Return-Path: <nifl-povracelit@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id f4EMYbf00052; Mon, 14 May 2001 18:34:37 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 18:34:37 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <4c.15339131.2831b6de@aol.com> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-povracelit@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-povracelit@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-povracelit@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: AndresMuro@aol.com To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-povracelit@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-POVRACELIT:484] The K12 School Experiences of High School Dropouts X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas X-Mailer: Unknown (No Version) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Status: O Content-Length: 3889 Lines: 30 I apologize for what may appear a little dense, but I think that the following is serious and needs to be questioned and explored. I hope that Quigley, Reader and Strawn are participants in these listserves and respond. I just finished reading the article by Reader and Strawn with the above title in the latest issue of focus on Basics. I do not believe that I agree with the conclusions and wanted to explore this further. It has been a while since I read Quigley's Rethinking Literacy Education. In it, he talks about two psychological profiles: Field Dependent and Field Independent. According to Quigley Filed Dependent learners tend not to succeed in K-12 and some do return as adult students. However, since ABE mirrors the k-12 experience they tend to fail again. In my observations as a literacy program coordinator, I tend to agree with Quigley's points. Quigley also points out that adult students tend not to report having a negative past school experience. They attribute failure to situational barriers rather than disposition. However, he found that disposition is actually the major barrier. I think that situational and institutional barriers are more significant than Quigley believes. However, I do believe that dispositional barriers have a very negative impact on learning as a whole. Also, I think that poor disposition towards schooling is not always conscious. Therefore, students may not report it, which is one of the points of contention for Reder and Strawn. In fact, what people may report in questionnaires, even anonymous ones, have to do with their conscious, or unconscious perceptions of what an appropriate answer may be. Answers are also influenced by habitus. In other words, adults may reflect positively about school environments, since school, as a good thing, has been culturally ingrained in us. There are a whol! e host of forces, historical, cultural and social that construct the habitus that shapes our responses. Another person who explores resistance, but in terms of multicultural, political experiences is Ogbu. Ogbu classifies minorities as voluntary vs involuntary, and argues that involuntary minorities resist the whole school experience because it silences them, objectifies them, subordinates them, etc., etc. Such resistance is the grounding for "social theory" research in the US, grounded in Freire. I think that the implications for arguing against a theory of resistance are politically serious and also frightening. Theories of resistance are grounded on the idea that learners' subjectivities are essential in the development of pedagogies. Elsa Auerbach makes this clear in "Making Meaning, Making Change". Unfortunately, Quigley is weak in making the relationship between learners subjectivities and resistance clear in his book. Possibly because it may have forced him to make political implications more clear. This may have not allowed his work to become as mainstream as it did. Quigley's work, by becoming mainstream, opened a door for practitioners to access radical perspectives that can serve to deconstruct traditional teaching practice. Starwn's and Reader's, in my opinion, scientist, research could be an attempt to subvert this. I think that it is "scientist" because it completely ignores both subjectivity and habitus as essential elements of resistance. The problem! is that since some of the research is so depolitisized, it is hard to seriously explore cultural and contextual issues that affect our students. Finally, I want to include this in the next issue of Focus on Basics as a respond to the article. NCSALL people, please forward this tho the editor for consideration. Please respond, I think that this is serious. Andres PS: I wonder if Reader is familiar with Gramci's theory of organic intellectuals and Giroux later transformative vs status quo intellectuals.
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