Jul 22, 2019
Critical Literacy: A narrative
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Critical Literacy: A narrative
I have a dream...
Dear diary,
My rationale for a writing classroom has to be epic, insightful, philosophical. But where do I start?
I sincerely wish for my students to be able to seek and delight in beauty, which is what I believe is the true purpose of all art forms. The aesthetic gives us ‘an experience that allows us to understand the world more fully and experience it more richly’ (Mission & Morgan 2009, p. 50). That’s what this is all about. To fall in love with the idea of beauty, to find it in visuals, in language, in novels and films and artworks and performances; to find a sincere form of expression.
As critical literacy informs my practice, I dream of a classroom that questions, that fights back. That is interactive and questions the status quo. That asks, “What makes the literary canon?” (MacLachlan 1994, p. 18), and “Why have set texts at all?”. I want students to engage with texts beyond the literary canon. I want to ‘make use of the printed material that daily assaults the student’ (Watson 2009, p. 80), particularly social media, blogs, vlogs, advertisements, streaming media - not only reading and interpreting, but also writing, speaking and creating! I want students to engage with the ‘universe of discourse’ (Andrews 2009, p. 39) – to understand and question the values placed on some forms of writing over other – and to argue that...
I want to rid this weird culture where students feel that they shouldn’t speak unless they know the answer. Although the students in Australia aren’t told this message as explicitly as in Vanuatu where I taught (yes, below was ACTUALLY a sign in the classroom), it still troubles me that in many of my classes, students don’t speak up in fear of being wrong (Locke 2014, p. 8).
(In case you can’t read it, the sign says “Sh.....!! Silence!! Keep your mouth shut until you know what you’re talking about”) - UGH!
I want students to get it wrong, because that is when learning occurs! Mission explains it perfectly, that ‘poststructuralism undercuts this vision of glorious certainty’ (Mission 2009, p. 69), and further, I want the students to understand that certainty is a mirage, and all I care about is growth. I don’t always hold the answers. I am all too aware of the power dynamic in classrooms and hope to have a more balanced, student-centred, student-led and dialogic classroom where my position is as one of many interested readers (Andrews 2009, p. 42).
All of this is in the hope that my students will leave my classroom with their own critical understanding of the world, their place in it and the contexts which inform everything surrounding them.
Epilogue
So you are at the end, and are wondering, what’s next? Good question dear reader, don’t feel too perplexed. This is a work in progress, and will never be complete, As long as there are more things to learn, and new students to meet.
Question 1: Critical Literacy
First of all, when I heard about Critical Literacy, I was both worried and assured. Because during semester 3, we learned Introduction To Tertiary Learning (ITTL). So, some of my seniors discussed this course with me and my friends. They said that semester 4 would be really busy and a lot of students might have a problem with Critical Literacy. It is important for us to manage our times and pointer. I was worried when I heard about that. However, I immediately feel a bit reassured when they told us that if we can understand the concept of ITTL, it will be easier for us. I was glad when they told me and my friend about that.
I did struggle a lot from semester 1 to get a high pointer. I tried my best to manage my time, so, I get to rest in between the stressful assignments. It was tough but I manage. Now, I am in semester 4. Everything change a bit. I always have a problem with mass lecture and unfortunately, for Critical Literacy, there is a mass lecture. So, I really struggle with learning because I really have a short attention span and easily distracted when with a lot of people. But, I will try my best to focus on the mass lecture as much as I can.
My expectation for this course is I will be able to analyse any articles with critical thinking skills without any problem. I will be able to understand ‘heavy’ or ‘uninteresting’ topics and being able to give my own critical thinking is what I want. However, I know to acquire that I have to very hard.
I hope I also will be able to learn and focus on this course and acquire valuable skills for my future. This will be a great asset for me and also advantages during any interview or works. I also hope that I will be able to pass this course with flying colours and make people around me proud.
Janks and Deconstruction
One of the biggest take-aways that I had from the Jank’s reading was the importance of design and re-design in advertising. While my thoughts are still a bit scattered, I do want to say that Janks’ assessment that every “design serves a different set of interests” is one of the key features that informs my understanding (Janks 183). Janks’ point is that all advertisements show some sign of bias. Even in her example with the LEGO figures, which depicts a positive reasoning for opening up U.S. borders to refugees, still represents a form of bias (Janks 182). The bias in this case is just a positive representation of an open border policy that I myself might agree with. The thing that struck me was that I often view ads that I agree with as having little to no bias. Janks explains that “no design is neutral”, and that once a design has been constructed it still must face some form of deconstruction (Janks 183). From my group conversation in class, I recognized that I was much harsher on the childhood obesity ad (the ad that my group analyzed) than the LEGO ad in Janks’ book. That’s not to say that my deconstruction of the LEGO article needed to reflect the harshness of my criticism of the childhood obesity article (it would be weird to force myself to disagree with policies that I believe are true), but I do believe that Janks is making the point that we should all be cognizant of the media that we are consuming. As Janks mentions, “each redesign becomes a new text that requires deconstruction” (Janks 183). Without this deconstruction we become complacent in the design of the advertisement.
When I was in class, I started thinking about just how important it is for students to be able to analyze bias. Even in my own education, I learned how to analyze bias in a text from an early age, but I only learned how to analyze bias in advertisement that I didn’t agree with. In no way do I believe that I grew up in an echo chamber, but I do believe that my schooling may have geared me to only look at certain types of bias. If I am to become a great teacher someday, I realize that I need to be prepared to teach students how to handle diagnosing all forms of bias, even bias in advertisements or works that I might personally agree with. However, I do not see schooling as a non-political zone, and I’m not sure that Janks’ intention is for me to be neutral at all. On page 184, Janks mentions a poem that her students in South Africa had to read about a father that demands his child to keep going back and forth from the kitchen to the table to get things for dinner (Janks 184). Janks notes that, when her students in South Africa read the poem, the stated that their home life wasn’t like the one they described. They did not live in a nuclear family like the Eurocentric poem depicted. By asking students in South Africa to read and analyze the poem, Janks explained that the school was providing the students with literature that was inaccessible to them, but without deconstructing the poem the school would never have known. I believe that redesign and deconstruction serve the purpose of helping us check our own biases. As a teacher, I will have to be political, but I will need to make sure that what I am saying is always relevant to the students I am teaching. If not, I will need to deconstruct my own thinking, so that my teaching can be relevant to my students.
Janks and Design Orientation
From the readings, I was most interested in Janks’ ideas that there are orientations to literacy that shape the ways we interact with literacy. Janks starts her section on literacy orientation by explaining that she is interested in understanding “approaches to literacy and language that take power seriously” (Janks, 2010, 23). For Janks, orientations to literacy explore the different was that certain approaches perpetuate privilege for some people while at the same time oppressing others. Janks notes that this happens through curriculum, preferred methods of teaching, and even what books are put into the syllabus (Janks, 2010, 23). As a person that wants to be a teacher, I’m very concerned with making sure my curriculum is culturally responsive. I would like my curriculum to both be accessible for my students and include authors that represent their background. In my own education, I don’t recall having teachers that actively tried to advocate for books with characters that looked like me, and it is important for me to provide that opportunity for my future students. I think that’s why I like the “design orientation” so much. Janks defines the design orientation to literacy as “productive power”, and that it’s the “ability to harness the multiplicity of semiotic systems across diverse cultural locations (Janks, 2010, 25). One of the things that I love about this approach is that it acknowledges the individual humanity of each student. If Paulo Friere’s theories are about creating a pedagogy to work “with” the oppressed, then Janks’ thoughts on design orientation are the practical implementation on those theories. Janks asserts that design orientation does more than just acknowledge a student’s cultural location, but also seeks to find ways to destroy systemic issues that may be oppressive to that student. In class, we had a discussion on code-switching, and while code-switching is not something that should be necessary, in some situations it is. In my mind, design orientation would teach students about code-switching (what it is and when to use it), but it will also teach students how to fight the current power structures that uphold an Anglo-American way of speaking as the dominant form of vernacular. For me, it seems wrong to not teach my students how to adapt to oppressive system. Those systems are real and are always affecting my students. However, I don’t want to only teach them to conform to the ways of the oppressors because then I would be the one furthering oppression. Instead, design theory chooses to acknowledge that there are oppressive systems, but it also teaches students how to undermine those systems. Janks asserts that design orientation is able to prepare students to undermine systems by working in “multiliteracies” that allow students to “select from all the available semiotic resources” to fulfill their educational needs (Janks, 2010, 25). Janks states that these multiliteracies are supported by using a “range of media and technologies” (Janks, 2010, 25). These media and technologies represent a diverse set of literacies and literary practices, and Janks makes it clear that it is this diversity that allows students find their own approach to dealing with literacy, both oppressive and liberating. However, it’s not just media and technology. It’s the application of those resources along with the framing of undermining oppression that makes design orientation so effective. For my classroom, I want to make sure that my students feel like my curriculum has representations of themselves, but also want them to know the dangers of living in an oppressive system. But most importantly, I would want them to understand that they have the agency to fight oppression.
Love in the Classroom
In Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire introduces the concept of love as “dialogical”. Freire explains that love is both “the foundation of dialogue and dialogue itself” (Freire, 2017, 89). The contention here is that conversations, even those between the oppressed and the oppressors, must contain love to be considered a dialogue. Without love, there is just empty speech between two parties and no critical dialogue going on. I really like this idea because it connects really well to Freire’s other thoughts on Sectarianism. In class, we talked about how sectarians are unable to change the world around them because they are trapped within their own “circle of certainty” (Jones 2018). While within our circle of certainty we see everything we believe as objectively true, but we miss what Freire considers to be reality: a way of viewing the world that allows us to transform it (Freire, 2017, 39). As a person who wants to be a teacher, I have realized that I need to step out of my own sectarian views if I want to be successful in the classroom. Though Freire doesn’t mention it, for teachers, existing in a circle of certainty breeds oppression. Students who have diverse opinions and viewpoints should be heard. However, I still struggle understanding what to do when a student has an opinion much different to my own, or an opinion that I believe is harmful to other students in my class. For instance, over the summer I taught at Breakthrough in Boston. We were having a discussion about Claudette Colvin and the Civil Rights movement when one of my students mentioned that Claudette deserved to be kicked out of the NAACP because she got pregnant. My entire room went silent. Students froze and looked to me for answers. I had no idea what to say in that moment. It was clearly a sexist comment, but I had no training dealing with the situation. I decided to have my students do a silent write for thirty seconds about what had just been said, and then I had them share what they had written with the class. We were having such a good discussion, and I didn’t want it to end because of what someone had just said. However, my mind was still reeling from what had just occurred, and I forgot to talk with my students to see if people were still alright mentally. I knew that many of my students had sisters who had left high school because of teenage pregnancy, and it was potentially a hot button issue. I feel like I failed my students at that moment because I didn’t know what to do. At the same time, I wanted to embrace all my students with love, including my student who had made the remarks. I didn’t want to be authoritarian and shut him down, but at the same time I realized that what he said was potentially harmful to my other students. I tried my best to use an approach that wouldn’t put anyone on the spot, and treat each answer given with a touch of warmth and love but even that was hard. Unwittingly, I had left room for other students to agree with the sexist remarks, and our class soon devolved into a discussion on teenage pregnancy. I could feel some of my students getting uncomfortable with the situation, so I forcefully changed the topic. I’m not sure if that was the right move either. I think that it’s hard to approach every situation with love, especially if you put yourself at risk of validating sexist, racist, or homophobic remarks. I don’t know if Freire gives us the tools to deal with these situations.
Critical Literacy-Nick Foulon
One of the things that I loved about the Janks reading was the idea that one can become literate in a subject. Janks claims that literacies represent a “set of cognitive skills and a set of practices” (Janks PNG). While many interpret literacy to imply an ability to read, Janks asserts that being literate in an area represents could mean being able to read, but also should include an ability to interpret symbols, realize relationships between words of symbols, and an ability to synthesize processes to make meaning (Janks PNG). In this regard, literacy represents all of the complexities of understanding a topic or area and being literate in certain subjects is definitely associated with power. In the middle of chapter 1, Janks explains that children who grow up in oral traditions develop different, but equally powerful, facilities with language (Janks PNG). However, school systems tend to value the written successes of privilege middle class literacy norms (Janks PNG). The students who grow up in the oral tradition face the task of becoming literate in a written tradition that they may not have access to at their house. I know that as a child I was lucky because I had many books growing up. For my birthday I would ask for Magic Tree House books, and I would read them to my brother. I grew both my written and oral literacies this way, and I think that my access to books shaped my ability to be successful as both a reader and a writer in my elementary years. Janks’ analysis explains that, while it is difficult to build the knowledge for a literacy, that is the point of being literate. In the middle of chapter one, Janks asserts that “literacy development is ongoing” (Janks PNG). Everyone encounters new literacies every day, and while some individuals are given great advantage due to privilege, many people will still struggle to grapple with the complex symbols, phrases, or relationships that are part of any difficult literacy. For me, that literacy is social media. I’m a recruiter for Breakthrough Teaching Collaborative (honestly a great program and one of the main reasons that I want to teach). Breakthrough requires me to have recruitment events on campus, and I organize them entirely through social media. I constantly have to take-down, re-upload, or delete my posts on both Facebook and Twitter because I lack the skills necessary to post my work in an area where the greatest amount of people can see it. Though I struggle with my illiteracy in social media, I have come to realize that my barrier for that literacy is relatively low, and I only need to spend more time writing posts and studying the Facebook interface. Other literacies are much more complex, and some have extreme barriers to entry that involve oppression and identity politics based on race, class, gender, or sexuality. While I have a harder time understanding and accepting all of the nuances in James Gee’s theories on discourses (which is also the reason I favored analyzing Janks’ literacies for this response), I do believe that Gee offers a good explanation that groups often provide I high barrier to entry for a literacy/discourse in order to “protect their social goods” (Gee 529). While Gee is speaking about discourses, which are usually associated with particular ways of speaking or actions between individuals who are part of a group, this idea still applies to literacies which represent more than just person to person interactions. While I may be illiterate in Facebook, as Janks mentioned in her work, there are a lot of components at play in being Facebook literate, and many of those components are routed in privileges. For example, before you can be Facebook literate, you must be computer literate, which would require you to have access to a computer. You must be reading and writing literate, and you must be literate in using Google. These are all literacies that I may not even know that I have, but after seeing my mother struggle to create a Facebook account a year ago, I recognize that these literacies act as barriers of entry for people who have not had access to schools or computer technologies. This realization is one of the main takeaways that I had from the Janks readings: we all hold privileges that make certain literacies so accessible to us that we don’t even recognize that we have that literacy. It’s only after we see someone else struggle with something we are literate in that we can recognize our privileges.