Literacy

What struck me from the various readings of Workshop 7 and 8 are the notions that Literacy is socially constructed and it helps us understand the world around us. The underlying and often forgotten result of this is the fact that how an individual uses language to understand the world is very dependent on the social environment or discourses they partake-in. This was an interesting notion for me because it emphasizes the point that literacy is used and internalized differently for different people. It is dependent on the person’s experiences and cultural upbringings.

Why do we as teachers then, try to teach literacy in very narrow-specific ways? Why do we tend to teach using a top-down model instead of a student centered one that allows the learner to use their own knowledge and their experiences to further their understanding of the world around them. Personally I believe this occurs because we as teachers grew up with social discourses that emphasized Friere’s notion of traditional teaching as being similar to the banking system. The teacher’s role is ‘to fill’ the students by making deposits of information that he/she considers true knowledge, while the students were simply supposed to ‘store the deposits (Belenky, p. 214). Fortunately for us, we are now able to change this discourse through our experiences from our masters courses. We are learning to change our ‘teaching ways’.

The article that really emphasized the folly of continuing to teach ‘traditionally’ was Brian Cambourne’s article: “A sure-fire, Never-Fail K-12 Recipe for Producing Dependent A-Literate Learners”. Cambourne’s article criticizes traditional teaching styles or models that create dependent learners, i.e. learners that cater to the demands of the teacher’s assignments. These students read when and what they are asked to read. They write about what is requested of them. Consequently they become individuals who can read and write, yet they do not use language (literacy) to learn more about the world around them.

Essentially, what we need to remember is that students need to be able to work with others. They need to take an active role in their learning so that they can be active members of society. We as teachers therefore, need to introduce new learning opportunities that are contextual (based on the students’ social discourses and life experiences). We also need to allow for the students to ask questions and learn from the new paths these questions will steer the learning towards. It is by doing this that we can help create independent, social and critical thinkers and learners.