Now that we're halfway through the class, I realize what the point of it is. When I was growing up, I was encouraged to find the lesson or the moral that lied within the text. After this week, however, I see that there are endless questions that can be asked by the teacher and/or the students to discover even more from the text.
I must admit I have felt somewhat discouraged the past few weeks. When we have gotten into groups and read stories that pertained to the topic we were discussing, the majority of the critiques of the books were negative. The discussion of the book often ended in "I would NOT have this book in my classroom." This led me to believe that those books were full of negative stereotypes and were ultimately not quality pieces of literature.
However, yesterday in class Deb stated that just because a book may have certain stereotypes, that does not mean a student should not be encouraged to read it. Even if the book does have stereotypes, some stereotypes are not meant to be offensive, and they can stem from some sort of truth. Beyond this, a book that may have negative material within it could be an excellent source for facilitating a discussion with the class. At this time, the teacher could ask a few probing questions to get the class really thinking about why the author chose to write their story in the manner they did.
When a text is throughly questioned, the reader has a better understanding of why the author chose to write the story from that particular perspective. I believe creating discussions based on questions that the students have is an excellent way to get to the root of the story, which is what critical literacy is all about. As teachers, we must encourage our students to ask questions, challenge their perspectives, clear their misconceptions, and be able to give them as detailed of an answer as possible to ensure critical questions in the future.
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2 comments:
I had the same thoughts guring class. The last couple of books we read had negative stereotypes or views towards a certain group of people. This made me feel so confused! I did not know what to put in my classroom and what to tell my students if they were reading on of these books with negative stereotypes in them. After last class I realized I do not have to discourage my students from reading some of those books. Instead just explaining to them that all books come from one person's point of view. Also teaching the students to analyze the text to get the true meaning and weed out the negetive things as we go ago!
I enjoyed reading this post Ashley - thank you for sharing your thoughts
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