Talking Points #8 Literacy with an Attitude

Connections                                

               While reading Literacy with an Attitude by Patrick J. Finn I couldn’t help but connect some of his points with PeggyMcIntosh’s White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. The concept of the “haves” and “have-nots” made me think about white privilege and its secret implementations. I strongly believe that McIntosh would agree with the two kinds of education Finn discusses. I feel like McIntosh would agree that Empowering Education would be applied to the people of power being white. This means that the students who gain the empowering education will lead to powerful literacy and positions of power and authority. The second idea is Domesticating Education which would be applied to anyone who is not considered part of the white culture of power. This form of education leads to functional literacy that makes a person productive and dependable, but not troublesome. This just show how students who aren’aren't part of the culture of power are educated to live and be transformed into what us “white” people think is socially acceptable.  I strongly believe that teachers can have a huge impact on changing the way the classroom is currently set up for some students. Teachers can really make a difference for student’s futures particularly the ones that feel the impacts of social perspectives by making students believe literacy and school knowledge can be used as a potential weapon in this current world we live in through connecting school knowledge with the reality of working class students’ lives.

               The other article that I thought of while reading Literacy with an Attitude was I won’t Learn from You by Herbert Kohl. One of the present mechanisms and social dynamics that have been uncovered is the ways of communication and beliefs, attitudes, values, habits, and behaviors that underlie them especially attitudes related to authority, conformity, and power of working class communities is at odds with the discourse of the schools. This makes acquisitions of schools discourse and powerful literacy difficult for working-class children. Kohl says that student’s refusal to learn can be interoperated as failure to learn which the case isn’t. Sometimes learning from a stranger who doesn’t respect your integrity results in major loss in self and can result in rejection to learn and even the world.