[AAACE-NLA] modernization thesis & the newspapers

[AWilder106@aol.com]

Colleagues,

Debbie remended   us last week that this is an advocacy list, a good point, 
so I'll get right to it.

Newspapers and the mass publication of books are products of the 
Enlightenment. So is the idea of higher expectations, better living conditions.   

The movement from a traditional culture (agricultural) to modern I discussed 
last week.

I gave short shrift to post modernism, the idea that different cultures have 
different expectations;   George or Andres please correct me if I am wrong.   
The residue of colonialism fits in here--Algeria, other parts of Africa, Iraq.

These two "stories" if you will, fill our newspapers and magazines, TV, 
movies, and so on.   They are fairly easy to trace out once you pay attention and 
know what you are looking for. I grew up on these stories and went to college 
and graduate school on them--Freire for example, also Fanon, the Civil Rights 
Movement, War on Poverty, Vietnam.

Now   we have another story, the lack of energy one, the   energy that makes 
our modern culture.   Hitched to this is global warming, which is already 
happening--melting of glaciers, polar ice cap, freak storms, rising sea waters.   
These stories are also being reported in newspapers and books.   The two sets 
of stories are not often mixed even though they can appear on the same 
newspaper page.

The first story, modern/post modern, we can deal with in adult literacy, it 
is part of our   rhetoric and our advocacy.   How about the second?   How do we 
deal with this one?   (Or two, to be accurate.)   

For example, Andres teaches mostly Mexican immigrants, I think.   What is the 
effect of   drought in Mexico on immigration to his area, if the drought is 
pushing immigration?   (I think it is, hope I am not off.)   

I find this whole topic quite frightening, frankly, because it points   to a 
world   quite different from the one we live in now, or I live in now.    I 
think we have more and   bigger changes coming up, they have already started   
How   might this affect advocacy?   How we plan?   How do we teach?

Kathleeen Bombach, a strong advocate if there ever was one, alluded to part 
of this problem maybe a year ago.   I responded then, and am very glad she 
spoke up.

Andrea

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