I'm interested in the idea of out-of-school literacies and some of the themes that entails. There are many ways in which people learn literacies, indeed there are many different literacies, and school is only one of these ways. In fact, you could argue-- as many have-- that school is not the most effect of these means, and may actually be among the least effective, perhaps even destructive to these ends, especially if the students are from non-mainstream backgrounds (whose primary discourses contradict school discourse, i.e., what we in our culture call 'literacy'. [Gee 1991])
There are several implications here that are worth exploring: the idea that school discourse is somehow natural, or the 'real' discourse, which is nonsense when you really think about it; the idea that school is indeed the place where literacy, even Standard English literacy, is learned-- again, not so accurate; the idea that students whose primary discourses run counter to school discourse are bad learners, deficient, lazy, etc., and that their home discourses are somehow destructive; finally, and perhaps most importantly, the idea that schools completely suck at using students out-of-school strengths and building upon them, perhaps because we are so obsessed with the idea that if something is enjoyable or comes naturally that it is wrong and that school must be torture for our society to be getting its money's worth. I'm interested at looking at ways in which the literacies that students already have are the very elements that we need to build up and encourage; that we need to stop being prejudiced against marginalized discourses as 'wrong' because this is NOT the only way to maintain SE as the appropriate discourse for certain settings, that is, school, work, media (mostly), stuff like that.
Along the lines of the idea that school is not where students learn literacy, I think Gee's (1991) distinction between “learning” and “acquisition” is helpful. Learning is the process through which a we take a concept and break it down into pieces so that the student can “get it,” somehow internalize these ideas. This is what school is based on. This is what our ridiculous tests test. Acquisition is where you gain skills through using them, not through the intellectual process of analysis. We've all learned this way. (Think about how easily kids learn a second language when they are thrown into a situation where they need to use it versus how difficult it is for an adult to learn Italian – at least how to speak it fluently – by taking night classes at the local college...) School teach generally through 'learning'; but they don't seem to be good at teaching through acquisition, at least when it comes to literacy. Gee points out that both A and L are effective for certain things, and this is where it gets really interesting: if you want to master the use of a skill, which is what I think we all want when we want students to gain literacy skills*, then you need to help them acquire the skills; learning is only useful for helping student develop meta-cognitive abilities to reflect and think critically ABOUT the topic, not for actually putting it to use. Think about how grammar is taught, especially in todays testing age. Think, even, about how it is tested. Gee's description helps me understand how I can teach grammar and even help students pass very hard grammar exams, but see first hand that this process has done nothing to help students become better at the use of proper grammar in their actual writing. Damn.
*when I get to Freire and critical pedagogy—which, believe me, is where I'm going—I'm going to completely challenge the idea that this is indeed what the school systems, the administration does want; Freire might argue it's the LAST thing they want...
Where was I... Out-of-school literacies. I want to investigate the power of the ways in which children do NOT learn literacy in schools, and the ways in which they do indeed learn them EVERYWHERE else. But in order to see that, we need to expand our idea of literacy, indeed—again similar to what Gee points out about the word 'discourse'--we need to see 'literacy' as a countable word: literacies, because the idea that English is monolithic (Carpenter, Godley, Werner 2007) is just wrong; it was never right. If we want our children, our citizenry to develop true literacy skills, we need to gain a better understanding of what that actually means of course, but we need to use the world around us, the things they are actually interested in, the places where they are already learning these skills—we need to see these things as our allies, not our enemies. We need to shake off this idea that literacy is the extent to which someone can read Chaucer. This is where critical pedagogy comes in. Freire is constantly talking about education as liberation and liberation as praxis, as “consciousness intent upon the world” (1993). For him, the idea that students can learn in a vacuum, that they can gain understanding that is disconnected from the actual world in which they live—this is a fallacy. He takes it farther though. He looks at the underlying power structures of society and realizes that this is not what they want; they do not want to wake up the consciousness of the citizenry and have it intent upon action in the world, because that is the end of the gravy train. So not only are we dealing with a system of education that gets it completely wrong, but for Freire, we're dealing with a system that at some level WANTs it wrong and will fight to keep it wrong in just that way because it serves their greed and lack of humanity.
These ideas may feel disconnected but I think a point is emerging. I'm not sure I can address Freire's notion of this evil power structure that benefits from the ways in which schools rob our children of real literacy. I think I'll need to focus for now on the idea that if the schools really understood the damage they were doing, they would change and do good. I need to believe that, at least for now.
Here's where I'm going, and how I'm going to get from Gee and Freire to Chuck D. Because that is indeed what I plan to do. I want to look at the phenomena of out-of-school literacies in non-mainstream cultures (defined the way Gee defines them), and I want to look at some of the ways in which these students are indeed literate, and I'm talking about certain elements of pop culture. (This brings up the age-old complaint of parents about how their kids can recite every lyric from Elvis, the Beatles, Zeppelin, Billy Idol, Bruce, Prince, Public Enemy, Eminem, 50 Cent-- you get the picture, but that they can't remember their school lessons.) I want to uncover some of the critical pedagogy that underlies some of these discourses. I recently wrote a paper where I used the lyrics two hip hop artists (Kanye West and Dead Prez) as counter arguments against A Nation at Risk, a report from the Reagan era about the ways to whip our schools into shape. What I found was that these artists were making incredibly astute claims about the education system. They were saying exactly what Freire was saying, only in language and through a media that was actually accessible to the very people Freire was talking to** That is a major point here. I don't think I realized how major it was until just now.
My plan is to identify some of critical pedagogies major tenets and show, one by one, how these ideas are capitulated in certain discourses of black American culture, particularly in comedy and in rap lyrics. I plan to use West and Dead Prez, but also include Public Enemy, KRS One, and try to find others representing these ideas. As for comedy, I plan to start with Dave Chappelle, who I consider to be a brilliant social critic, and also to use Richard Pryor and maybe Chris Rock, although I'm not sure. I have taught and wrote about several of these artists and the ideas and themes that they present; others I only have budding ideas. But I think it's a worthwhile undertaking, one that can tie in all of the issues I've been presenting here. And I think there are practical applications of a study like this too; I don't think it's purely theoretical or academic. If I'm right, if these artists are expressing to a popular audience the very tenets of critical pedagogy, and if the people are listening and hearing these ideas, and if the school are at the same time rejecting these ideas and telling the people to shut them off so they can read “real” stuff—I think this has great implications for where we are going wrong and even how we can right the ship, assuming perhaps idealistically that righting the ship is indeed what we want to do. That's it, I'm done.
References:
Carpenter, B.D., Godley, A.J., Werner, C.A., (2007). I'll Speak Proper Slang: Language ideologies is daily editing activity. Reading Research Quarterly, 42, 100-131.
Gee, J. P. (1991). What is Literacy? In C. Mitchell & K. Weiler (Eds.), Reviewing Literacy: Culture and the Discourse of the Other (pp. 3-11). New York: Begin & Garvey.
Freire, P. (1993). The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (pp. 73-86). New York: Continuum.
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