UW–Madison’s John Baldacchino is the author of a new paper that was published in a special issue of the journal Espacio, Tiempo y Educacion celebrating 50 years of the publication of Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” and Ivan Illich’s “Deschooling Society.”

Baldacchino is a professor of art and education within the School of Education’s Art Department.

Baldacchino’s paper, “Separated by a Common Herodoxy. Illich, Freire and the Perilous Spell of Radical Canonicity,” challenges the common view that Freire’s and Illich’s respective works have a shared common ground.

The abstract notes that it is “too easy to argue that texts like ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ and ‘Deschooling Society’ can be aligned in sustaining a liberating and emancipatory approach.” However, the paper shows that, though noble, “such an approach would be detrimental to the one foundational aspect which both works happen to share: the claim to heterodoxy by which both Freire and Illich have endeared to make their case.”