Three stages of consciousness are identified by Freire (1973): semi-intransitive consciousness, transitive consciousness, and critically transitive consciousness. In the first, the semi-intransitive stage, people's "interests center almost totally around survival, and they lack a sense of life on a more historic plane" (p. 17). This level of consciousness is characterized by people's preference to accept magical or external explanations for their circumstances, attributing them to a superior power or outside agents over which they have no control and therefore to which they must submit. This kind of thinking is fatalistic in nature and "fails to understand causality" (Youngman, 1986, p. 150). A central concept of Freire's model of conscientization is praxis, a cycle of action-reflection-action. It is from this process, he postulates, that people come to understand the systems of oppression within which they live and ways in which they can challenge and change those systems both individually and collectively. The move from semi-transitive consciousness to transitive consciousness to critically transitive consciousness does not occur automatically, however. Freire saw it as an educational process, one that is grounded in the experiences and daily lives of the participants, but which requires clearly identified teachers/coordinators to initiate the process. Teachers have to be concerned with social and political responsibility, and with the development of the learners to critically understand both society and their capacity to change it. Teachers and students then act as co-investigators, engaged through dialogue in the process of understanding their lives in relationship to the world. Only then can an action plan be developed to address the problems. Freire's approach to developing critical consciousness is used in a variety of settings--including universities, health clinics, and women's rape crisis centres--although the process may be modified depending on "its relevance and practical utility for participants" (Minkler & Cox, 1980, p. 312). While reading Schooling in Capitalist America (Bowles & Gintis, 1976), another of the course readings, I realized more fully the degree to which the educational system contributes to the development of consciousness and defines people's relationship to work. Bowles and Gintis note that consciousness, which includes one's beliefs, values, self-concepts, and modes of personal behavior, is developed through a person's "direct perception of and participation in social life" (p. 128). The economic sphere, family structure, and educational system are all part of that social life and, therefore, all contribute to the development of consciousness. A major role of the educational system is to reproduce consciousness so as to "maintain and extend the dominant patterns of power and privilege" (p. 126) which exist in a hierarchical society. The educational system also replicates these dominant patterns within its own organization and these are further reinforced through the social relationship of the family.