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 iA52cbd10694; Thu, 4 Nov 2004 21:38:37 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 21:38:37 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <44555F0F.5D5C5D4D.0A349A3F@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: AWilder106@aol.com To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-aalpd@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-AALPD:1706] Re: Critical Literacy vs Critical Thinking- a crucial distinction 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: 3931 Lines: 38 Hello, George! Well, you will have to use "critical pedagogy" and I will just have to put it in quotations, maybe. The phrase exists, it is a way of thinking (not often specified, used more as a code phrase), and it does represent a group of people. It is also a PEDantic phrase, can't get around it. Doesn't say what it is, like the word "critical" doesn't say what it is. "Modest" in my lexicon means using smaller words, with more precision, than bigger words. And I know "hegemony"is a legitimate term, but again it cuts a lot of people out of the discussion; it is an opaque term rather than a transparent one, because it sends people to their dictionaries. I don't want people to have to run to their dictionaries. I would use that as a legitimate standard for the legitimate expression of ideas--the dictionary-running-to-standard--NOT. Yes, it is my preference not to use "appropriation" in a specialized meaning, either. Unnecessary. People say "hunh?" I don't think "reading the word to read the world" is appropriation, either. It is a remark that one quotes and then applies and explains. AND, as in all comprehension, this is my interpretation and my preference, but I can and do back up my preferences and say why I prefer x to y. I know the words, your use of some I may disagree with in their meaning, sometimes i just want something simpler. Now, Jackie asked both os us how all this applies to Professional Development. I seems to me that one thing we are talking about is....critical literacy...we are critiquing each other's "texts." This is an example of what David Rosen called an essential part of adult education--critical literacy. I think Meta covered a lot of what I am about to say. Granted, our discussion is a bit specialized, but perhaps it is a pretty good model for how text analysis is done. We're talking about vocabulary, and concepts, and other authors--intertextuality, how you refer to what I write, I do the same with you, we both dance around other authors and introduce them into our texts. Also, in what and how we write, audience is implied--we write for different audiences. We agree on some points and disagree on some others. We have different personalities and backgrounds, which comes out in our writing. We write for different purposes but in the same field. The use of email gives us equal time and position for a conversation, which as I recall was one of Eileen's points about computers and how to integrate them into adult literacy. By "position" I mean our roles are similar as list serv members. The conversation is also about social justice and who is a legitimate spokesperson for social justice via adult literacy--how money plays into one's ideas of social justice, and how hypocrisy enters even the most clear and crisp and uplifting writing about social justice goals. The conversation, additionally, is about being an insider and being an outsider in the field, being an insider and going along with the system, and profiting from it, even while critiquing it, savagely. This is also about argumentation and debate--the use of evidence to back up main points,and how this is done. By extension, this is an argument for the development in an adult literacy class for reflective judgment, and how to teach it as a skill. i think the vocabulary here IS the substance of our discussion--teachers, take heed! Vocabulary links concepts in networks, pull one vocabulary word, and like pulling the yarn on a sweater, a lot of unraveling happens--hegemony, autarky, colonization might be one network. Also....for adult literacy teachers, Freire is introduced, and Giroux; these are useful names to know, kind of signposts in the field. In this discussion/debate, they also function as kind of pawns, markers, if you like in a conversational game. My guess is that a lot of you readers know these points already.... Andrea
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