I suppose it is just coincidence that I happened to receive copies of these two books written from a very similar perspective within the last couple of months, but it is not coincidence that both seem to me to have much to say to teachers in the adult basic education field. Both books deal with teaching reading and writing using approaches that are based upon explicitly political foundations. Both authors feel that a focus on reading and writing and a focus on social justice are not in opposition, but are intimately and intrinsically tied together and should be interwoven so as to mutually support each other. And both emphasize that students (whether teens or adults) will read and write, and improve their reading and writing abilities, when they are interested in and care about what it is they are reading and writing about.
Thus each book presents approaches to literacy that simultaneously emphasize teaching about social justice (exploring the inequalities of race, class, and sex, for example, or seeking role models of those who work to make a better world) and working with students to develop their literacy and language abilities, their skills and capacities in reading and writing. As a result, many of their students who generally see no place for themselves in the world of schools and colleges, words and books, are drawn into reading and writing through the various activities they describe, which engage students in a critical exploration of their worlds. Likewise, reading, writing, and language skills are seen as crucial tools for students to develop in order for them to be able to work for social justice, both for themselves and for others.
At the same time, both books are great sources of ideas and inspiration for any adult basic education teacher who is working with learners on reading and writing, as each author draws from her many years of experience to present a very practical collection of teaching methods and suggestions that practitioners can use and adapt. Each book presents numerous activities built around a variety of different themes, activities that are designed to encourage and help students to read a wide range of texts and to write a variety of different types of pieces, to think actively about what they are reading and to respond critically and creatively to construct meaning for themselves from the text, to respond in helpful ways to each other's writing and to work effectively on revising their own work. Any adult basic education teacher should find material that is both provocative and useful in these books.
Linda Christensen has been teaching public high school students in Portland, Oregon, for over twenty years. In Reading, Writing, and Rising Up, she describes the ways in which she works to create a community of learners within her classes that is focused on using and developing the tools of reading and writing to explore and critique the world around them. Concentrating on such themes as childhood and family, unlearning myths, the politics of language, and immigration, she provides students with opportunities for personal reflection and expression as well as critical examination and discussion of their community and country. In the book she includes detailed lesson plans, along with copies of many of the written forms she uses to help students understand and respond to their reading and help them plan and evaluate their writing. For example, various parts of the book deal with one of the things that teachers often find most difficult--working with students on writing essays. She includes suggestions for helping students to get started, assess their own work, revise their writing, etc. The book also contains dozens of samples of her students' writings on a wide range of topics.
Rachel Martin is an adult educator whom some of you may remember from the time she spent working here in Boston and who has also taught in Philadelphia and Albuquerque. Throughout Listening Up (and especially in the first third of it) she seeks to examine the theory that underlies her own teaching and, by extension, that of others in the field. While recognizing the importance of the work of Paulo Freire, she provides a critique of Freire's approach from a point-of-view that incorporates poststructuralist and psychoanalytical perspectives. At the risk of simplifying Martin's points here, I'll attempt to summarize this by saying that poststructuralism would require us to acknowledge the multiple components that comprise most people's sense of identity, while the Freirian approach, she feels, can push people into recognizing only a single aspect of who they are and doesn't recognize the full complexity of people's lives and identities. Likewise, psychoanalytic theory, she says, can help account for the difficulty teachers often encounter in trying to help students move along the prescribed Freirian path where study is expected to lead to action. This discussion will be of value to anyone who is interested in Freirian approaches to adult education, but the bulk of the book isn't dependent on sorting through these theoretical issues. In the rest of her book, Martin presents her own experiences with and practical ideas about doing literacy work with adults and teens in a variety of school and community settings. As does Christensen, she provides a wealth of activities, ideas, and useful suggestions, based around a variety of themes, to help learners develop strategies and skills for reading and writing while simultaneously grappling with issues and topics that are of interest and importance to them.
The irony here, of course, is that most of the present-day so-called school reformers who seemingly have no real strategies for improving education beyond chanting "back-to-basics" and bombarding students with standardized tests would probably be loathe to recommend the approaches urged by both Christensen and Martin because of their explicitly political nature, despite the fact that both writers demonstrate how effective these approaches are in engaging students who otherwise are generally turned off by school and helping them to improve their reading and writing abilities. Learners get involved in reading and writing as efforts to create meaning, as ways of investigating, understanding, and responding to the world in which they live. The decontextualized and often uninteresting material they are frequently expected to read and write does little to engage them or to awaken their interest in literacy. The approaches recommended and provided in these two books help teachers and students work together to, as Christensen puts it, "find the heartbeat of a class" and make this sort of teaching and learning come alive.
(Copies of both of these books can be found in the A.L.R.I. library.)
Steve Reuys is Staff Development Coordinator at the A.L.R.I.