This book counters most of our prevailing views about literacy. It says that literacy, rather than enfranchising people, is violent, ulterior, and uniquely devoted to Western economic ends. It claims that the literacy profession perpetuates injustice, whether it knows it or not. This is a book for anyone who thinks that reading and writing are important to learning. In this respect, it's a book for everyone, but it's primarily for people on the hotseat - English teachers, especially composition/writing/rhetoric teachers, and teachers of dropouts and adults and minorities. The book addresses economics and social class, the political structure in which English teaching fits, the character of labor, the psychology or psychotherapy of literacy, and the future of social freedom in America. This is an angry book written by an angry English teacher: The author is angry that literacy is the center of the storm; angry that the center of the storm foments nothing but itself; angry that most of what we do, even the good that we do, remains academic, powerless, and self-serving. What solutions are offered? The author argues that literacy is not the solution. she argues that economics is the agenda, that the ability to read and write is less important than the ability to pay. The reality is that whose who set the agenda use literacy and literacy standards to maintain privilege and parcel disadvantage. The violence of literacy becomes, therefore, the customary domain of those who foresee no real change while foretelling it.

Although compulsory schooling intends to develop the potential of all students, some students may actually be harmed by schooling practices. In this book, researchers and practitioners identify and examine various aspects of systemic violence, particularly as it is embedded in administrative and pedagogical practices. Some of these are obvious—racism, harassment, and child abuse—however, systemic violence is insidious and may reside in "common sense" practices intended to improve student performance. The authors explore some of these subtle manifestations of violence from a variety of perspectives by investigating school administration policies, pedagogical methods, labeling, classroom interaction, children's games, and teacher reactions to child abuse.

Too Scared to Learn explores the impact of women's experiences of violence on their learning, and proposes radical changes to educational programs through connecting therapeutic and educational discourses. Little attention has previously been paid to the impact of violence on learning. A large percentage of women who come to adult literacy programs have experienced, or are currently experiencing, violence in their lives. This experience of violence negatively affects their ability to improve their literacy skills. Literacy programs and other educational programs have not integrated this reality into their work. This book builds on extensive research that revealed the wide range of impacts violence has on adult literacy learning. Interviews with counselors and therapists, literacy learners, and educators working in different situations, and a wide range of theoretical and experiential literature, form the basis of the analysis. Educators are offered information to support reconceptualizing programs and practices and making concrete changes that will enable women to learn more effectively. The book makes clear that without an acknowledgment of the impact of violence on learning, women, rather than getting a chance to succeed and improve their literacy skills, get only a chance to fail, confirming to themselves that they really cannot learn. Essential reading for literacy and adult education practitioners, teachers of English as a second language, and education theorists, Too Scared to Learn explores the intersection among trauma, psychological theory, and pedagogy. The book is filled with a wealth of practical ideas, possibilities, and thoughts about what practitioners might do differently in classrooms and educational institutions if we begin to think differently about violence.

Bringing together theory, research, and practice to dismantle Anti-Black Linguistic Racism and white linguistic supremacy, this book provides ethnographic snapshots of how Black students navigate and negotiate their linguistic and racial identities across multiple contexts. By highlighting the counterstories of Black students, Baker-Bell demonstrates how traditional approaches to language education do not account for the emotional harm, internalized linguistic racism, or consequences these approaches have on Black students' sense of self and identity. This book presents Anti-Black Linguistic Racism as a framework that explicitly names and richly captures the linguistic violence, persecution, dehumanization, and marginalization Black Language-speakers endure when using their language in schools and in everyday life. To move toward Black linguistic liberation, Baker-Bell introduces a new way forward through Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy, a pedagogical approach that intentionally and unapologetically centers the linguistic, cultural, racial, intellectual, and self-confidence needs of Black students. This volume captures what Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy looks like in classrooms while simultaneously illustrating how theory, research, and practice can operate in tandem in pursuit of linguistic and racial justice. A crucial resource for educators, researchers, professors, and graduate students in language and literacy education, writing studies, sociology of education, sociolinguistics, and critical pedagogy, this book features a range of multimodal examples and practices through instructional maps, charts, artwork, and stories that reflect the urgent need for antiracist language pedagogies in our current social and political climate.

Literacy can empower students, but it may also limit their understanding if taught without regard for the context of their lives. Using his encounters with students, in high school, college, and state prison classrooms, as well as his own experience, Robert Yagelski looks at the sometimes ambiguous role of literacy in our lives and examines the mismatch between conventional approaches to teaching literacy and the literacy needs of students in a rapidly changing, increasingly technological world. He asserts that ultimately, the most important job of the English teacher is to reveal to students ways they can participate in the discourse that shapes their lives, and he offers a timely look at how technology has influenced the way we write and read. The scope of this fascinating book reaches beyond the classroom and offers insight about what it means to be "literate" in an economically driven, dynamic society. Addressing earlier works on the subject of literacy, as well as the ideas of theorists such as Foucault, this perceptive work has much to offer educators and anyone seeking to understand the nature of literacy itself.

In this previously untold story of African American self-education, Heather Andrea Williams moves across time to examine African Americans' relationship to literacy during slavery, during the Civil War, and in the first decades of freedom. Self-Taught traces the historical antecedents to freedpeople's intense desire to become literate and demonstrates how the visions of enslaved African Americans emerged into plans and action once slavery ended. Enslaved people, Williams contends, placed great value in the practical power of literacy, whether it was to enable them to read the Bible for themselves or to keep informed of the abolition movement and later the progress of the Civil War. Some slaves devised creative and subversive means to acquire literacy, and when slavery ended, they became the first teachers of other freedpeople. Soon overwhelmed by the demands for education, they called on northern missionaries to come to their aid. Williams argues that by teaching, building schools, supporting teachers, resisting violence, and claiming education as a civil right, African Americans transformed the face of education in the South to the great benefit of both black and white southerners.

During an armed conflict or period of gross human rights violations, the first priority is a cessation of violence. For the cease-fire to be more than a lull in hostilities and atrocities, however, it must be accompanied by a plan for political transition and social reconstruction. Essential to this long-term reconciliation process is education reform that teaches future generations information repressed under dictatorial regimes and offers new representations of former enemies. In Teaching the Violent Past, Cole has gathered nine case studies exploring the use of history education to promote tolerance, inclusiveness, and critical thinking in nations around the world. Online Book Companion is available at: http://www.cceia.org/resources/for_educators_and_students/teaching_the_violent_past/index.html

The basics of media for junior secondary students. How do media outlets affect us? How to become a savvy consumer and identify the medias influence on us.

This innovative resource describes how teachers can help students employ "literacy tools" across the curriculum to foster learning. The authors demonstrate how literacy tools such as narratives, question-asking, spoken-word poetry, drama, writing, digital communication, images, and video encourage critical inquiry in the 5-12 classroom. The book provides many examples and adaptable lessons from diverse classrooms and connects to an active Website where readers can join a growing professional community, share ideas, and get frequent updates: http://literacytooluses.pbworks.com

This text examines the negative practices of schools which are resulting in school systems failing students. Such practices include intrusive authoritarian administrative structures and procedures; inappropriate discipline; unrealistic expectations; and placid exceptance of exclusionary practices. Indeed, educational systemic violence includes any practice or procedure that prevents students from learning, thus harming them. Taking a close look at ways in which current social problems may be a result of, or even supported by, compulsory schooling, the contributors to this volume consider whether or not schools contribute to the violence amongst modern young people.