43 Facts About Maxine Greene

Sarah Maxine Greene was an American educational philosopher, author, social activist, and teacher.

Maxine Greene was largely raised in a way which conformed to the cultural expectations of women at that time.

Also at that age, Maxine Greene began to explore her desire to be a writer.

Maxine Greene wrote her first novel for her father, who she adored and whose attention was formative for Greene.

Maxine Greene was the first in her family to attain a higher education degree.

Maxine Greene had not received any encouragement to attend graduate school or to continue her education.

Maxine Greene married a doctor named Joseph Krimsley in March 1938, with whom she had a daughter, Linda.

Maxine Greene authored several historical and personal novels that despite negotiations with publishers did not go to press.

Maxine Greene described Krimsley as unsympathetic to her intellectual aspirations and after his deployment and return from the war, they divorced.

Maxine Greene married Orville Maxine Greene on August 7,1947 and remained married to him until his death in 1997.

Maxine Greene remained there and completed her MA and PhD both in the Philosophy of Education.

Maxine Greene taught at New York University between 1949 and 1956 and between 1957 and 1959, Montclair State College as assistant professor between 1956 and 1957, and Brooklyn College as Associate Professor of Education from 1962 to 1965.

In 1965 Maxine Greene was invited to become faculty and the editor of the Teachers College Record, a peer reviewed journal published by Columbia University's Teacher College, which she accepted.

Maxine Greene broke traditional convention with her narrative and literary form as well as through her philosophical approach, transitioning from analytic to existential schools of thought, that shaped the field moving forward.

Maxine Greene served as the William F Russell Professor in the Foundations of Education at the Teachers College of Columbia from 1975 to 1998 and was professor emeritus thereafter.

In 1981, Maxine Greene was elected as president of the American Educational Research Association.

Maxine Greene recalls that appointment as one of the most startling events in her career, in part, because a woman had not filled that role in over 31 years.

Maxine Greene went on to serve as president of the Philosophy of Education Society, American Educational Studies Association, and the Middle Atlantic States Philosophy of Education Society.

Maxine Greene wrote and spoke extensively about aesthetic education, social imagination, wide-awakeness, and educational reform.

For Maxine Greene, the inclusion of arts in education was a means to reveal the social conditions that shape schools and to spark imagination that looks beyond current conditions towards future change.

Maxine Greene was an advocate for approaches to education founded on concepts of freedom and humanity.

Maxine Greene was influenced by her contemporaries such as Paulo Freire, Hannah Arendt, and Fritjof Capra.

Maxine Greene wrote more than 100 articles and essays, 40 contributed chapters, six books and one edited collection.

In 1967, Maxine Greene published Existential Encounters for Teachers which marked her move as one of the first educational philosophers to draw out connections between existential philosophy and educational theory.

Maxine Greene's primary claim is that the pursuit of a pedagogy for freedom is situated in specific time and contexts, and, therefore, is an ongoing process that requires educators, in community, to continually pose questions about what has become accepted or given in educational systems.

For Maxine Greene, transformations are possible when educators and students, inspired by works of literature and art, enter into dialog in public spaces.

In Releasing the Imagination, through narrative essays, Maxine Greene urges educators to be aware of inequities, complacency, and exclusions in everyday life and in schools.

Maxine Greene argues that imagination and the arts can, and should, play a key role in helping educators to look on education anew, to shift inherited perspectives, and to pursue reimagined approaches for learning.

In Variations on a Blue Guitar, thirty of Maxine Greene's lectures given at the Lincoln Center from 1980 onward are collected into one volume.

Maxine Greene's works have had broad influence on educators, philosophers, social theorists, artists, and community activists, many of whom continue to reference and build on her work.

Maxine Greene advocated for the use of arts, dance, music, literary, among other artistic texts as classroom content that could foster learner engagement and could help learners to view their worlds with renewed perspective.

Maxine Greene insisted that education move away from the habitual and routine practices in order to create classrooms that engage with immediate and relevant social circumstances, an approach that builds on John Dewey's notions of aesthetic experiences.

Wide-awakeness is a concept that Maxine Greene drew from phenomenologist Alfred Schutz and poet Henry David Thoreau, which describes a degree of consciousness necessary for actors to critically and deliberately make choices and have impact on the world.

Maxine Greene placed tremendous importance on the public sphere as a location to collectively engage in intellectual dialog beyond traditional education boundaries, and as such has been grouped with thinkers like Susan Sontag under the title: New York Intellectual.

Maxine Greene hosted well-known thinkers of the time, such as the critical educator, Paulo Freire with whom shared foundational beliefs about education.

Maxine Greene influenced thousands of educators through her position as Philosopher-in-Residence of the Lincoln Center Institute for the Arts in Education, now known as the Lincoln Center Education.

Between 1976 and 2012, Maxine Greene lectured at the summer sessions in her capacity as philosopher-in-residence.

Maxine Greene recalls this as one of her most significant career experiences because it afforded the opportunity to work with practicing teachers and to potentially broaden the number of schools bringing arts into learning.

Maxine Greene was the recipient of honorary degrees in the Humanities from Lehigh University, Hofstra University, the University of Colorado at Denver, Indiana University, Goddard College, Bank Street College, Nazareth College, McGill University, College Misericordia, and Binghamton University.

Maxine Greene was awarded the Medal of Honor from Teachers College and Barnard College; Educator of the Year Award from Phi Delta Kappa, Columbia University, and Ohio University; the Scholarly Achievement Award from Barnard College; AERA's Lifetime Achievement Award; and received a Fulbright Program fellowship, which took her to New Zealand.

Maxine Greene was elected to the National Academy of Education in 1984.

Maxine Greene was survived by her son, daughter-in-law, step daughter, and grandson.

Robert Lake edited a collection of 75 letters written in the first-person by admirers and scholars influenced by Maxine Greene, including: Gloria Ladson-Billings, Herb Kohl, Mike Rose, Deborah Meier, Nel Noddings, and William Ayers.