Kearney, I can say from my experience that students by and large don't  think critically, if by that you agreed to accept my meaning of analytical skills and questioning assumptions: I do not accept yours as implicit or danced around in mine. They can however be taught to think critically, not in any ideological way, but in the good old fashioned platonic dialogue way. They can always, unless they have an ideological bias (whether I agree with it or not, wich is immaterial anyway), can be taught to go beyond their first levels of thinking and to think and read more critically. In a recently completed online English course, for example, most students a priori resisted not just literature, but poetry in particular. Now after the class is over, most, to their surprise, would put poetry at the top of their list, for the same reason they'd resisted it, because it was difficult to read. They came to see they enjoyed the challenge of not knowing what a
 meaning was and going through the struggle of finding out, and I did't always agree with their interpretations, either, but they were theirs and they had fought hard to get there. The only student who repeatedly resisted this process was one who insisted that Barack Obama's inaugural poem was racist, as was one of the plays, and that that play was dull, bland, and boring, despite other students' attempts (not mine) to dissuade her. The class was engaged, challenged, changed their minds numerous times, sometimes in very surprising ways, and in a very real way I had nothing to do with it; I had gotten behind and did not post replies to the discussion boards until everyone had posted, and I usually try to stay more current. It was an interesting exercise to see what students were able to do on their own: question the power of the state (in Antigone), celebrate the value of African-American culture (with Maya Angelou and others, and affirm family values
 (in Fences, threatened by a tyrannical African American father.)
Enough said. Critical thinking can and does happen without a teacher's direct intervention, and it can be encouraged by the nature of the readings, the students' interactions (and they themselves already have ideological positions imposed by no one), and, every now and again, a nudge or a question the teacher asking the student to go a little further in an answer.

This course was a struggle but I got some very humbling feedback, and it just shows me what the power of growing literacy and the true meaning of education can be: not just the learning of content, facts, structures, but seeing how they're intertwined.

Bonnie Odiorne, PhD Director, Writing Center Adjunct Professor of English, French, First Year Transitions, Day Division and ADP
Post University, Waterbury, CT
Labyrinth Facilitator, Spiritual Director
please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to




________________________________
From: Kearney Lykins <kearney_lykins at yahoo.com>
To: The Adult Literacy Professional Development Discussion List <professionaldevelopment at nifl.gov>
Sent: Fri, October 30, 2009 9:49:37 AM
Subject: [PD 4100] On the meaning of politics and why teaching is political






Literacy practitioners:


Can we all just get this out in the open once and for all and acknowledge that terms (as they are most commonly used in this listserve) such as critical thinking, critical analysis, social change, social progress, social justice, and The Change Agent, are all ideologically based vehicles that assume that there is something inherently wrong with society as it exists in general (and with America's in particular) and that the remedy is an inherenly left-leaning, if not outright socialist or communist one. 

I am tired of reading posts that dance around this issue, as if no one knows the names of the steps.


Literacy teachers should teach people to read, write, and speak. Learners should not have to be subjected to implicit or explicit political agendas from teachers who think they know better than others. In Steve's latest post (PD 4087) he very cogently unmasks the condescending nature of teaching "critical thinking," that there is an assumption that learners don't already think critically, or that they don't do it as well as the teacher. Or that students are in more dire need of "emancipatory change" than teachers are.  I find it interesting that the Friere followers are so quick to abandon his leaderless classroom when it comes to critical thinking and pressing "social justice" issues. 

It is my understanding that the methods for teaching people literacy skills went relatively unchanged over several millennia, and that these methods actually worked long before anyone heard of "praxis." I believe Marx, Lenin, and Darwin learned to read in this quaint, disparaged way.

I now await the barrage of comments from educators who will insist that rote memorization drills and vocabulary lists have oppressed me, and that I am but an oblivious political pawn.


In good spirits, 

Kearney



 
 
Kearney_Lykins at yahoo.com
 





________________________________
From: Federico Salas-Isnardi <fs_dos at yahoo.com>
To: The Adult Literacy Professional Development Discussion List <professionaldevelopment at nifl.gov>
Sent: Thu, October 29, 2009 8:23:06 AM
Subject: [PD 4085] On the meaning of politics and why teaching is political



Thank you, Janet for your contribution about politics.  I would go one step further in arguing for a political education or political literacy:  the word politics comes from Greek πολιτικός (politikόs) which simply means citizen, civil, of (or regarding) a citizen, and of (or regarding) citizenship.  πολιτικός, in turn, comes from Greek πόλις (pόlis) which means city or inhabited territory or island.
 
Thus, everytime we engage students/adults/citizens we are engaging in a political activity.  We cannot ignore that when we deal with the inhabitants (I don't want to use the word citizens in this context) of any territory we are dealing with the nature of politics.  
 
Some people (and some politicians) give politics a bad name, but the fact remains that politics is everything we do that involves us as citizens of this nation.  As you said, nobody is advocating to engage our students in a specific end of the political spectrum but rather that we should accept our political role as teachers and facilitators or learning which is to engage our students to the extent possible in a critical analysis of what they learn or they are confronted with.  Otherwise we are giving our students only data to deposit in their "bank" which may never be useful to them.

 
federico
 
Federico Salas-Isnardi
Adult Literacy Specialist, Texas Center for the Advancement of Literacy and Learning
Secretary, Executive Board,  Association of Adult Literacy Professional Developers
Adult Education Consultant, Houston, Texas
 
"The Arc of the Moral Universe is Long but it Bends toward Justice."  Martin Luther King




________________________________
From: Janet Isserlis <Janet_Isserlis at brown.edu>
To: The Adult Literacy Professional Development Discussion List <professionaldevelopment at nifl.gov>
Sent: Wed, October 28, 2009 7:50:27 AM
Subject: [PD 4080] Re: Swinging the Sword of Literacy in Iraq

Re: comments about Art's post, education in Iraq and the whole notion of political literacy.

Just looked up the word politics, but the definition kept using the word "political"
so then I looked that up:

po·liti·cal(pə lit′i kəl)

adjective

of or concerned with government, the state, or politics
having a definite governmental organization
engaged in or taking sides in politics political parties
of or characteristic of political parties or politicians political pressure

http://www.yourdictionary.com/political


so now, to reply, simply, to those who believe we shouldn't impose a particular set of political beliefs:
NO ONE here has said we should.  Art has spoken eloquently to addressing the skills, knowledge and strategies needed to understand how government works and to enable adults to make choices  (and/or support them in making choices) that best suit their own interests and beliefs.  NO ONE is advocating for any one system, or set of beliefs.  No one is using the adult learning center as a soap box.  Good educators are listening to learners, living in shared communities, discussing what goes on and using language and learning skills, critical thinking, healthy debate, use of media and other resources, to enable everyone to get on as well as they can in the communities in which they live.

Janet Isserlis 
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