In our parking lot exercise today, my favorite idea put on the board was the one Alyssa brought up having to do with teaching critical literacy. This is something that was not really taught to me in high school. We always just sat and absorbed what our teachers told us, what the authors wrote, and what we saw happening in the world. It was not until my AP lit class that I learned how to read critically. My AP lit teacher told us that even though the text is our main source, we still have to examine every factor that went into that text. It was not created in a vacuum. Its main influence is the biases of the author, which is influenced by the history and culture of that time period, and so on.
I don't believe that this needs to be limited to Advanced Placement classes, and obviously it does not need to be limited to ILA courses. We learned in this semester that any subject and any text can be read critically. Because so many students are taught to just absorb absorb absorb, we are going to have to shatter this idea about school and build up a culture of critical literacy.
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