NYTimes article on E.D. Hirsch Jr.'s comeback

The NYTimes seems sympathetic to E.D. Hirsch as it focused on his influence and the implementation of the CCSS (Common Core State Standards) through his foundation and less on his book. I was interested in Hirsch's quote at the end of the article expressing his concern that the CCSS not be used for standardization purposes, a huge concern as standardization spreads in all directions. It has been illuminating to watch the approach of the 2014 GED test partnered by GED Testing Service and Pearson, the IT giant in education, which is a huge switch from a paper-based, personal essay format of the 2002 test, to a computer-based, scientifically-and-empirically based essay. Many states have opted for a sudden change, whereas New York state, which ranks 50th in pass/fail rates, (and which has a law prohibiting charging for the test,) has chosen a more pragmatic approach: the transitional test from McGraw-Hill, the TASC, will give students less trauma and pressure as they continue to prepare, and it allows the instructors to begin to incorporate all the fine print of the CCSS in a more sensible fashion, allowing a more gradual and successful shift to the eventual computer/science model. I am curious to see how other states fare as they jump to the 2014 GED test model from Pearson.

E.D. Hirsch Jr.'s Cultural Literacy Theory

I understand the seesaw arguments here, as I too, find myself running between a pro/con perspective on Hirsch. Maya's comments made me wonder if there was a way to find middle ground in between the essential point of Hirsch's theory and the very relevant criticism of dominant cultural values, blindness to the many social contexts of learning, and the value of a critical literacy approach to learning.
Maybe the usefulness of a cultural literacy framework rests on taking a critical literacy approach to knowledge instruction. This way, taking the "cultural" definitions of the dominant culture and fashioning them to the particular context the educator is working in, could mean an integration of local and then larger contexts of cultural understanding. Maybe the same seesawing some of us feel in trying to accommodate the practical in his theory with the actual cultural values in a population could be used proactively as a study of polarities: the externalized "background" content, detached from the local and immediate culture, could be studied (and evaluated) in direct relation to the culturally immediate, socially-based, communally-valued content, leading to understandings and conclusions of relative value: is something important if it happened before your lifetime? Why or why not? How might our community concerns be linked to the historically placed event? Does its importance to us shift if we find larger value in it? Or do we decide it is ultimately of no use to us, socially and culturally? As educators,do we begin with the culturally immediate and branch out, into the larger society? Or start in the abstract and remote, and work our way into our immediate cultures?
Of course, this seems to demand that educators do double-duty: dissemination of a faceless criteria by the powers of the moment, coupled with juxtaposition of the local and immediate to offset the disabling elements of an "objective" list of knowledge content. But double duty is where we are in any case, as we are asked to satisfy standardized learning and result goals while still attempting to facilitate learning, growth and critical thinking.

Deborah Brandt and Sponsorship

Working with GED students using sponsorship as a topic of how the individual is connected to the larger community, and then bringing back a perspective, researched and questioned by the students, of how the sponsor (as even an individual sponsor exemplifies some educational paradigm, reflecting some values of the society), benefits from the individual might prove effective. We could plot some kind of projected trajectory of how a sponsorship could germinate into the blossoms sought by the sponsor, and how a mutually beneficial outcome might be achieved. This seems to be a model for exploring the ideological perspective on literacy without sliding into a critique. The students would be able to see their relevance to a larger need/goal (and hence choose to stay actively engaged or not), and also perceive their growing relevance as they continue along the path of (sponsored) higher education. This is one vision I might try to implement in my GED class, to see if the idea of sponsorship could incentivize and inspire further active engagement in educational goals and acquisitions, as consciousness of a mutually beneficial reciprocity is glimpsed.
I find that GED students are motivated by knowing the specific economic consequences of their investment in classroom participation. When it remains too general ("I want to get a job"), they can be pulled away by concrete distractions of day to day life, and disappear.
More urgently, how do I engage them in the questions of how education can be a pathway that has to be followed persistently, in the short time I may see them, so as to not slide into settling for partial solutions ("I got a job at TJ Max, I can't come to class anymore")? It seems that a dialogue about sponsorship, which is not loaded down by political or social weight, might work.

Response to Margarita and Adult Literacy as Social Practices by Uta Papen

I can relate to your response to E.D. Hirsch, as it seems so central to being equipped to handle a complex world. I am forced, though, to go back and take a closer look at his words, to find the unsettling aspects to it. Critical literacy, on the other hand, seems to be the opposite E.D.Hirsch, who seems to want to "fill the container", whereas Freire seems to be about using one's own perspective, experience and consciousness to question the literacy given so as to be a more active participant in one's own learning. So then the question comes up: "Who am I being educated for? Myself? Or the society?"

"A History of Reading" by Alberto Manguel

Interesting, isn't it, that in Alberto Manguel's The Silent Reader, the folks most involved in the responsibilities of reading in early Christian days were also responsible for the establishment of religious doctrine, beliefs and custom. Could I say that the men of the church, skilled in reading scriptura continua, were also representative of the religious metaphor of sole authority, of Jesus as the "only" son of God? In other words, a consolidation of power, through transcription of reading that demanded particular skills held by few.
This power was clearly threatened when the transcription rules shifted towards ease in reading punctuation, facilitating the reader's interior activity of engaging with the material while reading; earlier, readers gave oral enunciation of rhetorical and religious ideas. So, when silent reading became easier, the individual's internal engagement with the text threatened the church's monolithic authority as solitary source of God's word. Eventually, other interpretations came about, as reading became more internal, less public. An interesting tension between public and private uses of reading.

Literacy and the Great Divide

Terence G. Wiley has done a comprehensive overview in laying out the differences between the autonomous orientation (literacy as a set of skills acquired by individuals in a formal approach), the social practices orientation (literacy learned in environments that inform the approaches and contexts of learning) and the ideological orientation (emphasizing the role of socio-economic powers and its influence on literacy and its acquisition) so that he can then present a clear presentation of how each of these orientations stacks up beside the cognitive divide theory, which maintains that writing as a skill has successfully divided societies into those that have the skills and those that don't.
I enjoyed the challenges these comparisons brought me concerning the idea that "orality" is somehow substandard, and Ong in particular has taken on the analysis of how different the oral mind is from the literate one. I found the autonomous orientation to be insufficiently contextualized to deal with the complexities that literacy acquisition presents today for educators, although it is very clear that economic opportunity rests on one rather than the other.
The social practices orientation is far more filled out, and is able to factor in the assets that "orality" brings, something that has been overlooked, with Scribner and Cole presenting evidence from the Vai of Liberia that brings in more nuance of how orality and literacy can merge and succeed for a people.
The ideological orientation is the one that interested me the most, as it brings in the enormous factor of social power and its influences, which factored in with the social practices approach, presents a more total picture of multi-lingual, inter-cultural challenges that are growing every day. Erickson in particular brings the evidence forward clearly as to how the system perpetuates itself in order to survive, and that challenges are met with resistance. To me, this is where the serious work lies, as we are obligated to find ways to present viable alternatives as necessities, not simply desires, if we are to advance into the 21st century with viable, functioning societies that allow for diversity and the responsibility of a wide range of literacy skills and opportunities.

The CUNY Conference on Best Practices in Reading/Writing Instruction was full of great presentations and teachers. Here are my morning notes, afternoon notes to come shortly:
1B: Some New and Interesting Pedagogies:

Nicola Blake (Guttman Community College): Using Smartphones in Reading/Writing nicola.blake@guttman.cuny.edu

Ms. Blake gave examples of how students used their smartphones to take pictures and videos of their neighborhoods or landscapes that gave meaning to assignments fashioned around environments and spaces. The students then worked out their writing and presentations around how the images were incorporated. Ms. Blake makes her students consider how the same lens used to look at a picture apply also to our writing. Some projects she suggested were jigsaw readings (pictures and texts interspersed); twitter and animoto combinations; digital stories; documentaries ("selfies") and commercial and research projects (the phone monitors student process); paired work.  

Benjamin Lawrence Miller (Queensborough Community College): Creating an Egalitarian Pedagogy  bmiller@qcc.cuny.edu

Mr. Miller felt that in order to counter some of the digital distractions in the classroom, which isolates students' attention, transformation of the classroom into an egalitarian space would be an effective way to engage students. The question the instructor asks her/himself: How do we square the process we have been through with the instruction we are giving? Especially if students are interested in going the same direction? One approach was to do the assignments with the students. Another was to discover texts alongside the students (not pre-planned, pre-read texts). Collaborations with other professors and learning groups illustrates equal sharing and an unanticipated outcome. An example was collaborating with another class where one group wrote about the 'stop & frisk' issue; the other devised the rubric with which to judge the writing; they then came together for the final exchange and assessment.

Mr. Miller's criteria:

 - students' self-assessment

 - focus on outcomes

 - rapport with students that counteracts disciplinarian/entertainer roles of instructor.

 - response work

Shoba Bandi-Rao (Borough of Manhattan Community College): Can Mobile Apps Help ESL Overcome Grammar Errors? sbandirao@bmcc.cuny.edu

The challenges Ms. Rao wanted to address were the time restraints in class for extended grammar practice, limits on students' study time, the lack of study skills, and the need to focus on function over form. Her solution was to create a focus on "Small Chunks of Time" for students to utilize with their apps, such as travel time, waiting in lines and for appts/classes and other small increments of downtime. For this reason, Ms. Rao promoted the over 3000 apps available for ESL learners that help with the need for repetition and practice in grammar and idioms. The way to implement them in the classroom was to present them in a light, playful and bite-size way to encourage further use outside class; also encourages feedback. Group work and presentations would result. Three types of projects proposed were:

 - Vocabulary - customized and pre-selected to go with texts to ensure the right definitions and usage.

 - Student videos in mother tongues - this loosens up students to discuss aspects of their lives that can lead to more exploration. Drawback: only others in that language can follow.

 - Prosody & intonation - this can help with the difficult areas that don't always get covered in class, as they need patience, time and practice.

Websteronline was mentioned as a means to hearing American pronunciation.

This approach has to accommodate not everyone having a smartphone, in which case sharing would ensure.

Rajul Punjabi (Long Island University, Brooklyn): Using Music Lyrics in the Classroom rajulpunjabi@liu.edu

Ms. Punjabi felt that hip-hop lyrics are a great bridge to more traditional texts for young people because there exist so many parallels, multiple meanings and paraphrasing to both forms. She picks lyrics that can be connected to written texts, taking the students through the texts, looking for universal themes and time & place studies. Response papers help create a two-way approach, bringing the themes back to the students' own experiences. Through validation of the form and the students' input, it helps build confidence to then give their input to the texts that also demand the same examinations. Her example of taking Tupak Shakur's "My Girlfriend" linked to Richard Wright's story of a young man and his gun showed how this approach is effective and makes traditional texts more accessible.

Sailing the Oceans Blue

When I was a child, I talked alot. Preferably while dancing, running and singing. I don't think I noticed I was speaking two languages until I wasn't anymore. Now I know that I spoke English with my parents and brothers, Spanish with Hilda, who lived with us and took care of us in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. I do remember teasing my mother about her Anglo-Spanish; her accent was ridiculous to me, and made me laugh. I played dolls with Nilsa, across the street, in Spanish; with Natasha, up the street, in English. 

I remember  Hilda  writing out an address to her parents on a small envelope with a stubby pencil: she held her fingers tight and close to the point, forcing it to her will, turning the pencil in her fingers after each small curved mark, tentative, uncertain, connecting each letter in careful Catholic script. It took her a long time. Inside were pages of pencil script on lined school paper, all written the same, determined way, and I wondered how long it had taken her to get it all down after the long days of caring for us four children.

I, on the other hand, didn't give writing much thought. I did it as needed. What engaged me was reading, which I did any chance I could, escaping into a multitude of worlds, in a million voices.

Speaking, though, was a complex affair in my family. My mother worked as an editor, fixated in a literal way on language and how it was constructed. To her, language was the portal to the world, and speech was the first step. Speaking reflected everything: your family, your manners, your comportment, your background, your position vis a vis others, your passport. She rode our language skills like we were horses. "You are citizens of the world," she would tell my brothers and me. I understood this to mean that I needed to learn all languages, and quick. I had Spanish in school and outside, English at home. But my books told me Japanese was a truly different language, as was Chinese and Russian and Hebrew and Arabic, and I was frankly concerned about my abilities to absorb all of them. Gulp...

My father, on the other hand, wrote about music, so language was a plaything, a game, an endlessly amusing tool to tickle and challenge. We climbed over each other verbally at the dinner table to make him chuckle; we built language pyramids higher and higher, to see when it would all topple.

Now, looking back, I don't know what to think about my relationship to language. I have never forgotten a bus ride when I was seventeen, arrogant and angry, sitting next to a middle-aged union organizer.  I chewed his ear with my tirades about humanity's stupidities, and finally he turned to me and said, "When you no longer speak in right angles, you will have found your voice." That shut me up. I have been trying to rid myself of right angles ever since.