors of what is familiar and comfortable. A new progressivism can only be forged of a fundamental re-thinking and re-mythologizing of democratic education. Drawing upon cultural studies perspectives, Carlson interrogates philosophy through popular culture for mythologies that might guide such a progressivism. Carlson uses Platonic, Hegelian, Nitzschean, and Heideggerian "mythologies" to elaborate a progressive model that provides powerful ways of "thinking" democratic education and public life.