News and Events
Features
LiteracyStudies@OSU Spring Lecture: Ira Shor Asks "Can Critical Literacy Change the World?"
Ira Shor
Shor explained how the publication of Newsweek's December 1975 cover story "Why Johnny Can't Read" set off the climate of "literacy crisis" American education has been involved in for the past 35 years. Newsweek's alarmist claims were based on the changes which had occurred in American education in tandem with the Civil Rights and student anti-war movements of the 1960s, which, according to Shor, "demand[ed] that society be run for the benefit of ordinary citizens." The pedagogies inspired by these social movements emphasized what Shor calls "literacy from below"—literacy skills associated with citizenship and democratic participation which emphasized critical thinking—rather than the traditional, drill- and skill-based literacy instruction methods that had dominated American education through the 1950s. The shift away from older, "neutral," skill-based methods of education to overtly political pedagogies inspired by 60s social movements represented a cultural change that threatened traditional values, a change that was even more threatening because it targeted children. In the Cold War era of the 1970s, these democratizing and social activist oriented pedagogies were seen as the beginning of a dangerous progression toward socialism which threatened American values.
The political overtones of these educational debates inspired media reports like the Newsweek story, as well as 1983's A Nation at Risk report commissioned by the Regan administration, which has promoted a discourse of "literacy crisis" which has dominated media coverage of education since 1975. In this politicized climate, literacy education came to be seen as fertile ground for the ideological formation of children, and both the traditional and progressive sides of the debate designed literacy curricula which emphasized their own values. Shor used these parallel literacy programs to discuss how literacy skills themselves are indeterminate tools: they can be used either to support social change or to restore previous authority (which, Shor argued was based on exclusion which the 1960s social movements called into question).
After this extensive explanation which set the stage for his views on literacy, Shor went on to describe the critical literacy paradigm he advocates, which falls into the progressive pedagogies for social democracy he outlined in his overview of American literacy education in the last 35 years. The central tenets of Shor's conception of critical literacy have to do with resistance to the traditional educational model focused on creating docile subjects designed to become capitalist cogs through conceiving of literacy broadly (as more than just reading) and emphasizes teaching content as a way to teach forms. This method goes against the traditional educational procedure of teaching skills before content.
The content of a curriculum based on on Shor's critical literacy would be similar to the "contact zone" pedagogy Mary Louise Pratt outlined in the postcolonial education theory she developed in the early 1990s. Shor used Pratt's watchwords of "auto-ethnography" and "transculturation" to explain the kind of eduational status quo resistance he envisions. Critical literacy in auto-ethnography would involve engaging with and resisting the representations media and society have created of students, which contests dominant discourse while it recognizes the fact that students are embedded and constructed by existing power structures. The value of auto-ethnography for Shor lies in the fact that this critical literacy practice requires students to be aware both of themselves apart from society and of their construction by others in society. Similarly, Shor's use of the concept of transculturation describes the process whereby members of subordinate groups choose which aspects of dominant culture they absorb and how these cultural values or processes are used within their community. The value of this approach for Shor is the emphasis it places on the agency people have in the process of cultural dissemination and change, rather than viewing minority or oppressed groups as powerless victims steam-rolled into assimilation by dominant culture.
Shor used his own critical literacy pedagogy to answer a resounding "yes" to the question posed in the title of his lecture. Through its promotion of a critical approach to culture and an in-depth analysis of the historical forces shaping the long-standing debate over the role education plays in cultural change, Shor argued that critical literacy can change the world.
A pioneer in the field of critical education, Ira Shor teaches seminars in literacy and conquest, Paulo Freire and critical pedagogy, whiteness studies, domination and oppositional discourses, composition theory and practice, and the rhetorics of space, place, and resistance at CUNY. In the English Department of the College of Staten Island, he teaches first-year composition, non-fiction writing, coming-of-age narratives, multicultural literature, and mass media. Shor worked with friend and mentor Paulo Freire for many years and they co-authored A Pedagogy for Liberation, the first "talking" book Freire published with a collaborator. Shor's Empowering Education and When Students Have Power, two foundational texts in critical pedagogy, are widely used in teacher education. His Critical Teaching and Everyday Life-grew out of Shor's literacy teaching for Open Admission students in the City University in the 1970s-was the first book-length treatment of Freire-based critical methods in the North American context.
For more information about LiteracyStudies@OSU, email literacystudies@osu.edu or visit their Web site.
