English Humanities Base Literacy Texts

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English Humanities Base Literacy Texts

• Fall 2006

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Fall 2006 HB Literacy Packet

• MEMOIR/AUTOBIOGRAPHY Frederick Douglass,
  Learning to Read and Write from Narrative of
  the Life of FD
• NON-FICTION Jonathan Kozol, excerpt from Savage
  Inequalities (Intro East St. Louis)
• POETRY Langston Hughes, A Dream Deferred
• PLAY Brian Friel, Translations
• RESEARCH Shirley Brice Heath, "Protean Shapes in
  Literacy Events Ever-shifting Oral and Literate
  Traditions."
• SHORT STORY Alice Walker, Everyday Use

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Why Literacy?

• All department members share an interest in
  literacy and texts
• Literacy is the natural focus of a composition
  course
• Literacy-related questions are inherently about
  what it means to be human
• What does it mean to be literate?
• How do people attain literac(ies)?
• Should access to literacy be universally
  available?
• How are language practices tied up with identity
  and culture?
• What literacies are valued in school?

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Why a Packet of Readings?

• A variety of genres enables us to define
  literature broadly
• We can help students see how various genres
  address and deal differently with similar
  questions.

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How I Learned to Read and Write

• Frederick Douglass (1817-1895) was born into
  slavery in Maryland. This piece describes how he
  secretly taught himself to read and write, and
  how the books he read led him to desire freedom.
  It is an eloquent argument for universal
  literacy.

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Savage Inequalities

• In 1988, Kozol visited wrote about schools in
  over 30 neighbor-hoods, including East St. Louis,
  Harlem, the Bronx, Chicago, Jersey City, and San
  Antonio.

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Savage Inequalities

• He describes
• schools in high-crime neighborhoods resembling
  Soweto
• 98 segregation
• rooms with no heat, few supplies or texts
• labs with no equipment or running water
• raw sewage and chemical fumes
• overwhelming fiscal shortages.

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Savage Inequalities

• When Kozol began teaching 4th grade in 1964, he
  included Langston Hughes poem in the curriculum.
  He was fired for teaching
• inflammatory works.

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Savage Inequalities, How I Learned, A Dream
Deferred

• Suggest questions such as
• Who has access to literacy?
• What basic literacy rights are all children
  entitled to?
• How does it serve the oppressor to keep the
  oppressed illiterate?
• What happens if students dreams of a good
  education are deferred?

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Translations

• This play takes place in August 1833 at a
  hedge-school in Baile Beag, an Irish-speaking
  community in County Donegal.
• Royal Engineers are making first Ordnance
  Survey, changing local Gaelic place names into
  English.

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Translations

• Brian Friel examines the effects of this
  re-naming on the lives, language, and culture of
  the townspeople and several British soldiers.

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Translations

• This play suggests questions such as
• What power does naming have?
• How do different groups define literacy?
• Is it important to preserve language practices
  and ethnic traditions?
• Why and how is language an important part of
  identity?

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Protean Shapes in Literacy

• Protean Shapes describes part of Heaths
  larger ten-year ethnographic study, Ways with
  Words. She studies children learning to use
  language at home and at school in two communities
  in the Piedmont Carolinas
• 'Roadville,' a white working-class community of
  mill working families
• 'Trackton,' a black working-class community whose
  older generations grew up farming the land but
  whose current members work in the mills.

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Protean Shapes in Literacy

• Heath demonstrates that literacy is not simply
  the ability to read and write, it is a social
  phenomenon. 
• Children acquire language and literacy practices
  from their cultures.
• Teachers must explore ways to incorporate
  multiple literacies in their classrooms.

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Protean Shapes in Literacy

• Heaths study raises questions such as
• Whose literacy is valued in school?
• What are the benefits of mastering school
  literacy?
• What other forms of literacy are not valued or
  taught in school?
• What are the problems with school focusing on
  only one kind of literacy and ignoring others?

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Everyday Use

• Walkers story illustrates how education and
  literacy can impact a persons views of her
  upbringing and culture. She illustrates the
  importance of understanding the present relation
  to ones traditions and culture.

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Everyday Use

• Walkers story raises questions such as
• Reading is not portrayed positively in this
  story why not? Whose language is used in the
  written stories taught in school?
• Education is not portrayed entirely positively
  here why not?
• What is the power of naming (or re-naming)?

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Todays workshop

• Recording of Act II, Scene 2 from Translations,
  followed by a commentary from director and cast
  member.
• Ideas for using the readings in class.
• Panel to discuss ethnography and Heaths text.
• Dramatic reading demonstrating relationship
  betweem the Hughes poem and the Kozol text.