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 iABJBvR04708; Thu, 11 Nov 2004 14:11:58 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 14:11:58 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <BAY22-F3bCJnEMzAUor0006325e@hotmail.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: "Eileen Eckert" <eileeneckert@hotmail.com> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-aalpd@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-AALPD:1739] critical literacy X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Status: O Content-Length: 2216 Lines: 40 Sally, I appreciate your post because I've been thinking about many positions each of us occupies. On the one hand, I'm white and therefore privelged; on the other hand, I'm female and therefore less priveleged. I'm highly educated, and therefore priveleged, but that working class background instills beliefs and blocks access to knowledge that is so accessible as to be invisible to middle and upper class people. But having that working class background still gives me advantages over people whose class background originated (in this country) in slavery or migrant labor. I'm heterosexual (priveleged), but, believe it or not, being married to someone from Mexico almost led to someone refusing to sell me a house! I don't know if it's really possible for an individual to "become" middle class. My daughter, who is growing up in the middle class (though as a Mexican-American girl, her position is complicated too), has such a different outlook from mine. She can't imagine not going to college. I'm still trying to pinpoint the source of my own anger about this discussion, and I think it has something to do with the sense that much of what we think of as being critical is really being politically correct. There's a superficiality and lack of authentic partnership with students that I sense in the field as a whole. That's not to say every individual fits that description, or even that the people whose messages I reacted to fit that description. For me, though, those messages tapped into a sense that with efforts toward professionalism, and with efforts to define critical literacy before fully exploring it, we say we're with and for our students when we're really mainly meeting our own needs, and not theirs. So, what if we earn universal acceptance and value as a professional field? (Not that it's likely anytime soon, but hypothetically, because that is the goal for many.) That doesn't move our students, and the many people who could be our students but aren't, into the mainstream--they're still marginalized and we're even farther from them, aren't we? That's not even close to all the thoughts this discussion is provoking for me, but enough for now. Eileen
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