Page 47 - Linguistically Diverse Educational Contexts

Critical literacy can be seen as a perspective for learning across the school curriculum and beyond, rather than as a topic to be discussed or a module of learning to be "covered". It is about having an ingrained critical perspective or way of being that provides us with an ongoing critical orientation to texts and school practices. It thus does not just refer to texts but treats the world around us as a socially constructed text. Inviting students to write down messages they see on public transport, take pictures of graffiti or billboards, cut out advertisements from magazines, or collect sweet wrappers and bring them to class helps them to read critically the everyday texts they encounter. If done often enough with learners, they would learn to "read" the world around them with a critical eye. Texts never free from socially constructed perspectives, nor is reading ever neutral. Every time we read, write, or create, we draw on our experiences, our understanding of the world. Therefore, we should also analyse our own creations and texts, and examine our own points of view. What is interesting is that when we agree with a text, it is easy for us to read it, but difficult for us to relate to it critically. If we find a text offensive, it is difficult to engage with it. Nevertheless, we should try both to relate to texts critically and to engage with them, so that we can learn from them and better understand other perspectives as well as our own. Certainly, we should also try to reconstruct and redesign texts, illustrations and practices in order to convey different, more just and socially honest messages and ways of being that have a real impact on our own and others' lives. T. Szkudlarek wrote that it is necessary
to create new forms of knowledge that transcend the traditional framework of separate disciplines: to create new spaces where knowledge can emerge. The educational process should begin at the level of everyday, specific, individual experience. That which is mutable, and that which falls within the realm of popular culture, forms the basis of efforts to legitimise the "silenced voices" of people marginalised from culture by totalising processes34.
However, not much is changing in schools. J. Gatto (2017)35 in his book entitled Dumbing us down describes his experiences as a teacher of English language and literature. He claims that he doesn't teach English there, but teaches school (metaphorically speaking), and lists seven things he believes he is teaching in school:
1. Confusion
Everything I teach is out of context. I teach the lack of connections of everything. I teach disconnection. I teach too much: orbiting planets, the law of large numbers, slavery, adjectives, architectural drawing, dance, gymnasium, choral singing, assemblies, surprise guests, fire drills, computer languages, parents' nights, staff development days, pull-out programs, counselling with strangers my students may never see again, testing, age segregation as opposed to anything seen in the outside world . . . What do these things have to do with each other?
The logic of school is that it is better to leave school with a toolbox of superficial jargon coming from economics, sociology, natural sciences and so on than with the only thing that really counts, enthusiasm.
34 Szkudlarek, 2009, pp. 46–48. 35 First edition 1991
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