Liberty and Literacy Today: Contemporary Perspectives

1. Liberty and Literacy Today: Contemporary Perspectives Chapter Nine Ch9

2. Literacy as a Social Construction • Past and present literacy rates affected by differences in class, race, gender, region, and social need • Less need and less expectation of widespread literacy in 18th and 19th centuries • Socioeconomic marginality of illiteracy a 20th-century phenomenon Ch9

3. Hegemony Theory Why, in the face of massive inequalities, does rebellion not occur in a democracy? Hegemony theory posits that: • Institutional elites control U.S. political and economic institutions. • They share a common ideology that justifies their position. • Public is socialized into accepting these views through schooling, mass media, workplace. • Ideology serves to limit discussion/debate and promote acceptance of status quo. Ch9

4. Mass Media and Cultural Hegemony • Corporate chains control significant numbers of newspapers and magazines; television, publishing and films • Concentration of ownership equals restriction of range of viewpoints • Media criticisms of American institutions stay within acceptable bounds • What will happen with computers and the Internet? Ch9

5. Schooling and Cultural Hegemony • Hierarchical distribution of power in schools fosters compliance • Nature of students’ work promotes competition; failure is personal, not linked to a structure that needs winners and losers • Social stratification within the school culture encourages differences rather than commonalities • Capitalist democracy lauded; instillation of compliance in students encouraged • America’s social history selectively presented in textbooks Ch9

6. Schooling and Cultural Hegemony • American society educates in contradictory ways • Taught that this is a democratic society • Daily experiences reinforce non-participation • The option of questioning this dichotomy is not presented • Citizens are prevented from participating in democratic processes • Ultimately, is this really a democracy if the populace cannot participate? Ch9

7. Four Contemporary Perspectives on Literacy Each expresses different understandings of schooling, political economy, and ideology. • Conventional literacy • Functional literacy • Cultural literacy • Critical literacy Ch9

8. Conventional Literacy • 1980 U.S. Census found 99.5% of adults literate – “the ability to read and write a simple message in any language” • Issues with these findings: • Were data collection methods appropriate? • What level of literacy is reflected in the data? • Could respondents read and write in English? • Conventional perspective useful to support claims of progress and to mask need for adult education programs Ch9

9. Functional Literacy • “Functional literacy” first used by Army during WWII to mean literacy that would accommodate military demands • A literacy that measures ability to perform tasks requiring literacy skills or to “function effectively” • Social class and literacy acquisition go hand in hand; race and ethnicity matter • Limitations of functional literacy perspective • Seems to imply minimum competence as a goal • Tends to lay blame on the illiterate themselves, rather than social inequalities • Overemphasis on mechanical skills of reading and writing; less on understanding and critical thinking Ch9

10. Cultural Literacy • E. D. Hirsch’s argument that literacy includes a basic knowledge foundation that gives meaning to what is read • “Intellectual baggage” that supports a familiarity with the events and ideas that have shaped American culture • Historical names and events, authors and works of literature, geographical places, phrases, scientific terms, etc. • Limitations of functional literacy perspective • “Trivial pursuit” approach? • Adds meaning, but falls short of advancing democratic understanding • Emphasizes recognition rather than critical thinking, and is very testable • Reinforces Eurocentric bias; overlooks global society Ch9

11. Critical Literacy • Literacy may enable some parts of society to control others • Critical literacy draws attention to power relations in society by focusing on racial, ethnic, gender, and class oppression • Critical literacy attends to how knowledge and power are interrelated • Literacy is the capacity to think and act reflectively—to understand the world and act to change social relations of oppression Ch9

12. Critical Literacy Method • Highlights connection between knowledge and power • Freire's pedagogy of “dialogue” and mutual learning • Reading and writing as tools to understand, express, and change social relations • Balancing criticism of the dominant culture and learning its “linguistic code” Ch9

13. Usefulness/Drawbacks of Perspectives Each of these supports a different educational aim • Conventional evidence of success of U.S. educational system; obscures the way illiteracy is distributed • Functional measurement of ability to function at minimum level in society; settles for minimal view of literacy • Cultural familiarity with the traditional knowledge base of our culture; promotes passive absorption of random knowledge • Critical emphasis on relationship between literacy and empowerment Ch9

14. Concluding Remarks • The concept of literacy is embedded in social contexts and is relative to particular societies and their conditions • Education is no guarantee of freedom when participatory self-government is not fostered by schools and media • Critical literacy key to challenging this state of affairs Ch9