[AAACE-NLA] "Spring Uprising" in AAACE-NLA Digest, Vol 35, Issue 20

[Kearney Lykins]

A Classroom Reaction to a Curb-side Account of the
Spring Uprising

Colleagues,

Question: How are the partisan sentiments and
arguments that infuse "Spring Uprising" relevant to
teaching people to read, speak, write and listen to
English? Answer: A lot, if one's pedagogic emphasis
includes the inculcation of leftist ideology among
members of our most at-risk populations. I used to
think that Leftist Advocacy masqueraded as Literacy
Advocacy. This seems to no longer be the case; the
masqueraders don't bother to get dressed up anymore.
Lauding the efforts of uninformed middle-schoolers for
skipping school, or praising the “out loud” demands of
their more august high school peers hardly qualifies
as subject matter that helps the professional
development of the general readership of this
discussion group. Such blatant political promotion
does not serve the greater goal of The Literacy Tent,
unless of course you see the promotion of leftist
ideals as the greater purpose. And if that is the case
then you should take your arguments to a more
appropriate forum, perhaps "The Socialist Worker." I
hear the dress code there is quite relaxed. I'll still
be right here trying to teach people to communicate in
American English. 

Kearney Lykins
ESL Teacher
Virginia Beach, VA
Kearney_Lykins at yahoo.com
(757) 496-7345


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> Today's Topics:
> 
>    1.  Spring Uprising (Lynda Terrill)
>    2.  The "Skills" vs "Knowledge" Debate
> (tsticht at znet.com)
>    3. Re:  Spring Uprising (Heide Wrigley)
>    4.  Time Magazine article on School Dropouts:
> Does a GED	Really
>       do the job? (David Rosen)
> 
> 
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2006 17:08:21 -0400
> From: "Lynda Terrill" <lterrill at cal.org>
> Subject: [AAACE-NLA] Spring Uprising
> To: "National Literacy Advocacy List sponsored by
> AAACE"
> 	<aaace-nla at lists.literacytent.org>
> Message-ID:
>
<7E0B624DDF68104F92C38648A4D93D8FF4BEE0 at MAIL.cal.local>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I am posting the following article on behalf of its
> author.
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> Lynda Terrill
> 
> *********
> 
> A Curb-side Account of the Spring Uprising?
> 
> by
> Anthony Bernier
> (530 words)
> 
> 11 April 2006
> 
> 	Reports coming in from across the nation, from
> large cities and small agricultural hamlets,
> announce that young people have become the vanguard
> of this Spring Uprising in opposition to the House?s
> recent attempts at immigration policy reform. 
> Yesterday, young people mobilized through cell
> phones, Instant Messaging, blogs, and all manner of
> information devices as they did two weeks ago,
> peacefully filled streets and town squares with song
> and protest defending their families and communities
> in numbers unprecedented for any protests in
> American history.
> 	History will show this broad and thick grassroots
> youth movement not only exceeding in size the
> anti-war and civil rights movements of the
> 1960s/70s, but would justifiably claim the scale of
> mobilization and significance of the Paris Commune
> in the spring of 1871.  [for a thumbnail review of
> the Paris Commune, see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_commune]
> 	In cities as dispersed and diverse as Houston,
> Phoenix, Atlanta, Okalahoma City, New York, Salt
> Lake City, Los Angeles, high school students marched
> miles to the middle school and stood outside calling
> their younger brothers and sisters out into the
> streets.  In Oakland, youth formed an unarmed
> phalanx 10-blocks long and filled the lawn in front
> of City Hall, before moving on the Federal Building.
>  And in small fly-over towns such as those rimming
> the agricultural belt of California?s massive San
> Joaquin Valley, cities such as Frenso and
> Bakersfield, and towns such as Aptos, Watsonville,
> Hollister, and Salinas, untold thousands likewise
> chanted and demonstrated ? exercising the rights to
> free expression effectively denied many of their
> parents.  These are by far the largest public
> mobilizations in the history of many of these
> places.
> 	And already they have suffered fatal retribution. 
> On Thursday, March 30, 14-year old Anthony Soltero
> took his own life in Southern California after the
> assistant principal at his middle-school threatened
> to send him to prison for three years, deny him the
> right to walk for his graduation, and fine the boys?
> mother because Anthony was ?truant? during a massive
> school walk-out two days earlier.  
> 	Irrespective of how one feels about immigration
> reform policies, a huge generation of young people
> is arising and assuming an unheard-of degree of
> civic responsibility taught by no after-school
> program and written about in no text-book driven
> advanced placement ?government? course.
> 	In 1962, at the dawn of a new student movement,
> Students for a Democratic Society envisioned the
> birth of ?participatory democracy? in its Port Huron
> Statement.  ?We are people of this generation,? the
> preamble declared, ?bred in at least modest comfort,
> housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to
> the world we inherit.?  With these words a
> comparatively wealthier, privileged, and formally
> educated generation attempted to make its mark on
> their culture.
> 	With this Spring Uprising, however, a far more
> marginal generation begins to make its own claims
> for full citizenship.  With far more at risk than
> expulsion at the Dean?s hands, this even younger
> generation prefigures its own march toward the
> center of history, asking not for approval or
> protection from parents or administrators.  With
> this movement they demand out loud that America
> live-out the full meaning of its otherwise
> full-throated creeds.
>          
> Anthony Bernier
> Oakland, California
> 
> 
> 
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> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 2
> Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2006 15:54:28 -0700
> From: tsticht at znet.com
> Subject: [AAACE-NLA] The "Skills" vs "Knowledge"
> Debate
> To: aaace-nla at lists.literacytent.org
> Message-ID:
> <1144796068.443c33a41edaa at webmail.znet.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> 
> April 11, 2006
> 
> The Great "Skills" Versus "Knowledge" Debate and
> Adult Literacy Education
> 
> Tom Sticht
> International Consultant in Adult Education
> 
> Earlier I posted a note on the aaace-nla list about
> knowledge and reading.
> Here I have revised that piece slightly in light of
> new evidence that
> the decades old debate about "phonics" [ synthetic,
> decoding emphasis]
> versus "whole language" [analytic, meaning emphasis]
> still rages in
> education circles. Now this debate appears to be
> being joined by another
> decades old debate, the "skills" versus "knowledge"
> controversy.
> 
> On the "skills" side of the debate, the BBC News
> education service reported
> on April 11, 2006
>
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/education/4897272.stm]
>  that
> the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) said
> that "The national
> curriculum should be fundamentally reformed with
> more focus on skills than
> specific subjects." The Association  "wants
> ministers to give children
> "entitlements" to broad skills, such as creativity
> and physical
> co-ordination, rather than specific knowledge." The
> ATL general secretary
> Mary Bousted reportedly said at a conference,
> "skills" were needed, rather
> than knowledge on its own. Subjects could be used to
> "illustrate" them."
> 
=== message truncated ===


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