The biggest issue that I am having to contend with is the fact that for the majority of my forty-three years, I have not been a critical literacy reader. I am even more shocked by my admittance, on these very pages, of this revelatory truth. Never having been one to question the accuracy of historical fact(s) and figures, I was merely content to absorb the information (history being my favorite subject), believing and trusting in the role models (teachers, book authors) that were dispersing the facts; hence, I found myself identifying with Gina in the Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years text (p 20). Quite simply, I was simply an empty (and yet eager) vessel to be filled. Mind you, I have learned these last 10+ years that when creating a genealogical database, one needs to be able to verify, validate and source information. Aside from my Gnostic soul searching where I am just beginning to employ critical literacy, I find myself easily relating to comments made by students in both Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years as well as Rethinking Our Classrooms: Teaching for Equity and Justice.
The remaining key issue appears to be how one passes along critical literacy knowledge to their children, current students as well as prospective students, for it is imperative that they learn to ......
• examine meaning within texts
• consider the purpose for the text and the composer’s motives
• understand that texts are not neutral (they represent particular views, silence other points of view and influence people’s ideas)
• question and challenge the ways in which texts have been constructed
• analyze the power of language in contemporary society
• emphasize multiple readings of texts (as people interpret texts in the light of their own beliefs and values, therefore texts will have different meanings to different people)
• have readers take a stance on issues
• provide readers with opportunities to consider and clarify their own attitudes and values
• provide readers with opportunities to take social action
...... if only to
• dismantle old values and reconstruct new ones, thereby challenging the status-quo
• critique portrayals of hierarchy and inequality
• dismiss the myths that exist with regards to various peoples
• eliminate the biases that exist in the curricula being taught
• to reverse the legacy of injustice (especially as it pertains to people of color, women, working-class people, the poor), thereby learning from history
• appreciate the diverse culture of which we are a part
• discover new ways of understanding relationships based on mutual respect and equality
• discover the excitement that comes from asserting oneself morally and intellectually
• encourage social action by dismissing apathy
How one goes about this, I am still not sure, especially as it is so new to me, but endeavor to learn I must.
As Joan Wink writes in Critical Pedagogy: Notes from the Real World, “... critical literacy involves knowing, lots of knowing. It also involves seeing, lots of seeing. It enables us to read the social practices of the world all too clearly. Critical literacy means that we understand how and why knowledge and power are constructed. By whom. For whom.”
She goes further to make the comparison between reading the word versus reading the world.
Reading the word pertains to
• decoding and encoding words
• bringing ourselves to the pages of the text
• making meaning from the text as it pertains to our experiences/cultures/knowledge base
Reading the world pertains to
• decoding and encoding the people around us
• decoding and encoding the community that surrounds us
• decoding and encoding the visible and invisible messages of the world
It is clear that I have much to learn.
CRITICAL LITERACY QUESTIONS
TEXTUAL PURPOSE(S)
What is this text about? How do we know?
Who would be most likely to read and/or view this text and why?
Why are we reading and/or viewing this text?
What does the composer of the text want us to know?
TEXTUAL STRUCTIRES AND FEATURES
What are the structures and features of the text?
What sort of genre does the text belong to?
What do the images suggest?
What do the words suggest?
What kind of language is used in the text?
CONSTRUCTION OF CHARACTERS
How are children, teenagers or young adults constructed in this text?
How are adults constructed in this text?
Why has the composer of the text represented the characters in a particular way?
GAPS AND SILENCES
Are there ‘gaps’ and ‘silences’ in the text?
Who is missing from the text?
What has been left out of the text?
What questions about itself does the text not raise?
POWER AND INTEREST
In whose interest is the text?
Who benefits from the text?
Is the text fair?
What knowledge does the reader/viewer need to bring to this text in order to understand it?
Which positions, voices and interests are at play in the text?
How is the reader or viewer positioned in relation to the composer of the text?
How does the text depict age, gender and/or cultural groups?
Whose views are excluded or privileged in the text?
Who is allowed to speak? Who is quoted?
Why is the text written the way it is?
WHOSE VIEW - WHOSE REALITY?
What view of the world is the text presenting?
What kinds of social realities does the text portray?
How does the text construct a version of reality?
What is real in the text?
How would the text be different if it were told in another time, place or culture?
INTERROGATING THE COMPOSER
What kind of person, and with what interests and values, composed the text?
What view of the world and values does the composer of the text assume that the
reader/viewer holds? How do we know?
MULTIPLE MEANINGS
What different interpretations of the text are possible?
How do contextual factors influence how the text is interpreted?
How does the text mean?
How else could the text have been written?
How does the text rely on inter-textuality to create its meaning?
