FARMINGTON  — Educator, author and activist William Ayers will present a program titled, “Lesson One: I Would Sing. (Re)Framing Education for Democracy and Liberation,” on Wednesday, March 30.

It begins at 7 p.m. in Lincoln Auditorium of Roberts Learning Center at the University of Maine at Farmington.

The program is sponsored by two UMF student organizations: UMF’s Student Education Association of Maine, or SEAM, and Peace Activists in Training, or PAinT. It is free and open to the public.

Ayers is a proponent of social justice, democracy and education, and the political and cultural aspects of schooling. He will talk about creating schools where democracy is lived and not merely talked about, practiced rather than ritualized. He will discuss creating schools and classrooms that assist in forming public citizens; where students and teachers alike can find socially meaningful work to do; and where children can read critically, speak openly, think freely and where everyone can find ways to make a difference.

Ayers is currently vice president of the curriculum division of the American Educational Research Association. He is formerly a distinguished professor of education and senior university scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago and founder of the Small Schools Workshop and the Center for Youth and Society.

An award-winning author, Ayers has written extensively about social justice; democracy and education; the cultural contexts of schooling; and teaching as an essentially intellectual, ethical, and political enterprise. With close to 20 books to his credit, he has also written articles that have appeared in many journals.

Ayers is a graduate of the University of Michigan; the Bank Street College of Education; Bennington College; and Teachers College, Columbia University. He received his Ed.D. in curriculum and instruction at Columbia University.

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