As I learn more about critical literacy and some of the theories behind it (such as the four resources model of reading developed by Freebody and Luke) I am reminded of the work of Paulo Freire. Just as Freire helped link social change to empowering the underprivileged and oppressed, I believe critical literacy is able to do a similar feat in developing the voice of our youth.
It's amazing listening to young children debate on what's fair and unfair. Often we neglect these conversations as trivial and uninformed. But if you listen closely, you will find that children already posses insightful thoughts and strong opinions on what impacts their world. It seems to me that the key age to further develop these critical skills is not at high school level, where we are taught how to critically analyze text, which by then we have already cemented our rote learning skills, but at the pre-school level where Dr. Vasquez has focused her research.
It's at this age we can equip our children with the tools needed to carefully analyze the text they will come in contact in their future classrooms, as well as in everyday life, such as the media and other forms of commercialism. More importantly, kids will learn to question such things and not take everything at face value, but instead dig deeper.
I look forward to reading Dr. Vasquez's book, Negotiating Critical Literacies with Young Children who has brought attention to the voices of our young children and what we as teachers can learn from them.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I agree with your comment that our students’ critical skills should be developed at the pre-school level instead of at the high school level. A lot of the work we do as high school teachers is damage control because many of our students have been "passed" through years and years of insufficient schooling. Granted that I have a large immigrant population, eighty percent of the students I currently teach read below a 4th grade level. Teaching critical literacy in such a class is extremely important, even though it is made difficult since many of them do not have a sufficient acquisition of the English language.
Over the past five years I've been working with teachers, on creating spaces for critical literacies, whose students are mostly English language learners. They have come up with very interesting strategies and projects with these kids. You may meet some of them a the conference on Saturday. Maybe I can get some of them to respond to some of these posts.
vivian
Kristina-
I saw the same connections with Freire. I also see what you mean about starting early in teaching young children how to read critically. I think even more than just approaching texts critically, it is important to encourage young children to THINK critically and question the status quo. Critical thinking isn't always encouraged in schools, just like professor Vasquez's example in her book. (where the teacher punished her for not following instructions) It seems the hidden curriculum in schools, namely the daily procedures and disciplinary systems often sacrifice the nurturing of individuality and critical thinking in students for the purpose of maintaining order.
I had my students read a news article about how a Chlorine gas bomb killed several people and wounded more than 200. In the article, it stated that the "coordinated" attacks were scheduled in order to incite some riot and whatnot. Also as they were writing, I notice that they called the weapon, "uncoventional." I asked who the audience was for the article. Because it seemed to me that chlorine gas was uncoventional to the US who reporting the story than the Iraquis who were using. I had never heard of Chlorine being used that way and neither had they. It opened up alot of discussion on the draft. We even talked about government. So, know who the audience is cause very thought-provokign ideas.
Post a Comment