Return-Path: <nifl-aalpd@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id i1HHO4I20137; Tue, 17 Feb 2004 12:24:04 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 12:24:04 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <0776A37D.3EDFC75A.0AB94E44@aol.com> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-aalpd@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-aalpd@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-aalpd@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: AndresMuro@aol.com To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-aalpd@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-AALPD:1048] Re: Light, not heat X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 X-Mailer: Atlas Mailer 2.0 Status: O Content-Length: 4243 Lines: 47 Hi Andrea I started to incorporate health literacy into our program thanks to 3 women that I am eternally indebted to: Lauren McGrail, Beth Sauerhaft, Jane Hugo. Many years ago I met them at the Women in Literacy strand in a Laubach conference. Beth and Loren were talking about the importance of health literacy in relationship to Breast cancer. With Beth's help we started to develop models to incorporate health literacy into our program. The following year we were awarded a grant from Laubach to develop a health literacy grant for Women in Literacy. The model kept building, and later we procured monies from Pfizer to continue to expand it and disseminate. We believe that health literacy instruction not only helps people to improve their literacy skills, but it also saves lives. What I always say is that if one of your students has diabetes and is not aware, it is irrelevant if s/he passes the GED or not. She will die, go blind or lose a limb. It is better to help the student address the health problem first, and then encourage her to get the GED. If they can do both things at the same time, even better. Regarding the Freirian question, it has been our intent for the longest time, to build some sort of Freirian participatory model that applies to all contexts. It has been very difficult to do, because traditional instructional approaches dominate the minds of teachers and students. To make the transition to a more participatory model is very tough. Also, the contexts of participation, are limited to the contexts and needs of the students in out community. So any Freirian model would never be completely Freirian a la "Pedagogy of the Oppressed." However, it is always my desire to connect theory to practice. Yesterday, I gave a presentation in Ciudad Juarez, Ch. to sociology students. My intention was to connect Structuralist theory to the murders of women in Juarez. Structuralist theory is academic ivory tower geek jargon to state that every event has two aspects, one that we can see, and other that we cannot see that is hidden below. Also, structuralist theory is grounded in a Hegelian dialectic. The example that I used was the distinction of public vs private. I argued that the public was visible, external, objective, empirically measurable, and therefore, it could be legislated. The private, on the other hand was invisible, internal, subjective, and therefore, it could not be legislated. It so happens that the realm of the public is the realm of work and government and the realm of the private is that of the home. Also, public = men and private = women. Since the private si invisible and cannot be legislated, domestic violence is hard to legislate, it belongs to the home, we cannot see it so we ignore it. Also, since women belong in the home, they should not take a step out into a realm that they don't belong to, ie, the public, and we should not legislate issues of women that belong to the private invisible realm. If women step out of their place, ie, the home, they are violating the agreement. they are "women of the street" they are "the other", "they are not like us". hence, if they get raped of murdered, maybe they deserved it. Since, they are not like us, it will not happen to us. so, those that have been turned into "others " become invisible, and therefore we can ignore them. According to Hegelian dialectic, the other is part of ourselves. So, if we ignore or mistreat the other, we are mistreating ourselves, and therefore we are sick. also a society that creates "selves" and "others" and mistreats the others, is a sick society. Anyways, sorry for the lecture. However, what I have been trying to do is tie theory to pedagogical practice to try to improve it. I still suck at it, but I am trying. Andres In a message dated 2/17/2004 9:26:20 AM Eastern Standard Time, AWilder106 writes: > > Andres, > > I've got a couple of questions in relation to your last email: > > 1) How did you get in the health/literacy part of adult literacy? > 2) Are there other occasions when teaching, doing PD, that > you are consciously aware of using Freirian concepts? > > Thanks a lot. > > Andrea > > > go here: www.geocities.com/andresmuro/art.html
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