Critical Literacy

Critical literacy is a response to injustice and the production of illiteracy in which students and teachers work together to create an inviting environment for diversity.  It’s where the rights to equal learning opportunities are held and where the learning necessities of each child are met by putting aside race, religion, and economic status.  Critical literacy gives us a chance to teach and learn without being discriminated by the shadows of racism, sexism, stereotypes, and prejudices. 

Through the teachings of Critical Literacy students become more independent and assume responsibility for their actions.  Students are able to sifter through their choices and act upon their decisions.  They are able to take their own education into their hands and act on their own.  By becoming a critical thinker students are able to learn and evolve through higher order thinking.  Classroom discussions are a great way to engage students and they are asked to think and respond through critical literacy.  Students are able to respectfully acknowledge their peers thoughts, beliefs, and feelings.  Then, they can build upon that thought and react to their new information by sharing it with the rest of the class.  Robert Probst explains that “The teacher’s contribution to the discussion lies in keeping it organized, keeping it flowing, making sure all perspectives are respected…but it’s also to enrich and deepen the discourse.  The teacher’s greater breadth of reading will enable her to spot what the students have missed, to raise questions they haven’t thought of, to see connections to other events and other texts that the less mature readers won’t notice, to recognize the need for more evidence here and a stronger logical connection there…so, she will gradually be training students to talk in more sophisticated and intelligent ways” (Delpit 53).     

Critical Literacy allows teachers to engage their students to the subject they are teaching by challenging them.  Not like the idea of teaching to the test, in which the students are learning skills to take tests and they are expected to memorize a whole bunch of concepts to later regurgitate it in order to pass the State Exams.  By solely learning for the test the students are not being challenged, they are not using their thoughts and feelings to learn, they are only memorizing information.   And what happens after the test? All of that information that has not been connected to their lives or interests goes out the window and at the end the students have gained nothing.  Herbert Kohl states, “We have to become a more literate society and I think literacy will not come through testing and an obsession with standards, but through patient, intelligent and sensitive speaking, reading, and listening” (Delpit 161).  Students need to feel a sense of connection with the materials being learned to fully understand what they are being taught.  They need to be motivated by getting them involved in controversial classroom discussions and writing about how they can relate to the subject to build from their background knowledge.  The learning will be meaningful and the students will see a reason to why the information being taught is valuable to them. 

As a society we must break the chains of the Banking education, which keep the oppressed from succeeding in life.  In the article, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Paulo Freire it is evident that non-dominant people are being oppressed by the teachings of the Banking education. “Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiqués and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat. This is the “banking” concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extend only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits” (Freire 53). This form of education makes students depend on others, by not allowing them to think on their own.  As Freire and Gatto battle against the ideology behind the banking education they believe that schools should engage students in the classroom by challenging them to be critical thinkers and to express their own creativity in the classroom. “Banking education (for obvious reasons) attempts, by mythicizing reality, to conceal certain facts which explain the way human beings exist in the world; problem posing education sets itself the task of demythologizing. Banking education resists dialogue; problem-posing education regards dialogue as indispensable to the act of cognition which unveils reality. Banking education treats students as objects of assistance; problem-posing education makes them critical thinkers” (Freire 64).  Through critical literacy the concept of banking education would be decimated forever. 

Critical literacy allows every kind of people to succeed and flourish in life without the need to know ones race, religious beliefs, nor gender.  Through critical literacy students will be engaged in meaningful learning and teachers will feel a sense of satisfaction for teaching. 

Success Guaranteed Literacy Programs?

In the Article, Success Guaranteed Literacy Programs I Don’t Buy It! Lynn Astarita Gatto explains how she refuses to teach to the test, she refuses to use companies’ literacy programs, and she refuses to use textbooks that have been provided for the school year.  Gatto has demonstrated her love for teaching through her successful career and her admirable awards.  She has “received a number of local and state awards, including The Presidential Award for Excellence in Science and Mathematics Teaching from the White House and the 2004 New York State Teacher of the Year” (Gatto 74).  After receiving all of this glory and respect as a teacher the state and school districts have told her that she needs to change her teaching methods because “We have become a district dominated by exam-oriented teaching (Street, 1995) in order to follow No Child Left Behind requirements and to keep our funding” (Gatto 75).  Even though she is faced with the dilemma of todays’ education system, of teaching to the test, she stays undefeated and follows her heart as a teacher to provide a suited education for her students. 

I agree with Gatto’s methods of teaching and would love to follow her footsteps in the world of education.  Gatto clarifies what literacy means to her and what teaching methods best work for her students by stating, “I define literacy as “shorthand for the social practices of reading and writing” (Street, 1995, p. 2).  My approach is to provide experiences and problems that engage students in expanding their existing literacy practices in order to construct and use new ones.  Within a community of learner’s framework (Rogoff, 1994; 2003), I make sure the children in my class have multiple opportunities for literacy events (heath, 1982) and practices within social contexts” (Gatto 75).  Her methodology opposes the ideologies behind the “banking education” concept (Freire 53) which consists of viewing students as blank slates.  “Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiqués and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat.  This is the “banking” concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extend only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits” (Freire 53).  Gatto does not view her students as robots nor receptacles she sees them as critical thinkers.  Gatto states, “I do not consider myself the giver of knowledge.  I view my role as constructing an atmosphere where the children see themselves as valuable to the process of learning within the classroom” (Gatto 75).     

Gatto explains how she has used the knowledge she has acquired about her students, by becoming familiar with their academic level and social comfort, to properly educate them.   She takes many literacy strategies into account when thinking about how to effectively teach each child, she describes that “considering the individual students, planning carefully, selecting appropriate materials and activities, and adjusting activities are all important aspects of what I do to establish a successful literacy program” (Gatto 77).  To fight against the ideologies of the banking education we must construct a welcoming environment, in which the students are valued as learners and as teachers.  As teachers we must not forget that we are always learning something new from our students themselves. 

Critical Literacy

Linda Rief acknowledges that in order to engage students in meaningful critical literacy learning, writing should not be used as a tool to administer tests that represent a series of memorization, but, rather writing should be done to express our feelings and thoughts.  It is seen as a way to learn about ourselves.  As writers we are motivated to write through the idea of having an audience, a purpose, and a choice.  These three motivational ideas will provide us with good writing pieces.  Arlington also agrees that we are distracted as critical learners by the “narrowly focused state assessments” (Delpit 287). 

Rief believes that in order to make our students “thoughtful citizens” we must let them hold the responsibility of their own critical literacy learning. The teachers must provide more students centered writing, reading, listening, and speaking activities and less teacher directed activities.  “…we want children to become adults who articulate, literate, and thoughtful citizens of the world, they must learn to think deeply and widely.  They must commit their thinking to paper…  In these roles, they and others can examine those beliefs, feelings, and thoughts; build on the same sentiments; provide the evidence to support the thinking; or argue vehemently against it” (190).   

Robert Moses acknowledges that critical literacy must be reinforced in the Math subject in order to stop inequality in our society.  He states that “The Algebra Project is founded on the idea that the ongoing struggle for citizenship and equality for minority people is now linked to an issue of math and science literacy” (Moses pg. 14).  He makes this statement by attesting to the high needs of today’s workforce for “high-tech workers” and the battle to stop minorities and poor people from obtaining these jobs.  “Industrial technology created schools that educated an elite to run society, while the rest were prepared for factory work by performing repetitive tasks that mimicked factories.  New technology demands a new literacy – higher math skills for everyone, urban and rural” (Moses pg. 11).

Jeffrey Wilhelm and Michael Smith believe that the best way to engage students is through critical literacy by using an array of texts that gives the readers a choice that is based on their interests.  The reader needs to be able to connect to the reading, “Out work shows us that kids need to find both personal connection and social significance in the units and texts we offer them” (Delpit 233).  Critical literacy should be accomplished through the planning of a differentiated lesson plan that will allow each individual to be challenged.  “What Our Boys Taught Us: Teachers must provide a wide variety of differentiated opportunities to develop competence and become competent, to practice, participate, and be successful as a certain kind of reader or writer, and to name and celebrate our students as readers, writers, thinkers, and disciplinary problem solvers” (Delpit 241).  Wilhelm and Smith end their writing by saying, “Maybe engagement is the cause of competence.  If we think hard about motivating our students, if we devise units that address questions of genuine importance, expand our notions of text, value meaningful textual engagement and textual pressure, and broaden our notions of competence, our students are sure to profit” (Delpit 242).  The source of critical literacy is found by engaging students through the interests the reader finds in the matter of books and the challenge presented to the student.  

Richard Allington agrees with Wilhelm and Smith by attesting to the use of a variety of texts will engage students and promote critical literacy.  “…virtually all students could find texts that they were able to read accurately, fluently, and with comprehension.  The second advantage was that when students were provided opportunities to select which text(s) they would read for a given topic or unit, their level of engagement in academic work was high and sustained.  Giving students such choices is a powerful factor in motivating engagement and fostering achievement, as a meta-analysis reported by Guthrie and Humenick (2004) so powerfully demonstrated” (Delpit 278).

The Injustice of "Sameness As Fairness"

Through the “sameness as fairness” framework, we are compelled to implement an English-only  and one –size-fits-all curricula”(Gutierrez110).  This ideology has been placed to keep the power in the hands of the white rich population and to maintain the status of the minority and poor in a lower social and economic status.  “Sameness as fairness” provides and limits any kind of advantages to the “power culture” only.  Is this the kind of injustice that we want to see in our country? An injustice done to our innocent children whom will keep this cycle alive if we don’t make a change in our school systems.   

Neo-liberals and conservatives believe that all schools should have a standard education with a “common culture and history”.  They are not open to the wonderful domain of diversity.   “”Of consequence to students from non-dominant communities, the mandated instructional programs are organized around reductive notions of reading and writing processes and practices that dummy-down literacy so dramatically that it no longer looks like literacy.  Of significant concern are the short and long-term consequences of the socializing effects autonomous forms of literacy have on students for whom schools fail” (Gutierrez 111).  The idea of “sameness as fairness” is an injustice done to the students who belong to the non-dominant culture and will continue to be the ones suffering in society.  As a future ESL teacher I believe that the practices behind “sameness as fairness” will only bring separation within our society.  Instead of making us a whole we will be divided by the feelings of resentment and greed. 

The same people who argue that the idea of “sameness as fairness” should be implemented in all schools are the ones who have been shown to be the hypocrites.  These people believe in the “color-blind” practices of common standards and common culture under the logic of the “sameness as fairness” framework, and to implement English-only  and one –size-fits-all curricula”(Gutierrez 110). But, what happens when they are confronted with the idea.  For example, through the Abbott ruling we see how they are not willing to give into the ideas of “sameness as fairness”, by having children from poor neighborhoods receive the same amount of money that their own children receive for their education.

Through the works of Moskowitz we are able to understand that there can’t be a “universal sauce”, but that we need to satisfy the needs of all by providing a variety of sauces.  There is no universal education that will satisfy the needs of everyone, because we are all different.  This concept contradicts everything about the philosophy of “sameness as fairness” and we should embrace the diversity that exists in our world.

Re-Visioning Assessment

By reading Delpit, Hillard, Luna, and Carini’s writings I have come to determine that “after all these years of common schooling, we still have no real way of knowing if students are learning”.  When I think about assessments the first feeling that I experience is nervousness and frustration.  I feel nervous because like any other person I want to do well on the exam and frustration because usually teachers expect so much to be covered in one exam.  Then, once the first exam is done and over with, you are left to worry about what is going to be on the following test.  Who can really enjoy learning in school, while having the uneasy feeling of knowing that a test is expected?

I believe that students do grow a sense of competitiveness with their classmates when traditional assessments are being used in the classroom.  For example, I remember when I was in third grade my teacher would do spelling contests.  All of the students had to stand up against the classroom walls and the teacher would sit at the desk with a timer.  She would then proceed to spit out any word she wanted and one by one each child was expected to spell out loud the word in front of all of his/her classmates.  If the child failed to spell it correctly he/she had to sit down while everyone else continued.  I really don’t understand the purpose of this assessment, because not only was I embarrassed and mad that I failed to spell the word correctly in front of all of my friends, I am still not good at spelling.    Students “shared their frustration with the predominant assessment practices that seem, to them, to be more about competition and convenience than about finding out what they have learned.  For these students, and for educators who see the primary purpose of schooling as promoting student learning, the current grading system represents an obstacle to the learning of all students, not just those labeled LD” (Luna 603).  This passage made me think, did my third grade teacher really think that I was learning how to spell through this contest? Did she truly believe that the information she got about her students’ spelling through the contest was sufficient to know if we were learning how to spell? 

Through Delpit, Hillard, Luna, and Carini’s readings I have come to understand that the high stake tests from No Child Left Behind are bias and are not put into effect to measure the students’ learning, but, to only favor the students who speak the Standard English Language.  So how does NCLB take into consideration what all of the other students have learned, if NCLB does not give them a chance to even succeed in their education.  “As Delpit pointed out, the norms and practices of school literacy reflect those of the culture of power; thus, a wide range of nonmainstream individuals and cultural groups have been defined as illiterate and deficient both within and outside of schools” (Luna 597).   

The NCLB act has also taken away the enjoyment of learning and teaching in a classroom.  Teachers are forced to teach to the test and students are mandated to learn certain information to do well on the tests.  Teachers have to step away from the curriculum and from their creative minds to prepare their students for the long exams.  After reading Dr. Tuck’s blog I found the perfect story that describes how a teacher feels when experiencing the demands of teaching to the test.  The teacher, Renata, was so miserable that she ended up quitting the whole education “business”.  “Every day for about a month my ' do now' said 'Get ready to get ready for the test!!!' And I would, like, add exclamation points to it like it wasn't a travesty. It got to the point where I was feeling embarrassed… When a student asks you 'Why do we need to know this?' I feel like a good teacher should have a good answer. To say 'Because it's on the test' is disrespectful to them in all sorts of ways… I was very depressed, I barely made it through that semester… Then all summer I felt so-< /span> heavy about going back… In the end, I just couldn't go back” (Dr. Tuck Re-visioning Assessment).  This passage shows how teachers and students question the existence of these tests…Does it not make you wonder as a parent, teacher, or student what is the real point behind these time and energy consuming exams?

Neoliberalism

  After reading “Education Policy, Race, and Neoliberal Urbanism” by Pauline Lipman and “Whose Markets, Whose Knowledge” by Apple I have come to the notion that The No Child Left Behind Act is a route that Neoliberals have found to be of their advantage.  The idea is to turn the public schools’ entity from a public sphere to a private sector.  What does this mean?  Well let’s take a look at one of the biggest money making private businesses, “Insurance Companies”. Healthcare is financed primarily through private insurance companies and millions of people are uninsured in the United States.  Even though Medicare and Medicaid exist, which are government health programs, you either have to be disabled, 65 or older, or you have to be poverty stricken.  This means that if you don’t have the means to pay for your insurance you are out of luck.  The uninsured are more likely to be poor and low income than higher income.  This is what neoliberalism is all about, a capitalist world, where the wealthy have the tools of production and the rest simply don’t.  If the public school system in the United States did become privately owned then what would happen to the children of low and middle income families? 

There are many problems associated with the No Child Left Behind Act which gives an alternative to privatizing public schools.   Because of NCLB a lot of teachers have had to put their focus off of the school’s curriculum to prepare their students for the high-stakes testing that the NCLB act demands for.  Schools are bound to the teachings of these tests to raise the test scores.  The problem with this is that schools that are found in low income neighborhoods are not equipped with the necessary materials to adequately educate their students.  Due to the lack of funds the students are not able to enjoy the advantages that the schools in the wealthier neighborhoods have.  For instance, computers, smartboards, textbooks, libraries, sports, etc.  The lower down the socio-economic ladder you go, the poorer the quality of education students receive.  In the long run these schools are most likely to fail the benchmark and are forced to close their doors.  The NCLB Act has opened the doors to neoliberals by identifying these schools as a failure to the concept of education.  Apple states that Neoliberals believe that schools have not prepared the students for their future as capitalists and this is why they view schools as “black holes”.  They do not believe that schools are doing their job in which they have failed to educate our children.  “Underpinning this position is a vision of students as human capital.  The world is intensely competitive economically, and students- as future workers- must be given the requisite skills and dispositions to compete efficiently and effectively” (apple 38).   Apple believes that if we “return to a “common culture”, make schools more efficient, more responsive to the private sector we will be able to solve a lot of our problems (Apple 35). In the long run, I don’t believe neither Apple nor the neoliberals really care about furthering children’ education, but they are more consumed about the money they will profit from by getting their hands on the public school system.  I believe that by privatizing schools we will be facing the same problems that we are encountering with our healthcare system. 

Give Literacy a Chance

I believe that through multiple literacies our ELLs able to not only further their education and successfully dominate the English language, but they will also enjoy the learning experience.  The concept of multiple literacies offers teachers and students a window of opportunities.  By considering such a literacy practice teachers are engaging their students through the use of the students’ background knowledge, connecting the two worlds (the outside school and in school literacy learning) and building a positive environment in the classroom.

 By connecting the lessons being learned in the classroom to the students’ background knowledge and interests the teacher is able to engage the students.  Teachers are able to build upon the students’ prior knowledge and challenge them with the new information presented to them.  If the students are not being challenged in the classroom they will become bored and at the end it will impede their learning, for instance, this is seen in the case of Almon.   “As a student who was limited English proficient, he experienced heavy doses of basic reading and writing instruction at school” (Haneda 340) by doing so the students is not being challenged and is missing out on furthering his education.  “Schools should give students opportunities to engage in a wide range of literacy practices so that they become critically literate-not just passively decoding and retrieving the author’s textual intentions but also analyzing texts and using literacy to act on the world” (Haneda 341).

Haneda pushes the idea of connecting the two worlds, the outside and in school learning.  “I would argue that, for all ELLs, it is important for teachers to develop an understanding of students’ personal and community literacy resources and to try to incorporate them into classroom practices in locally relevant ways” (Haneda 343).  By bringing the students’ personal interests and community resources into the classroom the students are able to personally relate to the academic studies and they are able to express and explore their identities in and outside the classroom.  This positive outcome was experienced in the state of Arizona, where the “teachers collaboratively created lessons that drew on the community resources” (Haneda 342) and they tapped into the students’ interests.  By doing so the students were able to learn through an array of projects which were based on hands on learning to the development of their reading, listening, writing, and speaking skills. 

It is very important to build a positive learning environment in the classroom.  By providing a learning nurtured environment the students will feel a sense of stimulation to participate in the classroom discussions and interact with their classmates and teachers.  “It is equally important for teachers to reflect on what it means to help students to become literate and, on this basis, to create learning environments where students feel safe to express their ideas in a developmentally appropriate manner and to engage in critical discussion of substantive issues by using reading and writing as tools for thinking” (Haneda 343).