Tuesday, September 18, 2012


In Wallowitz's explanation, she did a great job of linking critical literacy to self development, as well as encompassing knowledge based reasoning to shape the thinking of students and raises awareness about what is going on around them at any given time. Using the ideas proposed in the article, she talked about critical literacy as a liberating tool that selects facts from fiction and also filters facts from facts. I particularly like freire's theory of a bank education system where knowledge is simply deposited in the head of the student where it is never questioned but wholly accepted without criticism. There is a need to remove the veil from the eyes of our students to enable them think critically about what applies to them in different situations and how they would handle it differently. We need to talk about the expectations of the society but also allow them to be literate enough to make decisions based on their own analysis of the situation. The essence of social justice is to create a level playing field for all irrespective of certain characteristic differences, critical literacy helps students to right wrongs and read deep between the lines and filter out sugar coated stereotypes that may obstruct justice in a particular context. Freire also proposed a solution to this problem of banking system of education by introducing the "problem posing" concept, this is a concept that raises student cautiousness and a way to reveal real life situations that do not necessarily reflect their belief and expectation but help them to identify problems they never know existed and present them with the tools to deal with it effectively.  In conclusion, being critically literate is the first step towards social justice, which is then followed by a resistance to the norm, but rather view things with a different literate  perspective therefore making a decision for change. (oo)           

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