Hello Kearney:

I understand what you are saying in your note and am quite aware of subtle, and sometimes not-so-subtle, efforts to "bend" legitimate teaching toward illegitimate or, as you say, unethical teaching, both in selection and omissions of material and in methods used.  So I am in agreement with you on these issues.  The key in your note of course is what is ethical, and what is not, legitimate, and not, about teaching.

However, and if I may, what you say about the "broadest, Aristotelian sense ... because teaching helps members of society become better equipped, ..." still doesn't capture all of what I mean about "all teaching is political" and has a political ground that we already stand on.   Teaching cannot do that without first having the political freedom to do so. 

The point, and that is so-often overlooked by teachers (in my experience with teachers in education), is that we cannot teach freely (as much as we do) or even teach at all **unless** our political situation prepares for it, allows for it, and accounts for it. 

The extremes show the clarity of the issue:  As we all know, in some cultures women are beaten or killed if they try to become literate and further educated (it's a political issue for both the family and the state); in our own South, it was criminal (by statute) to teach slaves to read.  In Freire's situation, people who could read newspapers (where they didn't kill the editors and writers) had a political leg-up on those who could not.  I could go on.   Absolute or totalitarian political power has always hated literacy and education of those less powerful precisely because of its a threat to that established power. 

When the poor and un- or under-educated become literate, they can (and often do) become political bombshells.  

In our own USA, my sense is that a good section of our teachers take our political "air" of freedom that we breathe for granted--precisely because (at present) we are not oppressed--we still have reasonable freedom of the press, speech, assembly--thought-by statute.  But that's not a given for-all-time by any means.  As example, librarians--the keepers of our freedom of thought--sensed this incremental crumbling of our freedoms when the Patriot Act was initiated and implemented.  We felt it here when the issue of political discourse was quashed on these very sites.  We all went along with it.  What could we do but retreat into our own smaller and circumscribed universes of (free for now) discourse?  

We should not forget that moment--as many have forgotten what it took to get the freedoms that we have at present?

Regards,

Catherine King
Adjunct Instructor
Department of Education
National University
San Diego, CA





 



----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Kearney Lykins 
  To: Catherine B. King ; The Adult Literacy Professional Development Discussion List 
  Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 7:01 AM
  Subject: Re: [PD 4129] Re: On the meaning of politics and why teaching is political


  Catherine,

   

   

  It seems to me that you are blending the meaning of two uses of "polis."

   

  I'll grant you that in the broadest, Aristotelian sense of the term, that because teaching helps members of society become better equipped to make decisions, it can be considered a form of political action; it is political friendship perhaps. I think it is this understanding of the nature of teaching that leads most teachers to become teachers in the first place. 

   

  But that's not the sort of political action I am addressing. I am talking about ideological partisan views that are unethically wrapped in a literacy package. 

   

  Literacy isn't the only subject to be pimped in this way. I have seen websites that ostensibly offer fun, interactive, ready-made science lessons for grade schoolers, but which are little more than vehicles for injecting socialist economic propaganda (e.g., asserting as fact that if we raise Americans' taxes, we can change the Earth's weather).  

   

  So, in its least controversial sense, teaching may be a political act, but that is not the dynamic I am addressing.





  Regards,



  Kearney







------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  From: Catherine B. King <cb.king at verizon.net>
  To: The Adult Literacy Professional Development Discussion List <professionaldevelopment at nifl.gov>
  Sent: Sat, October 31, 2009 9:52:22 AM
  Subject: [PD 4129] Re: On the meaning of politics and why teaching is political

   
  Hello Kearney:

  First, you say: "Learners should not have to be subjected to implicit or explicit political agendas from teachers who think they know better than others."

  Here's the point I think you are missing in your discourse here:  All education **already has a political aspect to it.**  We don't get to choose that--It's only a matter of understanding what those implications are and of helping our students become aware of it.   That's not arrogance on the part of the teacher, but a gift that all teachers give to their students--it's a gift because when we or our students receive it, we don't need the teacher any more--and can even critique the teacher from that new development and broader view.   

  Helping people learn anything is already a political act.  A cogent case-in-point is when the slave-owners in the south made it a crime to teach slaves to read.  They knew what slaves being-able-to-read would mean to the political status quo--that we all here know about.  

  Also, I agree with you that teachers are powerful and, with that power, we can bend or ignore the truth, and employ pied-piper persuasion, especially to naive students who are too willing to follow without making the effort to understand for themselves.  And I am even sure that some do--I've seen it.  

  But then that's sophistry and not education (it's an abuse of education)--in the sense that education is informing and transferring power to the student (as I and others here have explained in other notes).

  And as you say, let's "get this out in the open."   Though I am sure there are some lefties around, and some who may be reading these posts, I am neither a socialist nor a communist nor do I think most here are.  Further, I do not think "social change, progress, and justice" are always ploys towards "outright socialism" or communism.   Indeed, I might ask:  What is "left-leaning" about your own self-analyzed, here-established "critical thinking and critical analysis"?  

  Also, I **do** think that "there is something ... wrong with society as it exists."   But not "inherently," except insofar as we are all inherently in need of self-correction.  And not "generally," but in the specifics of today's world.  I think that because we are always called towards self-correction, and we do that best, in my experience, in dialogue with others, e.g. in the classroom.  And as a democracy (small-d) or a republic (small-r) that self-correction is a part of our mandate of freedoms of speech, assembly, etc.  

  So I do not agree with you when you broad-brush everyone when you say:

  "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."

  Let's have some nuance here?

  Catherine King
  Adjunct Instructor
  Department of Education
  National University
  San Diego, CA


          
    ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: Kearney Lykins 
    To: The Adult Literacy Professional Development Discussion List 
    Sent: Friday, October 30, 2009 6:49 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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