Blog post #9

      "Critical literacy is a response to injustice and the production of illiteracy in which students and teachers work together to do their own jobs and to create an image of a successful learning environment."

      I would like to take this quote and relate it back to Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed in which he talks about the banking concept of education.  Freire states that, "In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing" (Freire, 53).  What he means by this is that students are seem as empty containers that teachers are supposed to fill.  In this type of system a teacher is assessed on how much information she can push onto her students rather than how much information they have actually learned.  One of the problems with this is that teachers do not feel obligated to make sure that students are understanding the material fully.  Another problem with this situation is that students are aware of how this system works.  They understand that they will have lots of information that they will have to be able to learn and repeat back on a test.  Therefore, students only learn things on a surface level so that they are able to sort of recite it back on a test and then quickly forget it to be able to store the new information that they will need for the next series of tests.       There is no one fostering long term learning of subject matter.

       In my own experience, I have seen injustice and diversity have a negative effect on literacy.  I have seen students who were treated unfairly and not given as much support and assistance as others because they were students who were learning English as a second language and because of that were not up to the level of reading that their peers were and the teacher felt that since they were already so far behind there was not much that she could do to help them.  Unfortunately, that is very unhelpful to students, especially those who are learning English as a second language and makes them fall even further behind.  This, in turn, contributes to illiteracy on that these students feel helpless and almost like they are not as smart as other students and incapable of learning because no one seems to want to help them.  Due to this, students become very discouraged and come to strongly dislike reading.

     One of the things that I thought were most interesting was how both Freire and Moses related their ideas back to the Civil Rights Movement and the way that during that time and in our education system today and the way that people are treated very differently in both of these situations.  Another thing that was really eye-opening to me was Gatto's writings and the way that she organizes activities in her classroom.  I think that having a set topic and allowing students to create the questions that were to be answered allows every student an equal opportunity to have a part and take their own interest in the activities in the classroom.