While reading this whole chapter, I couldn’t help but trying to decide which ideology that I would use in my classroom. I thought this is impossible to choose just one! Then thankfully the end told me I didn’t have to pick just one. Thank goodness!
I enjoyed the idea of progressive literacy the most at first. That made me the most sense to me. Being able to have the best of both worlds in the classroom with my students. I grew up always learning how important it is that you know the basic writing skills and you knew what to do with that information as well. I like the idea of students being able to choose the things that they learned about but I also understand the issues with that as well. I’m sure there would need to be some sort of guiding them to choose things that would be appropriate for certain kinds of topics. I know that I personally learn better when I’m able to choose the things that I’m reading and writing about.
I thought the idea of cultural literacy was almost ridiculous. I understand the importance of learning about the “greats” in writing, but to think that that is the only way to succeed in this world is horribly close-minded and absolutely not my style. I think that this style is missing out on a lot of important things and should be combined with something else, or else it just sounds depressing.
Functional literacy also makes sense of course, but it seems so bland. To teach students all these skills is one thing, but to base everything that you know about them off of some reading and writing test scores doesn’t sounds too efficient either. Those kids would be missing out on all sorts of things. Some kids bomb those tests just because they don’t want to take them or they are having a bad day. That shouldn’t really be the only determining factor in the child’s education.
Like I said before, I think that in order to have a good understanding of literacy one would need to have a combination of all the good parts of each of the four I mentioned above. If you can just take the use of the basal readers, the “Great” books from history, the use of what students are interested in, and the politics of literature and mix those in one big pot one would have a lovely literacy stew to feed their students.
I enjoyed the idea of progressive literacy the most at first. That made me the most sense to me. Being able to have the best of both worlds in the classroom with my students. I grew up always learning how important it is that you know the basic writing skills and you knew what to do with that information as well. I like the idea of students being able to choose the things that they learned about but I also understand the issues with that as well. I’m sure there would need to be some sort of guiding them to choose things that would be appropriate for certain kinds of topics. I know that I personally learn better when I’m able to choose the things that I’m reading and writing about.
I thought the idea of cultural literacy was almost ridiculous. I understand the importance of learning about the “greats” in writing, but to think that that is the only way to succeed in this world is horribly close-minded and absolutely not my style. I think that this style is missing out on a lot of important things and should be combined with something else, or else it just sounds depressing.
Functional literacy also makes sense of course, but it seems so bland. To teach students all these skills is one thing, but to base everything that you know about them off of some reading and writing test scores doesn’t sounds too efficient either. Those kids would be missing out on all sorts of things. Some kids bomb those tests just because they don’t want to take them or they are having a bad day. That shouldn’t really be the only determining factor in the child’s education.
Like I said before, I think that in order to have a good understanding of literacy one would need to have a combination of all the good parts of each of the four I mentioned above. If you can just take the use of the basal readers, the “Great” books from history, the use of what students are interested in, and the politics of literature and mix those in one big pot one would have a lovely literacy stew to feed their students.
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