Talking About Literacy: Principles and Practice of Adult Literacy Education PDF
Preview Talking About Literacy: Principles and Practice of Adult Literacy Education
TALKING ABOUT LITERACY Principles and Practice of Adult Literacy Education Talking about Literacy re-examines dominant notions of what literacy is, and challenges the problem-solution reflex to the issue (the problem is illiteracy: the solution is more literacy). Literacy has enormous emotional and political associations, and the job of literacy educator often concerns changing attitudes and challenging prejudices – whether in the form of publicity strategies, counselling new students, or in curriculum design. In short, adult literacy education means not only teaching courses like ‘fresh start’, ‘basic skills’, ‘study skills’, ‘communication skills’, ‘language support’ and ‘return to study’, but also designing strategies to encourage people to see that these courses may meet their own interests – and educating them and others to rethink their own negative attitudes to ‘illiteracy’. The book looks in detail at five principles put forward by Jane Mace as central to the education of people who often can read, but wish they could read better; who, technically, can write, but have a desire to do so with more expression and coherence. These principles focus on five themes: context, inquiry, authorship, equality and community. Since it is all too easy for literacy education involving adults who do not have formal qualifications to stop short of teaching techniques for ‘correct’ writing, these principles mean taking seriously a view that adult students are writers as well as readers – that they have an entitlement to be read, as well as to read others. Jane Mace has worked for twenty years in adult literacy and community education. At Cambridge House Literacy Scheme, as tutor-organiser and then Director, she contributed to the shaping of policy in adult literacy programmes during the early years of the adult literacy campaign in the UK. At the Lee Community Education Centre, Goldsmiths’ College, she co-ordinated a programme of courses and projects in literacy, women’s education, reminiscence work and workplace training. As Senior Lecturer in Community Education at Goldsmiths’ College, her work now concerns research and development in the same areas. TALKING ABOUT LITERACY Principles and Practice of Adult Literacy Education Jane Mace London and New York First published in 1992 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge a division of Routledge, Chapman and Hall Inc. 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2001. © 1992 Jane Mace All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Mace, Jane. Talking about literacy: principles and practice of adult literacy education/Jane Mace. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-415-08044-4 (Print Edition). – ISBN 0-415-06655-7 (pbk.) 1. Functional literarcy – Great Britain. 2. Reading (Adult Education) – Great Britain. I. Title. LC156.G7M28 1992 374´.012 – dc20 91-41608 CIP ISBN 0-415-08044-4 (Print Edition) 0-415-06655-7 (pbk) ISBN 0-203-03251-9 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-17581-6 (Glassbook Format) to Jessica and Joe CONTENTS Acknowledgements ix Introduction xi To the reader xi On writing books xvii The shape of this book xx Part I Issues 1 PROBLEMS OF REPRESENTATION 3 Liberating literacy 4 The illiterate as someone else 7 Authors and interviewees 10 Describe or quantify? 14 Authentic voices 16 2 THE TRUTH FOR NOW 23 Truths for teachers, truths for students 24 Truth or fiction? 28 Truth and talk 31 Truth and style 34 Part II Principles 3 LISTENING TO THE QUESTIONS 43 Questions: asked and unasked 45 Literacy: how do we talk about it? 47 Needs and interests 50 Context and outreach 53 Class and literacy: some themes 59 vii TALKING ABOUT LITERACY 4 THE TEACHER-RESEARCHER 64 Researching the interest 64 Context and menus 69 Researching the answers 73 Words and contradictions 76 5 AUTHORS AND IDENTITY 83 From private to public 84 Rights and responsibilities 94 Inspirations 96 6 READERS EQUAL WRITERS 102 Reading aloud 104 Applause and audience 107 Trusting the reader 109 Friend or censor? 113 7 VOCATIONS AND VOCATIONALISM 119 The workplace as community 120 Maps and communities 125 Status and literacy 127 Communication and community 130 8 CONCLUSION 140 Afterword 144 Notes 147 Bibliography 158 Index 164 viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Towards the end of working on this book I went, partly out of writer’s procrastination, to an event on a Friday evening. As it turned out, that event gave me more new energy than any amount of poring over drafts. It was an evening to celebrate International Literacy Day (8 September). A group of twelve people (students and two tutors) sat round in a room in South-east London and listened as three of them read and spoke about their writing. To those three, and the determination and eloquence of the whole group, I owe the inspiration to finish what I began. Beyond them are the many adult students who have participated in literacy education with me, without whom I would have had nothing to say in the first place, and just a few of whom are featured in the book.* The best advice I found from another writer was Dorothea Brande’s stricture to the writer to treat her writing desk as a workbench. (If you start daydreaming or fretting, get up and go somewhere else. The place where you have your writing equipment is the place where you write.) Other advisers to whom I turned in difficult moments included Frank Smith, Sue Roe and Natalie Rothenberg. I have never met any of them. Three friends, however, gave me help of other kinds, and I would like to thank them here. First, Ruth Lesirge, with whom I have shared travel, laughter and some hard times, and who combined direct questions with affirmative warmth in her comments on drafts. Second, Wendy Moss who taught me again how to keep a sense of humour about serious matters and restated some of my muddled thought in intelligible language. And third, Rodney Mace, with whom I have lived for nearly twenty-five years, and who gave me the same encouragement and faith that he has always given me when I have had difficult things to face. ix
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