Critical Literacy:

Teaching for Understanding & Transformation

Reading Quiz

1. Did you do the readings?2. What is the dominant issue or theme one questions

when engaging in critical literacy (one word would suffice)?

3. What are the four primary ways children learn values according to Bajovic (“The Intersection of Critical Literacy…”)?

4. What are “interrelated goods” (Bajovic)?5. What are some of the problems with trying to teach

critical literacy according to White?

What is Critical Literacy?

• What do you think that it means to be critically literate?– Use prior knowledge– Use context clues

– The focus of this class– Your knowledge of the professor– The term itself

Definitions of Critical Literacy

“Critical literacy aims to challenge the status quo by disrupting commonplace notions of socially constructed concepts such as race, class, gender, and sexuality. It allows for multiple viewpoints, highlights sociopolitical issues located in texts, and promotes social justice through political activism” (Wallowitz, 2008, p. 1).

Thesis: Critical Literacy = True Literacy

• Literacy can be liberating BUT it can also be oppressive; literacy is not, in and off itself, empowering

– Brainstorm ways that literacy might be oppressive

How people approach literacy is as imporant as the ability to read

Literacy can be liberating but it can also be oppressive

• In England, Church leaders decried the creation of the printing press and even more the publication of the King James Bible (1604-1611). – Why would they fear such technology?

• Similarly, why were many Catholic Priests, Bishops, and Cardinals resistant to the recommendations of the Second Vatican CounciI (1962-1965)

– Liturgy in English (or other native languages) rather than solely in Latin– Allowed more lay participation on church activities

Literacy can be liberating but it can also be oppressive

• Leading up to and throughout World War II, the Nazis sponsored book burnings throughout Germany

–Why would Hitler et al. encourage people to burn books? What books?• “Action against the Un-German spirit”• "Säuberung” (cleansing by fire)

–Simultaneously, the regime supplied free copies of Mein Kampf to newlyweds, all soldiers, and teachers

• In an interesting twist, the victorious allies created a list of 30,000 books created in or endorsed by the Nazi regime and ordered any and all copies found destroyed

Literacy can be liberating but it can also be oppressive

• In military coups across the world, one of the first things newly installed dictators have done is to round up intellectuals, their work, and even their students for imprisonment and/or assassination.– Why would a dictator want to silence intellectuals?

Wall of the “Disappeared,” Buenos Aires, ArgentinaRounding up students and professors, Buenos Aires, Argentina 1970

Literacy can be liberating but it can also be oppressive

• Textbooks convey overt messages (things included in the book), tacit messages (messages conveyed by the book but not overtly stated), and just as importantly by what they do not say!– What one reads is important, especially when it comes from “official” sources like

textbooks– What one does not read—or what is left out of textbooks and news—is equally as

important • One can only learn about those things one is exposed to

America: Shining Beacon of Freedom

Thesis: Critical Literacy = True Literacy

• Reading without a critical lens (basic decoding and comprehension) too easily leads to the perpetuation of the status quo

• Critical Literacy is a radical theory; it threatens many people because it calls for one to question the status quo and existing power dynamics in society

Teaching Critical Literacy

Binaries: Either/Or Thinking

White

Binaries: Social Constructs

How are YOU defined by binaries?

In what categories would you be classified in binaries (sexual orientation, sex, sexuality, masculinity/femininity, feeling/thinking), etc.?

How do you define others in terms of binaries?

How does binary thinking—especially as we normalize it through media, teaching/learning, social reproduction, etc.—affect our feelings about or reactions to what happens around us?

Binaries: Social Constructs

Binaries are problematic because:- they ignore nuance and the complexity of issues;- they encourage simplistic thinking that does not mirror reality;- they seek simplistic solutions to complex problems- they reduce identity and roles to stereotypes (alienating those

‘outside’ of the norm)

Can you name examples of binary thinking/representation of an issue that was simplified because of binary thinking?

Critical literacy encourages people to “read the word and read the world” (Freire) and thereby to question ‘reality’ as it is presented to them.

Binaries: Social Constructs

Where would you place yourself, your friends, or others in the following binaries?

Deconstructing Texts and Their Foundations

Critical Literacy = Looking for Bias (in texts, authors, and ourselves)

Readers using critical literacy not only question such constructs as binaries, they question the power dynamics behind such constructs (including such constructs as race, class, ethnicity, etc.).

They seek to ask: Who benefits from such constructs? How do those who DO benefit from such constructs reproduce them and get us to buy into them?

Then, they seek to expose such power dynamics and, in so doing, begin to deconstruct unjust systems to create a more just world

Bias in Texts and Curriculum

Teaching is an inherently political act - Paulo Freire

Critical literacy theorists believe that there is an ideology inherent in almost all ideas and concepts.

What we choose to teach in schools (content) necessarily represents ideologies (generally of the dominant and powerful classes).

That there is ideology behind major ideas is not the problem; rather, the problem is that we tend to treat information (especially those in ‘official’ curriculum or the “news”) as factual and without bias.

Repetition = Reality (for many)

Repetition of information becomes face and “common sense” to the uncritical reader/listener-entities (political, economic, commercial, etc. ) rely on this to promote their ideals and to sell their products- Television commercials and magazine advertisements: beauty products; new cars, beer, electronics…-repetition reinforces belief and helps curb scepticism

Example: The Bush Administration and conservative news outlets repeatedly mentioned Iraq and 9-11 in the same report (and sometimes within the same sentence). As a result, many Americans assumed that Iraq was involved in 9-11 and insisted that 9-11 was a reasonable rationale for invading that country

"My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed! You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that.”- SC Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer

Bias in Texts, Curriculum, & the News

The passage to the right, ostensibly used to help students become stronger readers and writers, is titled “The Pros and Cons of Genetically Modified Foods.”

The critically minded reader should notice that the piece contains no “cons” whatsoever.

Click here for video: Nationalist Propaganda in History Textbooks: U.S. and Worldwide

Activity 1: Examining Bias

With a partner or partners, choose a major national or international issue that is currently in the news or a topic specific to your content area.

Discuss how different sources might lead students to radically different conclusions and beliefs? Think, if possible, of a specific example.

Deconstruct the messages—literal and hidden—in the following advertisements

Critical Literacy in the Classroom & BEYOND

News Bias

Deconstruct the messages—literal and hidden—in the following advertisements

Critical Literacy in the Classroom & BEYOND

Deconstruct the messages—literal and hidden—in the following advertisements

Critical Literacy in the Classroom & BEYOND

Deconstruct the messagesin these advertisements the following advertisements

Critical Literacy in the Classroom & Beyond

Google result for “girls toys”

Google result for “boys toys”

Critical Literacy in the Classroom & Beyond

What is wrong (if anything) with these depictions of American womanhood?

Critical Literacy in the Classroom & Beyond

Students need to learn that the messages they see—inside and outside of the classroom—convey important messages that are intended to influence their thinking, affect their behavior, and ultimately perpetuate the power of those doing the ‘selling.’

Critical Literacy in the Classroom & BEYOND

Activity 2: Examining the Source and the Reason for Bias

Based upon what you just did above, examine the purpose of the bias in various outlets of “official” knowledge (newspapers, textbooks, internet sources, etc.).

In other words, don’t just examine how bias misleads, examine the source of the bias and what you believe is its ultimate goal(s).

Remember: looking for and recognizing bias is but the first step in being critically literate. The second step is to understand and critique the power dynamics behind biased information. The third step is to take action to correct such biases.

What is the point to trying to engage secondary students in critical literacy?

Critical Literacy in the Classroom

Empowering them with true literacy; making literacy liberatoryrather than an abstract exercise (helping them learn to “read the word and read the world”)

Getting them to question not only the author of a text, but to question the very system of which the author is a part

Getting them to question their own assumptions and biases

Getting them to see their own complicity in social injustices

Engaging them by acknowledging what many students already know (especially inner-city youth)

Injustice = true cultural relevance for almost all teens

Critical Literacy: Summary

• Critical literacy is radical and threatening to many• Teaching critical literacy sometimes means critically

questioning the very text, curricula, system, rules, etc. of our school systems

• Teachers cannot teach critical literacy without themselves being critically literate

• Critical literacy requires bravery; the more one knows/questions, the more one sees injustices

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS and REACTIONS?