Reflections on Adult Learners of Language and Literacy ENGL C0853

As a course, I feel like the content learned was very beneficial for me. Prior to taking the Adult Learners class, I didn't really think about the complex needs of adult learners. Reading up on all the different theories of adult learners, and especially being exposed to the works of Malcolm Knowles, Paulo Freire and Jack Mezirow has broadened my scope of knowledge. I'm glad to have come across these great thinkers at this moment of my life. I'm also now more aware of the struggles and challenges of post-secondary institutions and adult education institutions. My whole perception of the community college has been radically altered, and I think that these institutions should be treated with the same attention and exposure as any other four year liberal college--even more so I think. I look forward to the next semester and hope the classes I take expand my intellectual breadth.

Pedagogy of the Arab Spring: Digital Literacy and Freireian Transformative Learning

Kevin Kudic

Professor Gleason

Adult Learners of Language and Literacy

5/9/2014

                                          Pedagogy of Tahrir Square:

           Digital Literacy and Transformative Learning in the Arab Spring

            The symbolic power of Tahrir Square took form as a manifestation of frustration, anger and indignant treatment of a people that had had enough. It seemed like the whole world was watching the beginning of a grand democratic uprising against everything the ancien regime in Egypt stood for. Decades after the brutal repression by the Mubarak regime, a community of activists, led primarily by young educated urbanites would come together demanding that the dictator step down. In Egypt, like many other Arab nations, the narrative was the systemic repression of a dictatorial regime. Egypt’s ruthless Hosni Mubarak created an atmosphere of fear during the 29 years of his brutal regime enforced by the secret police, where “torture was systematic, and often extreme, and corruption was endemic” (Olster).  Indeed, the litany of injustices committed across the Arab world is harrowing and as an article of The Nation aptly summarizes, includes: 

 [P]etty and large-scale corruption; police brutality; abuse of power;                                     favoritism; unemployment; poor wages; unequal opportunities; inefficient or                                    nonexistent public services; lack of freedom of expression and association; state                        control of media, culture and education; and many other dimensions of the                                       modern Arab security state (Khouri). 

As a socio-cultural movement, the Arab Spring required re-tooling and grassroots organization from the bottom-up. This form of organizing was primarily through the use of ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies). Socio-cultural movements like the Arab Spring, encompassing many Arab countries, needed a tool to connect people together to inform and try to connect people together and ICTS were used to create networks and a robust discussion among the population that circumvented the repressive ways that regimes in various Arab regions tried to stifle dissent in their countries.

            Viewed through the perspective of the teachings of Paulo Freire, I will argue that digital literacy was an important tool in the Arab Spring for creating a transformative learning environment. I will show that digital literacy can be an effective tool to link people’s experiences together and create a transformative learning experience where people are transformed from passive Objects to active Subjects.  Transformative learning is not just an experience relegated to a classroom but a cultural phenomenon that can happen anywhere and can use expansive public spaces such as the Internet to change the way we view certain concepts.

            Although the Arab Spring movement is too large to generalize and each country that was affected has its own distinct history and political development, nevertheless one of the common factors uniting these countries is the increasing number of users that are occupying digital spaces and using different forms of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. These activists create networks collectively organized and sharing a strong sense of solidarity that “challenged dictators, their online censors, and the offline police. Members of networks created revolutionary content on their mobiles and digital media, and they distributed this same content to their friends, families, and members of other networks” (Allague & Kuebler 1436). A space like this was critical for these users to help organize and spread information about the protests. New media like Facebook and Twitter are giving activists and society in general a way to change or challenge the status quo. Therefore, we can presume that digital literacy will be an important factor in creating an alternative discourse that will challenge the status quo and fight censorship and repression. It is digital literacy that has given the Arab Spring its transformative moment in history.

            Rising Internet usage in the Arab world has made a connected society that came together during a critical moment of social rupture. According to the Arab Social Media Report, In Tunisia, during the first two weeks of January 2011, shortly after the self-immolation of Mohammed Bouzazi, Facebook usage went up 8 percent, which also signaled a growing interest in political discussion sparked by Facebook discussion (Fig. 3). In Egypt, 78.15 percent of Facebook users are between the ages of 15-29 (Fig. 9). This large base of young urbanites was able to create robust discussion and activism online.

            Indeed, the role of digital literacy in challenging dominant institutions cannot be underestimated, “overall, the input of the social media networks was critical in performing two overlapping functions: (a) organizing the protests and (b) disseminating information about them, including publicizing protesters’ demands internationally (Facebook reportedly outmatched Al Jazeera in at least the speed of news dissemination) (Stepanova 2).” The fact that the Internet could provide a platform, a digital space where ideas could be expressed is a testament to the power of social media sites to be the potential for a true democratic space. In this context, digital literacies such as Facebook and Twitter provided outlets to voice grievances and rally people. Egyptians used this digital literacy space as a way to educate people about the injustice that was being done to them. This was followed by extreme government responses in trying to shut down the amount of activity on ICTs but to no avail.  An article in Wired notes, “the powers-that-be can—and certainly did—persecute bloggers and infiltrate dissidents’ social networks, hoping to undermine plans and root out influential rabble-rousers. But compared with the likes of China’s leaders, the Arab-world governments proved largely inept in their countermeasures—so much so that in the case of Egypt, authorities resorted to shutting off Internet and telecom service” (Wolman par 3). Although governments tried to find a way to break these networks, digital media proved to be a resilient space for activism.

            New Media allowed activists a safe space that normally isn’t offered in a classroom setting, or if allowed would be censored due to the repressive natures of many of these autocratic Arab states. In a sense, the digital space of Facebook and Twitter were the substitutes for traditional classrooms. Once these spaces are established, a form of dialogue where people can begin to discuss the things that make up their reality begins to take place. Freire stresses the importance of generative themes as important themes to begin dialogue. These generative themes are meant to provoke thought and discussion. It creates the content of a transformative learning classroom and “inaugurates the dialogue of education as the practice of freedom” (Pedagogy of the Oppressed 96).

            In Education for Critical Consciousness, Freire breaks down some of the key components of a basic literacy course following the transformative learning approach. Instead of classrooms, there are “culture circles” where there are “coordinators” that engage in dialogue with the students (42). The students themselves would choose the content; these generative themes would be the words used to facilitate the dialogue. The end result of this process was that the students were not the “recipients” of knowledge but active creators (43). In the case of the Arab Spring many countries resorted to digital spaces to create keywords and ideas creating discussion. These weren’t developed in a traditional classroom setting but took the form of hashtags: 
  
 On Twitter, the hashtag “Egypt” had 1.4 million mentions in the three months of  the year. Other hashtags – which are essentially search terms – “Jan25” had 1.2m  mentions; “Libya” had 990,000; “Bahrain” had 640,000; and “protest” had  620,000. The flurry of tweets spiralled during the turning points of the uprisings (Huang).

These hashtags would provide a kind of generative theme throughout the course of the moments of the Arab Spring that correlated with the highest degree of social unrest creating the generative theme that would foster discussion in the collective populations of the Arab Spring.  

            In Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, Philip Howard analyzes the civil unrest during the elections in Tehran in June 2009. As the election crisis unfurled, Iranians took to the streets and violence erupted: “On June 20^th, Neda Agha-Soltan was shot dead at a demonstration…videos of her blood pooling on the street were uploaded to YouTube” (5). The result of her death led to a flurry of Tweets and activity on social media sites: 

Twitter user persiankiwi had 24,000 followers by day 6 of the protests…                                  StopAhmadi kept more than 6,000 followers alert to photos streaming up to Flickr. The Twitter service itself was registering 30 new posts a minute with the #IranElection identifier…YouTube became the repository for the digitally captured, lived experiences of the chaotic streets of Tehran (5). 

Although the events that unfolded in Iran did not automatically topple the regime, it gave activists the digital tools to sustain a network that provided a counter-narrative to the events unfolding and how it was depicted in the official media. It is important to stress that the goal of any transformative learning experience rooted in political awakening does not lead to a substitution of one form of government for another. Freire cautions against reactionary politics that seem to offer quick remedies of a society’s woes and denounces “rebellious attitudes” that simply mobilize the oppressed masses to rebellion without cultivating a radical critical spirit (Pedagogy of Freedom 74-75). True transformative learning allows people to be active makers of their realities, to again use Freire’s term of “reading the world,” it allows people to give a different interpretation to the events unfolding around them.  In the case of the Arab Spring it allowed people to denounce the systemic violence of regimes and say enough is enough. Traditional forms of media presume that people are ignorant and therefore prone to propaganda. Noam Chomsky in his assessment of censorship and state control quotes Walter Lippmann, calling the majority of the masses of people in society the ‘bewildered herd’ (Chomsky on Miseducation 22). What inevitably ends up happening is that the people begin to fight back and add tension to the official narrative. They create new infrastructures that challenge the status quo so that “they support the process of learning new approaches to political representation, of testing new organizational strategies, and of cognitively extending the possibilities and prospects for political transformation from one context to another” (Howard 8). This creates transformative learning and produces active makers of history. Freire labels the acceptance of facts without questioning it the banking method of education. In order to undergo transformative learning, people must not just passively accept facts, or “communiques” as Freire calls it, but constantly question so that we create a more democratic world. If not, “[e]ducation thus becomes and act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor” (Pedagogy Of the Oppressed 72).  In using digital literacy, like in the case of Iran, to post pictures, challenge official narratives and show the world different perspectives on what is happening, it refutes Lippman’s concept of the “bewildered herd” and turns Objects into Subjects.  The people actively contribute and form their own narrative.    

            Paulo Freire’s theory of transformative learning was rooted in a socio-emancipatory scheme of awakening the masses to consciousness. His efforts focused on adult basic literacy to try to give students the tools they needed to reach conscientization. He would not just give basic literacy lessons, but would fundamentally change the relationship of teacher-student, the way knowledge is acquired and the action each student must take in order to impact their community. This form of literacy was meant to be a means to an end and went beyond just simply de-coding alpha-numeric systems on a piece of paper. A deeper ramification would be to consider the relationship of a person with the world around him/her and how literacy fundamentally changes it.  As Freire puts it, “[i]t is impossible to carry out my literacy work or to understand literacy…by divorcing the reading of the word from the reading of the world” (Literacy: Reading the Word and the World 49). It follows that the “reading of the world” is an important step in the Freirian process of conscientization. Could we also see the effects of “reading the world” when it comes to social movements? Perhaps it can be useful to see social movements as having a pre-requisite moment of uncovering, or stripping away the layers of society that try to oppress them.

            Paulo Freire’s adult literacy aims were to create a citizenry that would use literacy to change the environment around them making them active citizens. Inspired by the Cuban mass literacy campaign, Freire would go to the Brazilian countrysides to initiate a basic literacy program that would galvanize the peasants who were the most dispossessed out of all of the people in Brazil. Freire’s ideas take a page from the Cuban revolution’s ideas and insistence on the importance of educating adults to create a more democratic and open community. His goal with the literacy campaign in Brazil was to make the peasants realize that the states of oppression they experience could be changed through revolutionary consciousness. Specifically, it gave peasants the attitude and frame of mind to confront existing oppression and demand the dignity of equal pay as rural workers. It allows rural workers to organize and demand justice. Freire’s implementation of transformative education through basic literacy had a direct way of communicating to the people that challenged the traditional classroom milieu. This approach is anathema to how traditional literacy courses are normally taught where the content is so removed from the lives of the students that it ends up shutting down the interest and therefore the intellectual and emotional attachment a student should have towards the learning material. As Freire notes, 

We wanted a literacy program which would be an introduction to the                                              democratization of culture, a program with men as its Subjects rather than as                               patient recipients, a program which itself would be an act of creation, capable of                            releasing other creative acts, one in which students would develop the impatience                              and vivacity which characterize search and invention (43).       
    

In the case of the Arab Spring, there were no culture circles, or coordinators per se but there were active Subjects coming together tired of the routine oppression that they were facing in their country and throughout the region in Tunisia, Bahrain and Egypt but  in order for transformative learning to occur a fundamental shift in how we make meaning has to occur. In the case of the Arab Spring this meaning perspective was challenged and new methods of inclusion supported by digital spaces and collective activism helped give rise to a new form of critical consciousness that was conducive for a transformative learning experience. Freire summarizes this revolutionary consciousness and how it liberates:

To surmount the situation of oppression, people must first critically recognize its causes, so that through transforming action they can create a new situation, one which makes possible the pursuit of a fuller humanity. But the struggle to be more fully human has already begun in the authentic struggle to transform the situation. Although the situation of oppression is a dehumanized and dehumanizing totality affecting both the oppressors and those whom they oppress, it is the latter who must, from their stifled humanity, wage for both the struggle for a fuller humanity… (47).
 
--> --> This shift is integral to the overall holistic education program, which focuses not only on achieving literacy but connecting this to a deep change in consciousness. Conscientization, requires an overhaul in the way we relate to society moving from a passive state of dependency (Objects) to an active consciousness- raising state of independence (Subjects). This transformation seeks to empower individuals that suffer from the yoke of oppression. This oppression is not an imaginary force, but rather a real force employed and sustained by systemic inequalities that are embedded and taken for granted in the society

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Here it is useful to use Mezirow’s analysis of critical reflection in “How Critical Reflection Triggers Transformative Learning.” In any state where transformative learning occurs a  “meaning perspective” has been fundamentally altered. Mezirow makes the distinction between two different types of meaning schemes: perspectives and schemes. “Meaning perspectives are made up of higher-order schemata, theories, propositions, beliefs, prototypes, goal orientations, and evaluations, and what linguists call ‘networks of arguments.’” (2).

            These perspectives are habits that we take for granted, and the more we passively receive these constructs without critically analyzing them, the more it reinforces our “habits of expectation” (3-4). The Arab Spring then was a moment of awakening that drew people to challenge the status quo and change their world. This awakening coincides with Freire’s concept of conscientization. Analyzing the situation in a Freirian paradigm views a world in which the transformation of Object to Subject hinges on the confrontation of the world. In Education for Critical Consciousness, an Object is somebody that tacitly observes history and does nothing to change it, but an active Subject questions the existing reality and tries to change it (100-101). The Arab Spring created Subjects that were intent on not being mere passive recipients of Knowledge but active citizenry. These Subjects, the dissidents, believed that they were no longer beholden to the whims of an autocratic state but that they had essential rights and actively asserted their dignity as human beings. Therefore, transformative learning can be seen as happening within a cultural phenomenon that can happen anywhere people decide to awaken to conscientization. This widespread dissatisfaction spread and made people critically reflect on their status as an oppressed people. These constructs orient ourselves to society and establishes patterns of meaning that we carry with us everyday, so that the basic assumptions that we have about society, government, economy, politics, religion, and family are all internalized in our minds to create a form of ideology that Mezirow defines as

 …[A] form of prereflective consciousness, which does not question the validity of                        existing social norms and resists critique of presuppositions. Such social amnesia  is manifested in every facet of our lives— in the economic, political, social, health, religious, educational, occupational, and familial. Television has become a major force in perpetuating and extending the hegemony of mainstream ideology (16).

            This oppressive ideology works in conjunction with forces that seek to take away spaces from the people to critically express their views. The antidote to this annexation of space is for young activists to create their own spaces so that critical consciousness can be reached. If this isn’t done then ideology as a force that supports status quo and stifles dissent takes over public spaces so that people are left without a voice to speak out.    If public spaces are slowly being taken over by oppressive forces, then what is the other form of space where people can safely protest and voice their dissension? The Arab Spring shows that digital literacy and the ability to use the network as a means to an end in helping spread information during the peak moments of the Arab Spring, gives hope to a future increasingly becoming more and more controlling in terms of the restriction of Internet freedom. Digital literacies will be important tools for transformative learning and “writing the world.”

                                                              Works Cited

Allagui, Ilhem and Johanne Kuebler. “The Arab Spring and the Role of ICTs Editorial                        Introduction.” International Journal of Communications 5. (2011): 1435–1442.

Web. 26 April 2014.

Chomsky, Noam. Chomsky on Miseducation. Lanham, Maryland 20706: Rowman & Littlefield        Publishers, Inc. 2000. Print. 

Dubai School of Government. Arab Social Media Report Vol 1, No 1. Dubai, United Arab                Emirates: Dubai School of Government’s Governance and Innovation Program,     2011.     Web. 

Freire, Paulo. Education for Critical Consciousness. New York, N.Y. 10017. The   Continuum          Publishing Company. 1997. Print.

Freire, Paulo and Donaldo Macedo. Literacy: Reading the Word and the World. New Fetter               Lane, London: Routledge, 2001. Print. 

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of Freedom. Boston Way, Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield       Publishers, 1998. Print.

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York, N.Y. 10018. The Continuum                         International Publishing Group Inc. 2000. Print. 

Howard, Philip N. “Prologue: Revolution in the Middle East Will be Digitized.” The Digital          Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Information Technology and Political Islam. New  York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 5-9. Oxford Scholarship Online. Web. 7 May 2014. 

Huang, Carol. “Facebook and Twitter key to Arab Spring uprisings: report.” The National. The    National. Web. 26 April 2014.

Khouri, Rami G. “The Arab Awakening.” The Nation. The Nation. Web. 26 April 2014

Mezirow, Jack. “How Critical Reflection Triggers Transformative Learning.” Fostering critical     reflection in adulthood (1990): 1-20. Google Scholar. Web. 9 May 2014. 

Olster, Marjorie. “Mubarak Regime Abuses go Unpunished.” The World Post. The Huffington     Post. Web. 26 April 2014.

Stepanova, Ekaterina. “The Role of Information Communication Technologies in the ‘Arab           Spring’ Implications Beyond the Region.” PONARS Eurasia. PONARS Eurasia Policy     Memo No. 159 (2011): 1-6. Web. 26 April 2014. 

Wolman, David. “Facebook, Twitter, Help the Arab Spring Blossom.” Wired. Wired Magazine.   Web. 26 April 2014.

           

           

           

                                                               

Deborah Brandt's Literacy in American Lives: Challenge 1 Diversity of Literacy Sponsors

"Literacy instruction needs to develop from a sense of new role for schools, as a place where the ideological complexities (and inequalities) of literacy sponsorship are sorted through and negotiated. Basic literate ability requires the ability to position and reposition oneself among literacy's sponsoring agents as well as among competing forms of communication" (Brandt 198).


Questions for Discussion

1. How do you understand Brandt's message here? In what ways have you had to modify or adapt your literacy skills to meet new demands or technologies? 
2. What kinds of literacy transitions or adaptations might your students need to make?
3. How might educators help students increase access to literacy sponsorship opportunities that can support these transitions?

I think Brandt's message complicates the acquisition of basic literacy. It makes literacy a dynamic force between the students that obtain the literacy and the sponsor of literacy. Brandt makes this clear, when she describes basic literate ability as positioning and repositioning oneself. The literary sponsor might want the goal of literacy to meet one specific end that might benefit the sponsor but not necessarily the sponsoree. There is a push and pull momentum going on. Implicit in this distinction is the idea  that students are not simply empty vessels where they are de-coding words on a page and having the words being dictated to them. Here the banking method of Freire comes to mind: Students deposit knowledge through the medium of a teacher-depositor. Brandt's characterization of basic literate ability points to a more active role of the person that receives literacy; the student doesn't simply read the words on a page but actively as Freire puts it "reads the world" around him/her.

I'm curious as to what the "competing forms of communication" Brandt talks about are. Could they be different forms of communication like advertisements? Is this a sponsor of literacy?

The biggest literacy transition that I had to make was, by far, adapting to the digital literacy age. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the main medium for basic literacy will be through the complex interface of a smartphone/tablet. It isn't even necessarily the PC anymore. Increasingly, technology is becoming mobile (PC sales are at an all-time low and many experts in the industry have prophesied the impending doom of the personal computer)  and this even affects the literacy ability of navigating cell phones. Smart phones themselves can be a convoluted device for many people that suddenly had to transition from a handheld cellphone to a flashy Ipad or Android device. My parents, for one, consistently bug me on this issue and the idea of even a simple tap on the screen to update something gets my mother nervous.


I teach ESL mostly to immigrant adults primarily Hispanic/Latino/a populations. In my opinion most of the students that I've come across are inadequately equipped for basic language acquisition for the 21st century. We live in age where digital language learning resources are so prevalent that it is inexcusable for any language-literacy center to not have the proper infrastructure to support it. Technological devices should be made easily available in these centers to support the kinds of multi-faceted language tools that are available online for free.

Another issue that I've noticed is that many of the jobs that immigrants have do not provide, or are not interested in providing literacy acquisition in a challenging way. Certain jobs may require English language skills that provide economic incentives for students to learn English, but on the whole there is a dearth of language acquisition opportunities in their workforce life. Many of the immigrants that I've taught spend quite a great deal of time at work but do not get the opportunity for any basic literacy whatsoever. This has to change somehow.

Back to School: Book review

Review: Back to School: Why Everyone Deserves a Second Chance at Education

Back to School: Why Everyone Deserves a Second Chance at Education. The New Press, 2012. Kindle file.

In Back to School: Why Everyone Deserves a Second Chance at Education, Mike Rose illustrates the importance of education-for-all by focusing on the students of adult educational institutions, such as community colleges and vocational schools. Increasingly, the students that occupy these institutions are non-traditional, and Rose understands that they are quickly becoming the norm. Public policy has tended to lean on the side of austerity when dealing with the educational outcome of institutions like community colleges. The burden of a higher education is put squarely on the shoulders of students: critics and educational pundits aligned with austerity measures want strict enactments for community colleges that are failing; any remedial programs that do not produce students capable of basic reading and writing skills translate into de-funding of schools. In this context, it is easy to generate a culture of indifference towards the people that actually encompass the various facets that define the non-traditional student. Rose sets out to rectify this oversight and emphasizes the wide cross-section of America that these students represent; it is this fact that animates Rose’s writing on the subject. At the heart of the argument of why obtaining an education is important is the link to the great democratic tradition of what an education represents. He does this by portraying and celebrating the achievements of students in spite of all the challenges they face in a landscape that is becoming more condemnatory of the adult student.

Rose illustrates the cultural milieu of the times by underpinning the core values that we carry about the role of individuals to be self-sufficient in society. Traditionally, we have had a romantic view of the American underdog as exemplified by the Horatio Alger character. The central myth that permeates our culture, as Rose points out, is the unflawed ability of social mobility to be the great equalizer of society, so that regardless of what your socio-economic background is, you can be successful by sheer determination and grit. This kind of worldview is a popular talking point on the Right and influences the stigma that tends to pervade the rhetoric when describing second-chance institutions. Right-wing ideology has been the driving force in calls for stricter policies towards second-chance institutions; any attempt to try to increase funding for adult education institutions is seen as big-government overspending, getting too involved. Worse there is an unspoken assumption that the students that are a significant population of these institutions, remedial students, are inherently deprived of the mental capabilities needed to excel in a traditional liberal arts setting. This prejudice creates an attitude of bigotry towards the non-traditional student that hinders progress.

Rose clearly sees the pernicious effects of this kind of toxic rhetoric in government policy discussions. At the heart of the discussion of second-chance institutions is challenging the assumptions that conservatives have had on social mobility. This rosy model of social mobility does not take into the account the significant obstacles that people must struggle with because of class, race or economic standing. Even worse, when these obstacles are present, it is assumed that they can easily be overcome by individual ability. This ultimately attributes the obstacles to the person and not to society. Rose sets out to challenge this paradigm that is being refuted by economists across all ideological spectrums. Economic opportunity is not equal for all and needs to be re-examined if we are going to create a society that can sustain and accommodate the specific challenges of the non-traditional student.

The model of an education linked to economic success and therefore social mobility, is hinged on the success of vocational schools to provide a pathway into the job market. Like many of his other books, a common theme of Rose is the intellectual richness of traditional blue-collar, or vocational activities. Back to School continues this discussion and offers important insight into the divide between the academic and the vocational. Many educators in the traditional vein of granting privilege to the humanities and the abstract models of thinking and creativity, lessened, or devalued the significance of vocational training, or vocational studies. Rose puts this divide in its historical context.

Historically, educators in the first decades of the twentieth century saw learning, especially reading and writing, as being mechanistic in its acquisition. In other words, the way a person learned a language, or its rules relating to grammar, phonology and meaning depended on how well one acquired its internal rules and logic. Very similar to a machine, one learned the rules of a language and all variations of these rules followed logically from one rule to the next. Therefore, if somebody were a remedial student, it simply meant that somewhere along the line they failed to internalize these rules. Educators and psychologists proceeded to create a whole list of clinical diagnoses and symptoms related to anybody that had basic reading and writing problems. A whole culture of treating remedial students like diagnosed patients emerged from this practice turning the job of a basic reading and writing teacher into that similar of a doctor.                        

Coupled with the implications of this kind of mechanical assessment of remedial students is the cultural prejudice towards manually skilled workers. Within the American psyche there is historical prejudice towards blue-collar technical skilled workers. Rose, again offers an informed historical commentary on the roots of this kind of prejudice going back to Western thought and the seminal The Republic. The division between body and mind was cemented, and “this set of beliefs and distinctions about knowledge, work, and the social order affects the structure of educational institutions in the United States (Ch. 5)” and creates a negative stigma towards any kind of work that was removed from the mind. Consequently, this division extended into the shape and form of vocational studies. It created a distinction between students that entered college and were academically prepared, and the vocational-track students that didn’t have the cognitive skills necessary to enter a liberal arts institution. It is through this artificial divide that, Rose argues, clouds the ability of policy makers to see the richness of cognitive activity that the students actually are engaged in. Missing from the broad, sweeping assumptions of remedial, or vocational students, as not being challenged enough academically, is a closer examination of what is actually going on in the classrooms. Much of what is usually fixated on, Rose says, is the failure and hardships of students instead of their achievements. By putting the remedial student into a continuum of the historical and cultural moment, Rose illustrates how students have been unfairly placed in the category of a vocational track based on antiquated notions of learning acquisition. He emphasizes the vast research that refutes this mechanistic style of learning and urges educators, policy makers and teachers to consider this fact.

It is this history that informs the assessment of a class that he observes that has incorporated a traditional vocational trade, like welding, with academic curricula and context. The class that Rose visits offers a model of how to bridge the academic-vocational divide. Through a creative curriculum that doesn’t inhibit students’ creativity, Rose observes engagement in all forms of traditional academic subjects such as math and even art. One student that he observes, Tommy, reflects on the intricacies of welding and the automatic response of the body in acquiring a skills over time that leads to a feeling of second-nature. Another observation that Rose makes is when students appreciate the skill of a perfect weld. The intimate connection between a traditionally vocational service like welding and the aesthetic appreciation of traditional art courses is made apparent by this observation. Speaking about the cognitive richness of welding is something that Mike Rose has passionately advocated over the many years that he has observed various jobs in the service industries. Imagine, Rose posits if the automotive vocational track incorporated elements of math and history in a sensible way. A more structured curriculum, Rose argues would go a long way into making these students successful. It would open the door for other vocational programs to follow, and would give a more fruitful classroom that incorporates the practical aspects of the vocational class with a rich and meaningful academic context. Such a weaving of academic and vocational sensibilities would give students a more nuanced understanding of their craft instead of a strictly economic application of getting a job. With this analysis, he offers a compelling case for why there has been a divide between academic and vocational studies and how this is intimately connected with the way society views a remedial student.

At the heart of the book is a daunting task for educators, policy makers, teachers and students alike. In order to adequately overhaul the way these second chance institutions try to help students succeed and transition successfully there needs to be a different evaluation system that takes into account the vast number of challenges that these institutions must deal with. Rose carefully looks at the data and statistics compiled on adult education institutions and finds many flaws in their conclusions.  

One compelling piece of data is that community colleges register the amount of incoming freshman students as the bar for whether a school is successful or not. Any student that drops out of a course no matter the situation is counted as a dropout and therefore a failure in the school’s part. Looking at an example of two students who dropped out reveals that they dropped out because of other job opportunities that may have opened up for them and not because of the difficulty or lack of interest in the class. It’s also true that “60 percent of community college students attend more than one community college, so we won’t get a complete picture of their postsecondary experience by focusing on their exit from the initial college” (Introduction). This seems like a very compelling set of statistics backed up with examples of real people undergoing real difficulties. The idea of using statistics to calculate policy decisions is one that should reflect more accurately what is actually happening on the ground. Initiatives such as setting benchmarks to schools that have a high percentage of students that exit remediation classes, Rose argues “has a common-sense approach” but it will “put a floor on whom they admit, accepting only those who have a better chance of succeeding, limiting opportunity for the most vulnerable (Introduction).” Statistical models and broad, sweeping generalizations that represent testing such as the No Child Left Behind Act and Common Core Standards have at the center of much controversy in education circles. This form of testing-as-evaluation seems to be happening across the board in all forms of education policy; they are simplistic solutions for a very complex problem.

Rose concludes that aggregate of data on these types of institutions do not paint a fair picture of the reality on the ground of these students. More than half aren’t even taking classes at one school exclusively, for example. He advocates for a more realistic and accurate picture that analyzes the different reasons why students go to secondary schools, why they quit, and what their long-term goals are. Any set of data that ignores the situation of students on the ground does them a disservice.

Together with these grim statistics there are structural deficits that when put together make institutions vulnerable to students losing faith in them. These little flaws can be seemingly benign, like non-sequential random number designating transfer-level English writing courses (Introduction) to the more deeper structural problems like the toss-up of qualified and dedicated instructors: some are very good and passionate about their work, others seem to just go through the motions. Counselors are too burdened with the amount of students they have to counsel, and this results in a counselor not having the time to connect with a student one-on-one intimately. These students are approaching college for the first time and need that sense of relief and comfort that a counselor can give them, but the packed schedule of many counselors just doesn’t allow for that connection. Many of these students face the challenge of trying to juggle a bunch of seemingly unconnected classes that don’t seem to match or fit each other. This problem is exacerbated by the increasing use of adjunct faculty that are juggling work in multiple campuses. These are problems that if not rectified can add more stress to a system that is already over-taxed with inadequate funding and overburdened staff.

Amidst all of these grim assessments there are examples of institutions that have implemented various reforms that have generated productive results with their students. Some schools mentioned like Hi Tech High and Big Picture Schools develop curricula that merge vocational learning with the traditional academic subjects. Rose observes that this should be done in a manner that is logical and meshes with the content and shouldn’t just be thrown into a set of curricula without any rhyme or reason. This could be done in a much more productive way if the social sciences weren’t so isolated from each other and actually contributed and shared information with each other. It is a disheartening picture when, as Rose indicates, in all of the journals in remediation research, “not one mentions the forty years of work on remedial or basic writing produced by teachers and researchers of writing (Ch. 5).” This kind of oversight is costly given the high stakes of remedial students.  

Central to Back to School is the notion of post-secondary institutions, especially community colleges, as centers of learning and places to instill civic duty and responsibility. The challenge of education-for-all must bring into question the reason of why an education is being pursued by so many students.  It is a desire deeply embedded in our most democratic spirit, ever since Horace Mann uttered the famous words of schools being a “great equalizer.” One of the main points that Rose makes is that policy makers have disproportionately focused too much time on the economic benefits of a PSE (Post-secondary education) degree. While focusing on the sole economic benefits, we forget about the more overlooked aspects of why a person chooses to get an education. This is where the heart of education-for-all comes into play and where Rose is able to humanize the students that make up these institutions. His vignettes of different people that are immersed in their school culture and really want to succeed makes the reader empathize with students and it offers a compelling reason why we shouldn’t be stigmatizing students that get a second chance through education. The students that Rose documents have worked hard and undergone family trouble, and economic hardship.

Overall Back to School is a clear and ringing evocation of the democratic ideas and values that a people’s college should live up to. Rose’s book is a valuable and much needed re-assessment of the need for education-for-all. It is a worthwhile read for policy makers, teachers, educators and the general public interested in the direction of a growing institution that will determine the country’s outlook. Much of the focus of adult education is placed solely on the economic benefits of a higher education, but Rose eloquently puts the purpose of education in its civic, intellectual and ethical sphere. The redemptive quality of many of the stories of students’ lives that Rose documents places the goal of education in a more personal way. This kind of narrative is missing in the public discourse, and hopefully more emphasis is placed on the holistic self-development of an education. Like many of his other works on adult education institutions, Rose is optimistic in his appraisal of the situation students face and focuses on what works when all of the best qualities of an institution come together. It is an important book that showcases the true potential of education-for-all and points policy makers and educators in the right direction towards a more inclusive and democratic future.

Cathy Davidson talks about our educational model stuck in the 19th century paradigm

Pedagogy of the Oppressed conference at Harvard

Video of Harvard conference celebrating 45th anniversary of POTO. Captions needed for Noam Chomsky though because it's barely audible.

A Narrative Response to Lives on the Boundary

Part two: Learning from the butcher.

The price of becoming older was losing the innocence that mythologized my parents. I was quick to judge them and I was unfair in my assessment of them. But it was necessary to destroy and re-create the images I had of them. My mother became the overbearing parent who focused on the aspects of my education and life that was controllable because she couldn’t control me otherwise. My father, who played a limited role in my educational upbringing was nevertheless a big impact on my life. Driven by an inordinate desire to orient me towards sports and physical abilities, he became a bully. His passion for soccer and the way he identified with the sport never connected with me. His behavior was inconsiderate about how I felt, or whether or not I really enjoyed sports. The interest in basketball I showed was smothered by his excessive coaching and hectoring. I would leave the basketball court feeling helpless and small unable to look at a basketball without some nascent fear of being watched by my father. When I told him I  wasn’t cut out for basketball, there was a pained and confused look on his face. Instead of seeing my response as a way to give myself autonomy and control in my life, he saw it as me being a flip-flopper and not serious about sports. In other words, I wasn’t a good son because I wasn’t serious about him.

In college, I was free to choose what I wanted to study. I settled on English as a major and developed a strong inclination to reading. This decision tensed the atmosphere around me because I always got the feeling that my consistent reading habits was somehow viewed as abnormal to him. It didn’t help that he made no effort to ask what I was reading or what my interests were. Once, he told me jokingly that I would get sick from reading too much. I knew that his hyperbole was meant as a critique of my reluctance to go out and interact with people—I was always an introvert and shy around people. The comment, however, proved to me how indifferent he was to me. Indifferent to my college life, my inner life. Through writing and learning about the power of different types of literacy I learned to accept my father for who he is. Learning and literacy is now a paradigm on how I view adult development and such ways of viewing literacy, such as horizontal literacy that takes into account certain cultures and practices that do not use written texts as the primary means of communication, made me understand the richness of my father’s work-life. My father wasn’t interested in the kinds of work that I was doing but this did not diminish him. Ephemeral as his interests in coaching were, there was a mind that inquired and made meaning out of life. This was something I had not seen before. I remember him taking me to the Associated supermarket on Ozone Park where he worked. I was young and bony, the white butcher’s smock big on me. It contrasted with the red streaks on my father’s smock. He showed me the basic setup of packaging and wrapping up cuts of meat all very much pre-packaged. Drawn into that cold frigid environment, I was introduced to the terminology of his workplace—placing cuts of meat on boats, or the Styrofoam trays, making sure a diaper, was used to absorb the excess blood acting as a buffer between the boat and the meat. Getting a crash course into the varieties of meat cuts that were used, some were more tender than other parts, others were tougher. Reflecting on this made me realize that my father used his workplace as an environment to acquire literacy. He had to remember all sorts of terminology, had to interact with customers and had to have the physical dexterity with his hands to make accurate cuts. The cognitive richness of my father’s life remains a deep reserve that I draw inspiration from still. I learned more from him than he will ever know.