Paul Goodman, Anarchism, and Education.

Goodman's notoriety as a romantic critic has tended to overshadow the positive and constructive dimensions to be found in his libertarian vision of a worthwhile world. Attention should focus on those constructive elements in Goodman's social thought which provide a dynamic framework for human association, i.e., the libertarian community. The interrelated principles of mutual aid, voluntary association, and fraternity, along with the organic integration of the background, or physical structuring of the choices and alternatives of human existence, and the foreground, consisting of human activity, are identified as essential to the realization of such a community. The libertarian community is further characterized as an educative community where learning takes place through individual experience. These considerations help to place Goodman within the broad experimentalists tradition in American education. (Author/JH)