Literacy as a Civil Right

Literacy as a Civil Right PDF Author: Stuart Greene
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9780820488684
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
The urgency to create equity in schools has never been greater, especially since legislators are considering the re-authorization of No Child Left Behind as a means to eliminating the achievement gap. Studies continue to show that increased standards, testing, and accountability have simply maintained the status quo. In response, this book proposes alternative ways of addressing these educational inequities, taking an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the complex historical, social, and global issues that stand in the way of ensuring that all students have access to literacy - issues that policy makers and educators can no longer ignore. Literacy as a Civil Right assembles an impressive group of essays that broaden the conversation taking place about school reform, unmasking an ideology that maintains unequal relations of power in school and society. The ideas presented here will help readers re-imagine success in schools by understanding the possibilities that grow from a democratic vision of education. Together, this book provides an alternative framework to increased testing, offering a more humane vision of education that values agency, rigor, civic responsibility, and democracy.

Literacy as a Civil Right

Literacy as a Civil Right PDF Author: Stuart Greene
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9780820488684
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Get Book Here

Book Description
The urgency to create equity in schools has never been greater, especially since legislators are considering the re-authorization of No Child Left Behind as a means to eliminating the achievement gap. Studies continue to show that increased standards, testing, and accountability have simply maintained the status quo. In response, this book proposes alternative ways of addressing these educational inequities, taking an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the complex historical, social, and global issues that stand in the way of ensuring that all students have access to literacy - issues that policy makers and educators can no longer ignore. Literacy as a Civil Right assembles an impressive group of essays that broaden the conversation taking place about school reform, unmasking an ideology that maintains unequal relations of power in school and society. The ideas presented here will help readers re-imagine success in schools by understanding the possibilities that grow from a democratic vision of education. Together, this book provides an alternative framework to increased testing, offering a more humane vision of education that values agency, rigor, civic responsibility, and democracy.

Freedom Writing

Freedom Writing PDF Author: Rhea Estelle Lathan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780814117880
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Through a blend of African American cultural theory and literacy and rhetorical studies highlighting the intellectual and pedagogical traditions of African American people, Rhea Estelle Lathan argues that African Americans have literacy traditions that represent specific, culturally influenced ways of being in the world.

Self-Taught

Self-Taught PDF Author: Heather Andrea Williams
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807888974
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
In this previously untold story of African American self-education, Heather Andrea Williams moves across time to examine African Americans' relationship to literacy during slavery, during the Civil War, and in the first decades of freedom. Self-Taught traces the historical antecedents to freedpeople's intense desire to become literate and demonstrates how the visions of enslaved African Americans emerged into plans and action once slavery ended. Enslaved people, Williams contends, placed great value in the practical power of literacy, whether it was to enable them to read the Bible for themselves or to keep informed of the abolition movement and later the progress of the Civil War. Some slaves devised creative and subversive means to acquire literacy, and when slavery ended, they became the first teachers of other freedpeople. Soon overwhelmed by the demands for education, they called on northern missionaries to come to their aid. Williams argues that by teaching, building schools, supporting teachers, resisting violence, and claiming education as a civil right, African Americans transformed the face of education in the South to the great benefit of both black and white southerners.

Literacy and Racial Justice

Literacy and Racial Justice PDF Author: Catherine Prendergast
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 9780809325245
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
In anticipation of the fiftieth anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, Catherine Prendergast draws on a combination of insights from legal studies and literacy studies to interrogate contemporary multicultural literacy initiatives, thus providing a sound historical basis that informs current debates over affirmative action, school vouchers, reparations, and high-stakes standardized testing. As a result of Brown and subsequent crucial civil rights court cases, literacy and racial justice are firmly enmeshed in the American imagination--so much so that it is difficult to discuss one without referencing the other. Breaking with the accepted wisdom that the Brown decision was an unambiguous victory for the betterment of race relations, Literacy and Racial Justice: The Politics of Learning after Brown v. Board of Education finds that the ruling reinforced traditional conceptions of literacy as primarily white property to be controlled and disseminated by an empowered majority. Prendergast examines civil rights era Supreme Court rulings and immigration cases spanning a century of racial injustice to challenge the myth of assimilation through literacy. Advancing from Ways with Words, Shirley Brice Heath's landmark study of desegregated communities, Prendergast argues that it is a shared understanding of literacy as white property which continues to impact problematic classroom dynamics and education practices. To offer a positive model for reimagining literacy instruction that is truly in the service of racial justice, Prendergast presents a naturalistic study of an alternative public secondary school. Outlining new directions and priorities for inclusive literacy scholarship in America, Literacy and Racial Justice concludes that a literate citizen is one who can engage rather than overlook longstanding legacies of racial strife.

Radical Equations

Radical Equations PDF Author: Robert Moses
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807031690
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
The remarkable story of the Algebra Project, a community-based effort to develop math-science literacy in disadvantaged schools—as told by the program’s founder “Bob Moses was a hero of mine. His quiet confidence helped shape the civil rights movement, and he inspired generations of young people looking to make a difference”—Barack Obama At a time when popular solutions to the educational plight of poor children of color are imposed from the outside—national standards, high-stakes tests, charismatic individual saviors—the acclaimed Algebra Project and its founder, Robert Moses, offer a vision of school reform based in the power of communities. Begun in 1982, the Algebra Project is transforming math education in twenty-five cities. Founded on the belief that math-science literacy is a prerequisite for full citizenship in society, the Project works with entire communities—parents, teachers, and especially students—to create a culture of literacy around algebra, a crucial stepping-stone to college math and opportunity. Telling the story of this remarkable program, Robert Moses draws on lessons from the 1960s Southern voter registration he famously helped organize: “Everyone said sharecroppers didn't want to vote. It wasn't until we got them demanding to vote that we got attention. Today, when kids are falling wholesale through the cracks, people say they don't want to learn. We have to get the kids themselves to demand what everyone says they don't want.” We see the Algebra Project organizing community by community. Older kids serve as coaches for younger students and build a self-sustained tradition of leadership. Teachers use innovative techniques. And we see the remarkable success stories of schools like the predominately poor Hart School in Bessemer, Alabama, which outscored the city's middle-class flagship school in just three years. Radical Equations provides a model for anyone looking for a community-based solution to the problems of our disadvantaged schools.

Interests and Opportunities

Interests and Opportunities PDF Author: Steve Lamos
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 0822977400
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
In the late 1960s, colleges and universities became deeply embroiled in issues of racial equality. To combat this, hundreds of new programs were introduced to address the needs of "high-risk" minority and low-income students. In the years since, university policies have flip-flopped between calls to address minority needs and arguments to maintain "Standard English." Today, anti-affirmative action and anti-access sentiments have put many of these high-risk programs at risk. In Interests and Opportunities, Steve Lamos chronicles debates over high-risk writing programs on the national level and, locally, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Using critical race theorist Derrick Bell's concept of "interest convergence," Lamos shows that these programs were promoted or derailed according to how and when they fit the interests of underrepresented minorities and mainstream whites (administrators and academics). He relates struggles over curriculum, pedagogy, and budget, and views their impact on policy changes and course offerings. Lamos finds that during periods of convergence, disciplinary and institutional changes do occur, albeit to suit mainstream standards. In divergent times, changes are thwarted or undone, often using the same standards. To Lamos, understanding the past dynamics of convergence and divergence is key to formulating new strategies of local action and "story-changing" that can preserve and expand race-consciousness and high-risk writing instruction, even in adverse political climates.

Literacy and Racial Justice

Literacy and Racial Justice PDF Author: Catherine Prendergast
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 9780809325252
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
In anticipation of the fiftieth anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, Catherine Prendergast draws on a combination of insights from legal studies and literacy studies to interrogate contemporary multicultural literacy initiatives, thus providing a sound historical basis that informs current debates over affirmative action, school vouchers, reparations, and high-stakes standardized testing. As a result of Brown and subsequent crucial civil rights court cases, literacy and racial justice are firmly enmeshed in the American imagination--so much so that it is difficult to discuss one without referencing the other. Breaking with the accepted wisdom that the Brown decision was an unambiguous victory for the betterment of race relations, Literacy and Racial Justice: The Politics of Learning after Brown v. Board of Education finds that the ruling reinforced traditional conceptions of literacy as primarily white property to be controlled and disseminated by an empowered majority. Prendergast examines civil rights era Supreme Court rulings and immigration cases spanning a century of racial injustice to challenge the myth of assimilation through literacy. Advancing from Ways with Words, Shirley Brice Heath's landmark study of desegregated communities, Prendergast argues that it is a shared understanding of literacy as white property which continues to impact problematic classroom dynamics and education practices. To offer a positive model for reimagining literacy instruction that is truly in the service of racial justice, Prendergast presents a naturalistic study of an alternative public secondary school. Outlining new directions and priorities for inclusive literacy scholarship in America, Literacy and Racial Justice concludes that a literate citizen is one who can engage rather than overlook longstanding legacies of racial strife.

Human Rights Literacies

Human Rights Literacies PDF Author: Cornelia Roux
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319995677
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
This book adds impetus to the nexus between human rights, human rights education and material reality. The dissonance between these aspects is of growing concern for most human rights educators in various social contexts. The first part of the book opens up new discourses and presents new ontologies and epistemologies from scholars in human rights, human rights education and human rights literacies to critique and/or justify the understandings of human rights’ complex applications. Today’s rapidly changing social contexts and new languages attempting to understand ongoing dehumanization and violations, put enormous pressure on higher education, educators, individuals working in social sciences, policy makers and scholars engaged in curricula making.The second part demonstrates how global interactions between citizens from different countries with diverse understandings of human rights (from developed and developing democracies) question the link between human rights and it’s in(ex)clusive Western philosophies. Continuing inhumane actions around the globe reflect the failure of human rights law and human rights education in schools, higher education and society at large. The book shows that human rights education is no longer a blueprint for understanding human rights and its universal or contextual values presented for multicomplexial societies. The final chapters argue for new ontologies and epistemologies of human rights, human rights education and human rights literacies to open-up difficult conversations and to give space to dissonant and disruptive discourses. The many opportunities for human rights education and literacies lies in these conversations.

Civil Rights Since 1787

Civil Rights Since 1787 PDF Author: Jonathan Birnbaum
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814782159
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 958

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Book Description
Editors Birnbaum (writer) and Taylor (history, Florida International U.) have gathered an impressive array of documentary materials from a variety of sources, including excerpts from books and articles, and recent newspaper articles. Their material, divided into the broad categories of slavery, reconstruction, segregation, the second reconstruction, backlash redux, and towards a third reconstruction, traces the ongoing black struggle for civil rights from the arrival of the first Africans to America today. Each major section begins with a brief introduction by the editors. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

Building Content Literacy

Building Content Literacy PDF Author: Roberta L. Sejnost
Publisher: Corwin Press
ISBN: 1452209847
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
This guide presents research-based strategies that enable secondary teachers to increase adolescent learning while meeting standards by incorporating reading, writing, and critical thinking into content instruction.