2nd Reading Assignment: Critical Literacy and Schools

This week your assignment is to read about “critical literacy,” which is a backdrop to our creation of the Culture Club. According to theorists on critical literacy, literacy is not only a corpus of skills. It is also an attitude that guides us towards ways of knowing and experiencing culture in a society. According to critical literacy advocates, teaching literacy is also lessons on how language can be used in a democracy, although most of the time schools teach us to be passive about this particular use of our language. Critical literacy, then, raises the consciousness of students towards understanding how reading and writing can help us understand, negotiate and even resist vehicles of power.

Please read the following article on the web: “What is Critical Literacy?” by Ira Shor at www.lesley.edu./journals/jppp/4/shor.html and the chapter “Whose Resource? Minority Languages, Bilingual Learners and Language Awareness” from the book edited by Norman Fairclough Critical Language Awareness, which is on e-reserve. [Go to e-reserve at http://oscr.gmu.edu/ and look for Spanish 326 002 with my name as the professor. The password is "triumph." This is from a class last semester and is still on-line.]

Please respond to the following questions by NEXT WEEK FRIDAY AFTERNOON, FEBRUARY 10, 2006 AT 5 P.M.:

(1) What is critical literacy, according to Ira Shor? How do you see using critical literacy when you teach in the Culture Club?

(2) How were lessons on how language functions as a vehicle of power in society incorporated into classes in the English school described in the second article? Does “critical language awareness” teaching give you ideas for the Culture Club?