During my first semester of teaching (a first-year writing class in which I was charged with teaching 22 freshmen how to "write across the disciplines"), I had my students write a position paper on what we termed "cultural literacy." I had them read two pieces from their reader (Real Texts, in case anyone was interested): one was an excerpt from Victor Villanueva's Bootstraps and the other was a (rather infamous) piece by E.M. Hirsch entitled "The Theory Behind the Dictionary." In a nutshell, these two pieces were meant to be read in opposition. Villanueva's argued that students need to be taught to question commonly held worldviews and the idea of the canon, while Hirsch's argued that a set of agreed-upon historical facts, tropes, and idioms that are widely used in public discourse should be taught.
I was SO excited about this unit when I put it together. In my frenzy of syllabus-structuring and assignment sheet-making over the summer, I imagined changing my students' outlooks on not just how they had been taught, but how they would be taught, how the the news was presented to them, etc. In short (and in retrospect), I guess I imagined piquing that esoteric epistemological curiosity that Freire discusses - in each and every student. How could one not be moved? I had them take online quizzes that demonstrated what a myth the idea of a common cultural literacy is - or at least, how difficult it is to attain. I even created a fill-in-the-blank worksheet to aid their analyses that had questions like, "Villaneuva states '...the goal is not to have students relinquish national myths. The goal is to expose them to differences and similarities within the literary conventions that they have to contend with, to know the traditional norms while also appraising them, looking at the norms critically' (362). How do you envision this idea being enacted in schools?"
...I wish I had kept any of their filled-in worksheets, but I suppose I returned them all. I have no idea how anyone responded to that question, although I'm sure we discussed it in class. All I know is that at some point during that discussion, we landed on the topic of standardized testing, which, admittedly, is a form of the cultural literacy rubric that Hirsch esteems. Unfortunately, that also meant that I got 22 final papers bitching and moaning about the SAT and ACT...and I take full responsibility for not reining in the conversation.
Somewhere along the line, I let them overlook the major objective of the lesson, which I now realize was kind of a Freire Lite idea, one that is specifically intended for American learners. I wonder if I should have emphasized its radicalness, its roots in Freirean ideology (can I call it that?)...but I guess I also wonder if the pieces were simply "too hard" or "too complex" for first-year learners to handle. I DON'T want to believe this is the case; I have more faith in my students than most teachers (I think)...but I have to remember that all they have to draw on is their own experience, and that standardized testing was something they all related to (and it got discussion going - very, very freely, without facilitation from me). Isn't that the goal? I wonder if this assignment fell totally flat or if it reached them on some level, even if it didn't completely change their lives/outlooks, like I had hoped it would.
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