Education, Language, Literacy, and Community
Using Paulo Freire’s “The Importance of the Act of Reading” as a starting point for thinking about your paper, compare and contrast the educational experiences of Richard Rodriquez, Barbara Mellix, Bell Hooks, Thomas Whitecloud, and Donaldo Macedo.
You might:
Compare and contrast the educational experiences of Rodriquez and Mellix in regard to language, literacy, and culture.
Describe how Hooks and Whitecloud view the role of language and culture in education and explain how their views relate to Rodriquez and Mellix.
Use examples from Macedo’s experience and explain why he concludes that asymmetry in education is less about cultural and language barriers and more about ideology. How is this idea reflected (or not) in the experiences of the other writers?
You might also consider the following:
How the experiences of these writers link back to Freire’s idea that “reading the world precedes reading the word,” and his idea that teaching is a political act.
The relationship between language and power.
Ways in which you believe language, literacy, and culture should be reflected in “education” and why?
