9/13/17 Response (Better Late Than Never)

Cadeiro-Kaplan forced me to examine my own education and really reflect on my high school experience. It was extremely easy to identify the type of literacy that was valued in my conservative, rural, Ohio high school. In our English classes, there was a huge emphasis on canonical works. AP English classes read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Scarlett Letter, The Great Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice, and The Catcher in the Rye simply because they were the books deemed most valuable by the school board. Curriculum was chosen based solely around Cultural Literacy. Our engagement with these novels was purely superficial. We read a few chapters, took a quiz about what happened, talked about what happened, and then essentially wrote a big summary paper when we finished it, maybe identifying a theme or main idea. It was all about Functional Literacy, which makes sense looking back now, because all they cared about was that we passed the state-wide standardized exams, and those exams revolve around Functional Literacy. But we never even dipped our toes into Progressive Literacy. There was no questioning, no deconstructing, no connections to our modern society, and definitely no mention of the treatment of people of color or women (aside from having to get a permission slip to read Huck Finn because it says the "N word"). Looking back, I consider whether what we did with these novels can really be considered reading.

I wonder how the standards must have evolved over the past 15 years, since I've been in and out of high school, because to see an emphasis on things like "public participation in a democratic society," "social situations in which students speak, write, read, and relate to other people," and "create writing lives for the world beyond school" on the NCTE page makes me feel like the approach to teaching ELA might slowly be moving in a direction that at least values some social reconstructionist ideas. Then again, maybe there has always been an emphasis on these things, and perhaps teachers aren't using standards to guide and influence their practices as frequently as they should be, which is all the time. I think standards and approaches developed by "those in power" are sometimes given a bad rap. Even if we don't completely agree with everything that is driving the educational machine that we are a part of, there may still be value in understanding and drawing from the ideas.

The reading about deficit ideology struck a nerve with me, because even in my limited classroom exposure and experience, I have seen the ways in which this approach plays out. To say "we need to focus on areas where you need to improve, and if you work heard enough you can overcome your problem areas" places all the emphasis on the student's problem areas. Yes, when you understand the ways in which certain students have been marginalized and received a schooling experience which lacked resources and/or made them feel alienated to such a degree that they could not engage the material, you can see why saying "we're going to focus on what you're bad at" may cause them to completely disengage. Having said that, students do need to have a grasp on the language of power if they have any hope to succeed in society as it functions or if they have any hope to dismantle society and build a better one. Having been at The Met, specifically in a classroom where students with reading and writing proficiencies well below average were lumped together, but also where they weren't receiving any additional help or support to raise those proficiencies, I can say that not addressing problem areas is not an option in some cases. The Met says "we're going to let you find what you're good at and focus on that." That is absolutely ludicrous. You cannot encourage students to dream big, but then fail to give them the tools to make those dreams come true. As we all know, college is all about reading and writing, and there is no learner-centered approach is most programs; there is just the one: read this, unpack it and engage it, write about it. There has to be a way to encourage growth and overcome deficits without alienating our students.