Everyone is a politician, either a mature or an immature one!

I am a retired professor of Public Health Education. I taught at West Virginia University (1970 – 1979), where I received my M.S. and my Doctorate in Health Education. At Penn State University (1980 –1993), I taught in the Community Health Education program, and I became program co-cordinator of the Inter-college Science, Technology and Society undergraduate and graduate curriculum program. During this time I also helped found the Public Issues Forums collaboration between the State College, PA Public School District and the Centre Daily Times News Paper. I was honored to become a Scholar-in-Residence at the Charles F. Kettering Foundation in Dayton, Ohio (1993 – 1994), where I contributed to the foundation’s research question: “What does it take to make a democracy work as it should?”  Since my retirement from teaching, I’ve worked for two years as a consultant at Montgomery College, Maryland, to develop the Center for Community Leadership Development and Public Policy at the college.

My lifelong interest and work has continued to be in the biological theory and practice of Liberation Education as a basis for Public Policy.

What do I mean with Liberation Education? This is a term by the educator and philosopher Paulo Freire, who developed the concept of critical pedagogy in his seminal work  Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970). Critical Pedagogy is the only practice of relating with each other that helps people become a mature politician. Everyone on this planet (except maybe a comatose patient) can develop a Critical conscious state world view, to engage as a mature politician.

Mature politicians engage to create a culture of liberty and justice for all, to survive and thrive peacefully. Immature politicians create a culture of domination, exploitation, and oppressive violence. This is a daily practice for everyone, in all relations. There is no way of not participating in one or the other. You will choose, every day, in every situation.

With my blog posts now, I want to challenge you to have the courage to be with others, to engage with my reasoning, as I will with yours to go more into depth. I look forward carrying on this deliberation with you and other participants in this blog. My main objective, however, is that we all carry these thoughts with us, and have them inform our daily relations and actions. Thought – Talk – and Action! Thus creating a critical mass of Critical-Conscious, mature politicians with other humans and the non-human surroundings regardless of age, sex, global geography.

Bob Walker