In a recent post I described critical literacy as ‘a radically interrogatory, disruptive approach to reading and listening’ and explored James Damico’s (2012) suggested methodology of reading with and against a risky stories to promote it. Though, it would be remiss of me to imply that Damico’s methodology alone functions to this end. Below I detail a little further the importance of critical literacy, how it can be fostered, and the value in softly implicating learners in the suffering of others.
Critical literacy gives Santos’ following statements axiomatic status (2013: viii-ix): that “[t]he adequate recognition of injustice and the possible overcoming of oppression can only be achieved by means of an epistemological break”; by “creating a distance in relation to Western-centric political imagination and critical theory”. To this end, Santos argues (2013: 20), education must ask ‘strong’ rather than ‘weak’ questions. Weak questions “assume that the current paradigm provides answers for all relevant questions”, and
“[s]trong questions address not only our specific options for individual and collective life but also the societal and epistemological paradigm that has shaped the current horizon of possibilities within which we fashion our options, the horizon within which certain options are possible while others are excluded or even unimaginable.”
Strong questions are vital in raising awareness of, concern for and inspiring change in response to issues of global social injustice since, as Mikander (2016: 70) puts, “students might not understand how deeply questions of global inequality are embedded in their everyday lives if the topic is not presented in a way that truly affects them”.
Andreotti and Pashby (2013: 423) echo this sentiment, stating that critical GCE involves asking “difficult” questions that might “implicate” learners. Questions such as (Andreotti and Pashby, 2013: 423-4),
“What creates poverty? How do different lives have different values? How are these two things connected? What are the relationships between social groups that are over-exploited and social groups that are over-exploiting? How are these relationships maintained?”
And,
“How would people respond if they realised that bringing justice to others meant going against national/local/economic interests? Why and for whose benefit are relationships among people mediated by nation-states?”
Curry-Stevens (2007) also believes that learners ought to be implicated in their oppression of others, although advocates for a slightly different critical pedagogy, yet one set firmly within the field of critical literacy. This “pedagogy for the privileged” is a two-staged process, based upon ‘shaking’ and then ‘building’ learners’ confidence. Each stage follows a sequential set of processes (Curry-Stevens, 2007: 45-53):
Confidence-shaking
(Step 1) Awareness of oppression; (Step 2) understanding oppression as structural and thus enduring and pervasive; (Step 3) locating oneself as oppressed; (Step 4) locating oneself as privileged; (Step 5) understanding the benefits that flow from privilege; and (Step 6) understanding oneself as implicated in the oppression of others and understanding oneself as an oppressor.
Confidence-building
(Step 7) Building confidence to take action- knowing how to intervene; (Step 8) planning actions for departure; (Step 9) finding supportive connections to sustain commitments; (Step 10) declaring intentions for future action.
These points of view articulate a belief that critical literacy enables and promotes “analyses of how […] inequalities came to exist, and tools to negotiate a future that could be ‘otherwise’” (Andreotti, 2012: 239). The implication being that if such analyses are absent from education it can “unintentionally reproduce ethnocentric, ahistorical, depoliticized, paternalistic, salvationist and triumphalist approaches that tend to […] trivialize difference” (Andreotti and Souza, 2012).
Bibliography
Andreotti, V. (2012) ‘Postcolonial and Post-Critical “Global Citizenship Education”’, in Elliott, G., Fourali, C., and Issler, S. (eds) Education and social change: connecting local and global perspectives. London: Continuum.
Andreotti, V. de O. and Pashby, K. (2013) ‘Digital Democracy and Global Citizenship Education: Mutually Compatible or Mutually Complicit?’, The Educational Forum, 77(4), pp. 422–437. doi: 10.1080/00131725.2013.822043.
Andreotti, V. and Souza, L. M. T. M. de (2012) ‘(Towards) Global Citizenship Education “Otherwise”’, in Andreotti, V. and Souza, L. M. T. M. de, Postcolonial Perspectives on Global Citizenship Education. New York: Routledge. Available at: http://www.123library.org/book_details/?id=67220.
Curry-Stevens, A. (2007) ‘New Forms of Transformative Education: Pedagogy for the Privileged’, Journal of Transformative Education, 5(1), pp. 33–58. doi: 10.1177/1541344607299394.
Damico, J. (2012) ‘Reading with and against a risky story: How a young reader helps enrich our understanding of critical literacy’, Critical Literacy: Theories and Practices 6:1.
Mikander, P. (2016) ‘Globalization as Continuing Colonialism – Critical Global Citizenship Education in an Unequal World’, JSSE – Journal of Social Science Education, pp. 70–79. doi: 10.4119/JSSE-794.Santos, B. de S. (2013) Epistemologies of the South: justice against epistemicide. Paradigm Publishers.
Megapedagogy 