This book is a small contribution to the history of the progressive intellectual, sociocultural, and national liberation struggles of our people throughout the 20th century. Its ambition is specifically to provide a series of brief but true and vivid portraits of some of the leading and significant protagonists of these struggles. In particular, it aims to portray the three late, enlightened educators and fighters, Kostas Sotiropoulos, Rosa Imvrioti, and Michalis Papamavrou, "first in rank" students, fellow fighters, and apostles of the great Teacher and people's fighter Dimitris Glinos.

Kostas Kalantzis's effort to highlight the political dimension of the educational vision of these great educators makes the reissue of this book timely and necessary in the context of a contemporary condition of depoliticization of education. A condition shaped by the dictates of an anti-utopian neoliberal discourse that attempts to equate visions for the transformation of reality with possibly dangerous plans, presenting dystopias as their logical fulfillment while proposing realistic alternatives from which the status quo that favors inequality and injustice in education remains essentially unscathed.