“There is no such thing as a neutral educational process. Education either functions as an instrument that is used to facilitate the integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes ‘the practice of freedom,’ the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.”
Richard Shaull, Foreword to Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Bonus link: Dialectic of Enlightenment (a theory is critical to the extent that it seeks human “emancipation from slavery”, acts as a “liberating . . . influence”, and works “to create a world which satisfies the needs and powers” of human beings)