Literacy - critical literacy

Critical literacy is the ability to read texts in an active, reflective manner in order to better understand power, inequality, and injustice in human relationships. For the purposes of critical literacy, text is defined as a “vehicle through which individuals communicate with one another using the codes and conventions of society”. Accordingly, songs, novels, conversations, pictures, movies, etc. are all considered texts. The development of critical literacy skills enables people to interpret messages in the modern world through a critical lens and challenge the power relations within those messages. Teachers who facilitate the development of critical literacy encourage students to interrogate societal issues and institutions like family, poverty, education, equity, and equality in order to critique the structures that serve as norms as well as to demonstrate how these norms are not experienced by all members of society.

Critical literacy in practice

The development of critical literacy encourages students to question issues of power — explicitly disparities within social contexts like socio-economic status, race, class, gender, sexual orientation, etc. Becoming critically literate means that students have mastered the ability to read and critique messages in texts in order to better understand whose knowledge is being privileged. Essentially, teachers using critical pedagogy demonstrate how to evaluate the function language plays in the social construction of the self. Michele Knobel and Colin Lankshear suggest that when students become critically literate, they can examine ongoing development, the parts they play in the world, and how they make sense of experiences. Facilitating the development of critical literacy promotes the examination and reform of social situations and exposes students to the biases and hidden agendas within texts.  Thus, in order to become critically literate, one must learn to “read” in a reflective manner; “read” in this connotation means to give meaning to messages of all kinds, instead of just looking at the words on a page and comprehending the meaning of those words. Instruction that encourages critical literacy development comes as a response to the marginalization of a growing number of American students who are not members of the culturally dominant group of white, middle-class youths. Furthermore, according to Adrian Blackledge, critical literacy emphasizes the potential of written language “to be a tool for people to analyze the division of power and resources in their society and transform discriminatory structures.”

Critical literacy and social action

There is often an activist component to critical literacy education, where the teacher serves as the facilitator of social change. Joseph Kretovics suggests that in addition to teaching students functional skills, the teacher must also provide “conceptual tools necessary to critique and engage society along with its inequalities and injustices.” Furthermore, with the activist potential in critical literacy education, students will learn how to envision a world in which all people have access and opportunity.  When students learn to use the tools of critical literacy, they can expose, discuss, and attempt to solve social injustices within their own lives.

When engaging in the development of critical literacy skills, students learn to acknowledge the unfair privileging of certain dominant discourses in which society engages. Students participate in conversations about the injustices of privileging one group or ideal over another because of skin color or socio-economic status, and teachers can help to empower students by providing opportunities for them to find their voices. Teachers engaged in methods that support critical literacy can, as Lisa Delpit suggests, “let our students know they can resist a system that seeks to limit them to the bottom rung of the social and economic ladder." 

By developing lessons based on dialogue with students about their needs and interests, educators can invite students to take part in a larger community discourse that attempts to solve problems and create alternatives to oppressive situations. Linda Christensen suggests connecting the curriculum to the outside world in a tangible way. By participating in social action projects or creating a public discourse, students may see the relation between curriculum and the world beyond the walls of the school. Essentially, students learn to restructure their knowledge base and challenge accepted societal norms in order to transform all institutions that oppress.

Critical literacy in the classroom

Because critical literacy theory focuses on the relationships between language, power, social practice, and access to social goods and services, there are numerous methods of engaging students in becoming critical members of their society. Within the frame of critical literacy, it is important to look at texts, like novels, magazine articles, short stories, films, etc., through a lens that challenges societal norms. Students can evaluate whose knowledge is being privileged in texts and de-construct the message of those meanings. As readers, students must also evaluate the social construction of a text and question the factors that may have influenced the author to create the text in a specific manner. Moreover, using critical literacy, teachers encourage students to look at texts from other perspectives and re-create them from the standpoint of marginalized groups in order to analyze the power relations and social inequities promoted by the texts.

Edward Behrman explains that the development of critical literacy encourages social justice and exploration of language and literature in many forms. Behrman suggests that the specific types of lessons examine power relationships that are found in language and literature and that these practices show students that language is never neutral. Because critical literacy looks different in every classroom, based on the subject matter and the population of students, there is no formula for how teachers engage students in mastery of critical literacy; however, there are some practices that appear in lessons more commonly. Behrman maintains that developing a pedagogy that includes critical literacy is an organic process that continually needs to be revisited and refined.

Behrman reviewed articles, published between 1999 and 2003 in The Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy that focused on lessons and units emphasizing critical literacy pedagogy in middle and high school grades. Behrman’s methodology included searching electronic databases for the keyword ‘critical literacy.’ After refining his search to include articles that contained classroom applications only, Behrman found 36 articles that presented “lessons or units intended to support critical literacy at the upper primary or secondary levels (grades 4-12).”

Behrman’s search revealed that the most commonly used practices that support critical literacy included: reading supplementary texts; reading multiple texts; reading from a resistant perspective; producing counter-texts; having students conduct research about topics of personal interest; and challenging students to take social action.

Taken from http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/4437

Red the article and answer the following questions: 

1. Are you a critical member of our society? Explain why.
   
2. Do you think we live in a critical society? Why?
   
3. How could you be a critical student outside the classroom?
   
4. Which are the difficulties to be a critical reader?