[AAACE-NLA] "Spring Uprising"

Thu Apr 13 09:19:58 EDT 2006

Kearney,

I have to disagree with you.  A stance of silence about what is going 
on over the immigration debate is itself a political act.  I also have 
to say that education is itself political, it says "We think you are 
worth educating." I once worked for a principal; of a public school in 
Brighton, MA, and he told me that in his younger days he would advocate 
strongly for his Hispanic students--to the point of jumping up on a 
lunchroom table and addressing his students in Spanish.  This is  how 
he got educational services for them.  He had to, I think.  It was the 
way he did succeed.  His mother had fled from Cuba with a suitcase of 
cigars and perfume, with her two boys, to make a life  for herself in 
the United States.

When I first heard about what  he had done I  was shocked.

Those of us who grew up teaching in the Civil Rights era and the 
Vietnam era got a lot of our political grounding there.  One of my 
former students, now the associate director of Yale's center on racism, 
wore a black armband to my school during Vietnam.

I agree this is a very confusing time, and I feel buffeted by the 
storms, too.  I think the best thing to do is "teach the moment."  
Whatever your feelings are, yea  or nay, a skillful  teacher can do 
this, it can be done.

Regards,

Andrea Wilder
On Apr 13, 2006, at 8:18 AM, David Rosen wrote:

> Kearney,
>
> I want to better understand what you mean.  Do you believe that the
> role of an adult education teacher, for example an ESL/ESOL teacher,
> should be to focus on language learning mechanics, not on cultural
> content? Or do you believe that cultural content has a role, but only
> in service of language learning? Or do you believe that cultural
> content has both an important role in the classroom, both for
> language learning and as a part of immigrant assimilation in American
> culture?  Or do you believe that cultural content is important for
> language learning, assimilation, and also because students want to
> know it, need to know it, or would benefit from it.  If the latter,
> what are your "boundaries," if any, on cultural content?  For
> example, if one of your students -- as adult ESL students across the
> country are doing -- asked in class to better understand the proposed
> federal legislation on immigrants, would that be in bounds or out of
> bounds?  How about if they asked what the meaning  was of the
> protests -- for example if, in the U.S. it was legal to protest? And
> do you, as a teacher, believe that it is your responsibility -- as a
> teacher or as a citizen -- to get involved in politics, for example
> to take a position on the proposed legislation?  And if so, if your
> students asked you what your position was, would it be appropriate to
> answer them in class?  Outside of class? What I am trying to
> understand better is what you mean when you say "I'll still be right
> here trying to teach people to communicate in American English."
>
> David J. Rosen
> Adult Literacy Advocate
> DJRosen at theworld.com
>
>
> On Apr 12, 2006, at 12:12 PM, Kearney Lykins wrote:
>
>> 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
>>
>>
>> --- aaace-nla-request at lists.literacytent.org wrote:
>>
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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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