Concerned about the dehumanization of teachers and students throughout the history of schooling in the United States, the author critically analyzes two metaphors for education that have perennially shaped educational practices in the United States: education is production and education is a cure. Drawing on a set of commitments that could re-humanize education, she proposes an alternative--education is translation--and discusses what it would require of educators in schools, universities, and programs of teacher education to embrace this re-humanizing metaphor.